How can GCCs enable organizations to be more customer-centric?

How can GCCs drive customer centricity for organizations?

Based on our experience working with leading GCCs, we have outlined five specific initiatives through which GCCs can drive enterprise customer centricity.

1. Product development and innovation 

Global Capability Centers (GCCs) today have evolved into innovation hubs, equipped with access to top talent and advanced digital capabilities. These readily available capabilities can be harnessed by businesses to enhance product and service quality, thereby delivering a superior customer experience. Several GCCs are collaborating with start-ups and universities, through incubation units, tapping into their AI/ML and technical expertise to develop and execute ideas for innovative customer products and services that are future ready. Through this, GCCs are now acting as critical innovation partners for organizations looking to develop newer products and capabilities.

For instance, a company involved in aerospace leasing and service operations was looking to address a legacy industry challenge, by automating a manual returns inspection process that had long impeded operational efficiency and led to longer wait time for customers. To drive this innovation, the company utilized its GCC as a pivot. Leveraging the GCC’s startup incubation unit, they develop an AI-cloud-based solution that uses images and videos captured through mobile devices to identify equipment issues swiftly and accurately, providing real-time responses regarding the availability of replacement parts. This industry-first solution has significantly reduced inspection time, enabling faster closure of customer return cases.

Organizations are also increasingly leveraging their GCCs for customer-related R&D activities, especially in software and product engineering and design. These activities encompass tasks such as product design, modeling, testing, etc. A recent NASSCOM study noted that 85% of the surveyed companies already use GCC for their ER&D activities.

A noteworthy example here is a global technology company that leveraged its GCC to develop a cutting-edge new chip system. The entire process, from conception, and design to chip validation, was driven through the GCC, and the technology was subsequently scaled across global manufacturing facilities. This helped the organization greatly reduce the time to market for the new system, capitalizing on the GCC’s concentrated end-to-end R&D capabilities.

2. Customer insights and analytics

Data is often referred to as the new oil, and GCCs are increasingly assuming the role of its custodians. Analyzing customer patterns and behavior is key to improving the overall customer experience. GCCs are best placed to deliver on this aspect, with several GCCs already spearheading the data agenda for their organizations. Organizations can make more informed and deliberate customer decisions by utilizing GCCs to leverage the power of data.

Global Capability Centers (GCCs) can analyze customer experience data, delve into root causes, and identify areas for improvement. Additionally, they have the potential to pre-empt customer requirements through hyper-personalization.

For instance, a GCC of a global retail organization has harnessed its digital and analytics capabilities to develop an AI / ML model. This model estimates the real-time cost of a product on its shelves, considering current market conditions and inflation. It achieves this by analyzing the real-time costs of its components and their impact on the end product cost. For example, the true cost of a slice of bread today can be analyzed based on the prices of its various ingredients including flour, sugar, energy, etc. This analysis provides ammunition to the procurement teams to re-negotiate objectively with suppliers and obtain the best prices for themselves and their customers.

3. Customer experience transformation

Customer experience is no longer solely defined by the end-product or service itself; it's equally, if not more, contingent on how the product or service is delivered to customers and how effectively are they engaged through various touchpoints in the overall customer journey. In other words, today's customer experience encompasses all aspects of interaction.

A key factor in transforming product and service delivery experience is understanding the end customer. This is where GCCs can leverage their digital capabilities and data insights to add significant value.

For instance, the GCC of an industrial equipment servicing company developed a solution for customers to be able to track their equipment warranty and repair history. This enabled the business to gain a deeper understanding of the customer’s needs and the timing of these needs, effectively allowing them to curate their sales strategy accordingly.

In terms of overall customer engagement, GCCs can collaborate with business units to map the overall customer journey, identify pain points, and recommend improvements. This can enhance the end-to-end customer experience by minimizing friction and delivering consistent experiences at each stage of the journey.

For instance, a major retail company partnered with its GCC to develop a software solution that assists stores in determining the most efficient route for daily customer deliveries. This substantially reduced delivery time and improved customer feedback.

In another example, a retail organization’s GCC was assigned the task of collecting customer feedback from stores across various regions and analyzing this data to understand customer sentiment towards the stores. Subsequently, the business collaborated with the GCC and used this sentiment analysis to design future ready stores, that are appealing to end customers.

4. Customer contact enhancements 

Today’s digital world has placed several unique nodes for customer interaction, including chatbots, messaging, social media channels, call centers, and emails.

These multiple interaction channels require organizations to develop and manage a unified omni-channel customer contact strategy, that focuses on the overall customer journey. GCCs, which have traditionally managed all customer contact activities in the voice era, are best positioned to drive this omni-channel strategy in the digital age.

For instance, a leading airline operator has leveraged its GCC for managing and developing its mobile applications and chatbots in addition to the call and SMS channels already managed by the GCC. This unified strategy driven through the GCCs has ensured that all modes of communication are well integrated, and customers have a hassle-free and seamless experience during contact with the center.

Several GCCs are also managing marketing campaigns and product testing units for organizations, in partnership with their global business teams. 

5. Transforming the transactional

As organizations increasingly prioritize external customer-centric strategies, they should not lose sight of their internal systems and processes. On one hand, an ineffective and fragmented back-end could impede customer service innovation, whereas, on the other hand, a robust back-end system can serve as the bedrock on which customer-centric processes are built.

These back-end processes, including order management, claims processing, customer billing, and query management, are for the most part being driven by GCCs today. By digitally transforming these processes GCCs can drive value to the overall organization. This could consist of foundational elements such as a unified technology stack as well as other fixes including optimized customer query management, digitally enabled order management, as well as more advanced use cases such as an AI-driven claims validation process.

The impact would be two-fold. Firstly, a unified and robust back-end system can provide the strong foundation required for developing innovative customer experiences. Secondly, by freeing up bandwidth from transactional tasks, businesses can shift their focus towards enhancing customer engagement.

How can EY help

EY can help you assess your existing customer experience performance through customer audits, feedback analysis, customer journey mapping, and other initiatives, to generate the right insights for you to build differentiated, high-impact experiences that can add long-term value to the organization.

Pramod Sudhindra, EY India Business Consulting Partner has contributed to the article.