Recently we welcomed Ravi Teja Bommireddipalli as our CEO. Ravi is a rare blend of engineering, business development, design thinking and transformational business strategy. Ravi is a global digital consulting leader with experience across diverse industries in the US, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
In a short interview, we spoke to Ravi about the landscape of the mobile industry, delivering right customer experiences and benefitting from design thinking. In this article, we share those insights with you.
What are the key areas in which the mobile app industry and the ecosystem evolved over the last 10 years?
When we started offering mobile app development as a service, it was largely for enterprises who simply said ‘we want an app’. The projects were just about coding and some basic wireframes. Today, the practice has evolved into a serious, business-building one and involves several specialists in consumer behaviour, trend mapping, UX/UI specialists, niche technologists, analytics experts and many more. It is not just about lines of code. It takes strategy, design, engineering, analytics and marketing to come together to deliver a customer experience. Also, our projects have to integrate with complex back-end systems and have the potential to impact not just a customer experience of a brand but the business fortunes of a company. Our app for McDonald’s delivered 103% more orders via the mobile than the previous version. So digital experience partnerships are critical nowadays.
In your view, what are the biggest challenges for enterprises when it comes to delivering a great customer experience?
I think it is more of a mindset issue. Many enterprises – even the experienced ones seem unwilling to pay a premium for great design. When I mean design, I don’t mean how a product looks – it is beyond that. It is understanding the customer journey, their pain points and offering an experience driven by empathy. Another challenge is getting every stakeholder on board to deliver great customer experience.
You have been an evangelist of Design Thinking over the years. How can enterprises benefit from this practice?
As I said earlier, at the core of Design Thinking as an attitude is empathy towards your user. Your user could be within the organisation or outside it – as a customer. So if we start from there, Design Thinking when implemented right, has the potential to be a catalyst for change across the entire organisation – not just how a website looks or an app looks. This can then have a ripple effect on every output – be it a product or service and ultimately deliver a delighted customer. And a delighted customer is a loyal one.
