With digital acceleration, customer experience is becoming an issue: Firstsource

We are embarking on an era where regulatory boundaries will be redefined, more will come within its purview, yet there will be distinctions globally in how this is approached. A couple of industries, namely FinTech and telecom, will see quite a few changes, also driven by supporting ecosystems such as artificial intelligence. And it will all trickle down to consumer experience, something Rajiv Malhotra, the Head of Europe Business at RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group company Firstsource, is wary of.

From his position, overlooking the company’s businesses in the European region with what he claims is a significant focus towards the Nordics, Malhotra talks about the changing contours of data privacy, cybersecurity as well as regulations, and how it impacts the demands from businesses they work with. Edited excerpts:

Q. A lot of data is generated in banking and telecom. What, in your opinion, would be the best practices to prevent data breaches and for handling user data?

Rajiv Malhotra: I think everyone is doing their bit. The whole aspect of cybersecurity governance and the best practices is very important. I believe taking it to the next level is important, which we are doing as an organisation, but at the same time, ensuring that our clients are also on that same practice. If there is anything else they embarking on, how do you better collaborate?

I think that is missing in some way or the other, which is where issues arise. This is where every customer organisation is now becoming stronger, and to say ‘this is my set of governance guidelines’, ‘what are your set of governance guidelines’ and ‘is there a way we can collaborate better?’ How do you then mitigate the overall risk? That is where we are seeing a significant amount of unlock.

Q. From your vantage point, how you look at the Indian economy and the Indian regulation space? Is there scope for more on the lines of FinTech and communication regulation?

Malhotra: I think India is doing enough, but the challenge we are facing very specifically is that there has been a lot of noise around the whole digital acceleration and with the drive towards NPS (editor’s note: this is short for Net Promoter Score, a metric used by companies to measure customer experience). The customer experience is becoming an issue in some industries, enough to say that is India ready to service that kind of an aspect. If you compare the customer experience, the regional customer experience is better in some industries and some sectors. So that creates a question mark.

Then if you look at the risk of data getting leaked, it is still higher in that market. There is a lot of movement on the cybersecurity aspect as well. In the past, we’ve seen some customers who have gone there, and then pulled the business back because NPS was a big issue.

That’s another segment which needs some improvisations, to say ‘yes, this is a market which can actually do the whole digital acceleration differently’. It can also actually do voice differently. If you see the communication media industry, they’re already there. And you see everything is happening all over India, but the financial services market in particular, and the non-financial services market, which is a diversified market, is still very resistant. This is where regulations are impacting massively the customer experience, by holding them back. It stops them from putting jobs in that particular market.

Q. As your base, the UK is with extending focus across tech verticals for regulations. Do they help in practice, in other geographies as well?

Malhotra: No, actually. We have been fairly fine in the US. I think the complexity on regulation comes in more after the UK is pretty much Europe, but again, Europe is Swiss. Right now, we don’t operate in that market, and we’ve kept away in particular. If we try and expand in Europe, our strategy is very clear to go in Nordics which is English speaking and less regulated.