For a company that was always obsessed with delighting customers, breathing new life into its customer-first philosophy would have been a tall order. But under Customer for Life, it has managed to do exactly that.
– Anselmo Martyres, Senior Managing Editor, Branding
When Cactus Communications (CACTUS) relocated its headquarters in Mumbai in 2018, Cactizens were greeted with walls plastered with maxims centered around good customer service. “Give your customers what they want—and a little more,” one of them read. Another advised, “Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
The customer-first philosophy has been a key pillar of CACTUS ever since its founding in 2002. Its flagship brand, Editage, has a No Questions Asked policy, which allows its customer base of 550,000 researchers to seek free rework or full refund if they are dissatisfied with the services. In fact, when hammering out new guiding principles for the organization—called The CACTUS Way, which it rolled out in 2020—the working group made sure it included a principle that summarized the organization’s long-standing approach to its customers:
Make your customer succeed;
set no limits to what you can do.
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In 2017, Rubina Parkar joined CACTUS with over 12 years of experience in customer servicing in the Food & Beverage, Retail, and Airlines industries. As the head of the small Quality & Customer Experience team, she was tasked with scaling up the company’s customer-centric activities.
As Vice President, Quality and Customer Experience, Rubina Parkar drives initiatives under Customer for Life.
“The mandate was clear: convert first-time customers into evangelists,” says Rubina. “We wanted to recognize customers beyond their order number or assignment code. We wanted to learn about their aspirations, motivations, and emotions. It was important to earn their trust and we aspired to become a trusted advisor to them.”
Once this objective had been articulated, Rubina set out to define areas that needed work. The first task was bringing all initiatives under one umbrella.
“In the last 18+ years, CACTUS has taken several customer-facing initiatives. Every department had a customer-centric target, but they were working on their targets in silos. It was important to make sure they were interconnected and that resources were used efficiently,” Rubina says.
Thus was born “Customer for Life.” Under Customer for Life, all customer-centric initiatives are defined and overseen by one team, with the support of the marketing, operations, customer servicing, and technology departments.
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Since its founding, CACTUS has ensured that its workforce imbibed customer focus and is constantly reminded of its commitment to customers. New recruits are introduced to CACTUS’s customer-first philosophy in the orientation program called Genesis. But Rubina and team wanted to make sure that Cactizens were excited about Customer for Life.
The team introduced a mascot, Captain CACTUS, a superhero(ine) figure that personified every Cactizen looking out for the customer. The launch was treated as a marketing campaign. Customer for Life was discussed in department meetings, introduced in ice-breakers, and made its way in the inbox of every Cactizen. Rubina started “Voice of Client,” a series of meetings where customer feedback is shared with people who could influence change.
The Customer for Life team introduced a mascot, Captain CACTUS, as part of their outreach activities.
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The core team behind Customer for Life has been relying heavily on big data and technology. The team studied approximately 15,000 feedback responses collected over the last four years from customers of Editage and implemented several measures successfully—from replacing the payment gateway customers had been complaining about in some markets to expediting rechecks for dissatisfied customers.
“With tech like AI and machine learning being accessible in-house, we’re exploring ways in which we can leverage new tech to collect data, study customer needs, and improve customer experience,” Rubina says. “We cater to over 550,000 customers worldwide, each of them with unique requirements. Our aim is to meet each of these needs satisfactorily and offer unparalleled CX.”
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Rubina admits that pulling off Customer for Life at this scale would not have been possible without the backing of Abhishek Goel (CACTUS Co-founder and CEO) and Vikas Narang (COO and Head, Editage).
Abhishek Goel became a staunch advocate of good customer servicing—what he calls “delighting customers”—during his stay in Japan. When he co-founded CACTUS, he personally oversaw the setup of the customer service department, which he later rechristened Customer Delight Department, and was invested in introducing customer-first tenets to the early workforce.
Vikas Narang worked for Amazon from 2014 to 2015. During this period, he became familiar with Amazon’s well-documented customer obsession. Vikas found a lot of similarities in the way CACTUS and Amazon prioritized customer feedback. He says that CACTUS’s commitment toward its customers is what drew him to the company and helped seal his decision of joining CACTUS.
Both Abhishek and Vikas ensured that Customer for Life stayed on the top of the organization’s agenda, providing input and support till it became an integral part of the work culture.
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Given the scale of activities under Customer for Life, Rubina felt it was important to have more eyes and ears on the ground. They have started roping in “ambassadors” to help drive Customer for Life. Rubina says, “These Cactizens will help us identify customer success stories, build customer awareness in their teams, and flag areas of concern with us. We are so used to thinking about things a certain way. By recruiting these ambassadors from different business avenues or touch points, we will be able to get different perspectives to customer experience and will be able to provide more creative solutions.”