This is Customer-centricity: Part 2 of many

As a 'behavioural designer', I pride myself in being able to advise my clients and stakeholders in how a certain product, service or business is addressing (or, will address, in case of a new idea) the customer / user needs or not. Over the years, some hubris also keeps accumulating, and I would stick my neck out and say that xyz product or service is not going to cut it with users. Of course, gravity always wins. By 'gravity', I mean, human behaviour. After all, human behaviour can be fickle, unpredictable, inconsistent, weird, inexplicable, etc.

And that's why 'Behavioural Design' is my version of an adventure sport. I work at the edge of that challenge: to be able to decode, understand and prepare (predict is too tall an order) for what the customers / users might do and how they might respond to a product, service or business offering.

There have been 2 product / service offerings which I got completely wrong, and 1 which I got reasonably right (probably, even underestimated how big it's going to get). Here is the breakdown of each and what I've learned in the process.

1) Quick commerce (Zepto, Blinkit and the likes):

When Zepto began the hype around 10-minute delivery, I was not just skeptical, I was sure that this wouldn't work. I didn't think that the (Indian) consumer needed something like this. The heights of this was when Zepto (or was it one of the other quick commerce brands) started offering the latest iPhone with quick delivery, I was aghast. I thought, who needs an iPhone in 30 minutes? Turns out, I was wrong on all these fronts. While the quick commerce industry has gone through its own ups & downs (largely due to the funding winter and its consequences), the reality is that the users have clearly shown their interest and hunger for this format. Even in recent projects that we (3 Big Things.Studio ) have been involved with, we have heard how quick commerce has become part of the daily lives of so many people from various walks of life, be it in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Nagpur, Madurai, etc.

And then, reading about the evolution of Kirana store, articles like the one below (by Mithun Madhusudan ) also helped us understand more about what's going on and what's emerging in India right now.

Shalini Raghunathan and I were speaking about all of this recently, and then she said something which really hit home for me. She said, India has always been a 'quick commerce' market. Our kirana stores have served that very same purpose for all these decades! We've all had the Neelam store, Murugan store and the likes in our neighborhood, who were always going to send us the atta, sugar, coffee powder, medicines, biscuits, chips, 'thanda' or whatever other things we needed at home, when we needed these urgently. And these would all get delivered anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes (or maximum, an hour perhaps)!

And so it's actually logical, well actually, even predictable (in hindsight, of course) that the Zeptos and the Blinkits of the world would crush it. (Yes, they need to get the supply-side economics and operational efficiencies right, that's equally important).

2) Rapido (and the emergence of 'Bike-taxi' services):

Did the concept of 'bike taxi' services seem outlandish? No. It made a lot of sense to me, that in a country where two-wheelers have been the predominant mode of private transport, that the concept of bike-taxis would be loved by people. But what has really surprised me, and I definitely didn't see that coming, is how women have taken to this platform. My 'logical' mind told me that women would not feel comfortable or safe in such proximity to an unknown male.

I've heard enough horror stories of women's challenges and safety issues in travelling in buses and other public / private transport scenarios in India. And so, I had enough reason to be skeptical and suspect of this new kid on the block.

Turns out, at least anecdotally, there seem to be enough women out there who are regularly opting for a Rapido over the alternatives. Especially for the daily, work commute. I started diving deeper into this with a colleague who's one such super-user of Rapido and collected some inputs from her friends too.

A few things stood out for me, and these are all hypothesis (to be validated and further evaluated through proper research):

• Younger women (i.e. those in their early 20s or mid-20s) are emerging as the super-users, compared to the older (late 20s and 30s) cohort.

• The bike riders (i.e. "Captains" as Rapido refers to them) are often referred to by the name of 'Bhaiya' or 'Anna' by these women users. This could be building off of the existing habit of calling the autorickshaw guys 'Bhaiya'/'Anna', but my hypothesis is that in the context of a bike riding scenario, where one is a lot more vulnerable than in an autorickshaw, women are able to establish boundaries and a certain safety 'code' with the unknown male. Of course, it's not fool-proof or a guarantee for any misdemeanour on his part, but it probably establishes some level of comfort for the women passengers.

• The economics of this is too good to ignore. Autorickshaws and, of course, Uber/Ola rides have become much more expensive than earlier. So when it comes to a daily commute which is unavoidable, these price differences can add up to a huge deal. And on top of that, with such rampant cancellations of Uber/Ola (by the drivers) and supply bottlenecks in the last couple of years, a bike-taxi service would make the whole value proposition so much more compelling.

3) Education and Entertainment on-demand:

Back in 2010, I was consulting for a global multinational tech company that engaged us for a project to look into the future (5-10 years horizon) and identify future needs of Indian consumers and to explore what possibilities that could throw up for technology and its usage. The idea wasn't to predict, but to explore scenarios and possibilities.

To put things in context: back in 2010, we were still new to 3G. (3G had launched in the end of 2008, but prices were still quite 'premium'). iPhone had launched in 2006, but was still predominantly a 'first-world' phenomenon. Smartphone adoption in India was hardly anything to write home about (some reports peg it at 34 million in 2010).

As part of this exploration of future consumer needs and technology usage scenarios, we hit upon two scenarios that have eventually become reality in a phenomenal manner, way beyond what we'd envisioned:

• Education on-demand: Scenarios we envisioned spoke about the hunger and need for good quality, affordable (not cheap) education across the length & breadth of India. We imagined possibilities for children and adults to tap into this kind of high quality content & education through their laptops and mobile phones. We all know how the 'edtech' revolution eventually consumed India, and got further accelerated with Covid.
• Entertainment on-demand, on-the-go: To envision a scenario where a large part of India would be hooked onto their mobile phones and consume everything from 'saas-bahu' soaps to cricket, sounds obvious in hindsight. But in 2010, there was hardly any inkling of this. I vividly recall, we came up with several illustrative scenarios, e.g. a mother waiting outside her child's school to pick her up after school and using that time to catch-up on the reruns of her favourite soaps that she missed. We also pictured a young corporate using his time during the commute to work in the official company bus, by watching travel related shows to plan a vacation with friends.

These scenarios are now so commonplace across India. Yes, we envisioned these to a great extent, but certainly didn't know to what scale and magnitude these scenarios would play out. Or, for that matter, how they'd actually manifest (for e.g. Hotstar launching an app in 2015, and especially focused on live cricket and some reruns of StarTV's content).

Like I said at the beginning, it's an adventure sport, to be able to design for human behaviour. One can get it right a few times (with some skill and a lot of luck), but one can get it wrong too, there is no guarantee.

Here are 3 things I've taken away from such efforts:

Lesson #1: What resonates with people is: New, yet Familiar. The key is to breakdown what aspects of your new product / service is going to get categorised and seen as 'New' to the user (and is 'value' in the way they see it), and what parts of it are 'Familiar' (i.e. what existing behaviours and habits of the user does it tap into)?

Zepto and Rapido are building off of existing (and therefore, familiar) behaviours AND doing that in a new format and experience. And yes, they are also delivering new value in a way that their 'familiar' versions (kirana stores in the case of Zepto, and autorickshaws and uber-drivers, in the case of Rapido) hadn't delivered. Some of this is about cash-backs, discounts and other financial carrots that these startups are able to offer which are, of course, thanks to venture capital money. But over and above that, it's also the visibility, clarity and control that they offer to the users.

Lesson #2: People are willing to trade-off 'risk' when the payoff is worth it to them, or when the alternatives are equally sub-optimal. What payoffs are your customers / users experiencing? How much incrementally better is that payoff, over the risks they need to take? Are those risks less than, or at least, equal to the risks they already are taking with the current alternatives?

In the most important moments that matter (like commute to/from work), Rapido is a far more accessible, affordable and speedy option than other alternatives (bus, autorickshaw, Uber/Ola).

Lesson #3: Human behaviour can seem irrational, chaotic and intense like anyone navigating Indian traffic for the first time in their lives. But, like Indian traffic, there is some method to the madness. There are a set of implicit, instinct-based rules and principles that are passed on from generation to generation. One just needs to embrace and learn that system ground-up. Preconceived notions and 'logic' will not help, and will in fact, make things worse. What works is to identify the context, the principles, and the patterns.

In closing, leave the hubris out. Hold on during the roller coaster ride. :-)