00:00But as a leader, how do you think that how much feedback is necessary in both ways?
00:06So there are two ways. One is internal feedback. The other is external feedback.
00:11I think, especially in this industry, let me first talk about the external one, then I'll come to the internal
00:16one.
00:17So when we started, we were basically a program management company, right?
00:22So we were managing programs on the ground and all of that stuff happened and everything.
00:26But what happened after a period of time is the clients grew, you know, thankfully it grew.
00:33So it became a bit difficult for us to manage the communication side of the clients at a daily level,
00:42because then one had to do multitasking too much.
00:45Coming to feedback, we went to our clients back and we tried to talk to them.
00:50So we used to have this very interesting in 2010-11, we used to have these off-sites with our
00:58clients.
00:59Off-site with the client?
01:00With the client. So we used to have one day meetings with our clients.
01:04We would all meet at some place, maybe Chennai or somewhere in off-site with those areas, clients from those
01:10areas.
01:11And we would have a workshop, we would do some capacity building exercise.
01:15But actually, frankly speaking, I didn't tell them, but those were actually feedback loops.
01:19So at very early stage of the company, first is I was fortunate to have a great team.
01:27At that point of time, my team was great.
01:29And some of them are now in the management of the company.
01:33So we started listening to our clients and continuously a loop started coming in that, you know, we are not
01:39updated regularly.
01:40At that time, there was no dashboard, no, all of that stuff.
01:44So we used to have to send emails and all that stuff.
01:48So we said, how can, and then we sat down, we said, how do we resolve this?
01:53And, and we thought, okay, why, why don't we think literally like out of the box?
02:00So we are in consulting industry, Akash.
02:04And you will still not hear that there is a communication team in any consulting industry or a consulting firm.
02:13You take the best of the firms, you will have all other practices, but you will not have a customer
02:20information and engagement team.
02:23So about three and a half, four years down lane, when we started in 2008,
02:27we decided, okay, this is an, it started with an experiment.
02:31We appointed three people.
02:33And what we did is we set up a client communication cell.
02:39They would actually communicate with the clients on a regular basis.
02:44And their portfolio would only be to transfer the project information to the clients.
02:49So that the people who are working on the project are focused on the project, but this communication team is
02:56still relaying the information to the client.
02:58So it's a kind of a daily task or what is it?
03:00It's a kind of a daily task for them to update as the movement happens.
03:04So if, if your project has reached a certain stage, the information is given to the client and all this
03:10stuff.
03:12And, and what happened is the clients overwhelmingly, you know, sort of accepted that because they never heard of it.
03:21They never thought that a consulting company can have a client engagement team.
03:26And today it is a full fledged department.
03:29And 100% of our clients are communicated updates on a weekly, daily as required basis by client specialist.
03:39And it is headed by one of our senior members, Anand, who heads that as a senior vice president of
03:44the company.
03:44And he manages that team fantastically well.
03:47So feedback, how important it is, if you would have not heard and taken the feedback as data at that
03:56time and, and, and change the course of our action, we would have, we would be facing some other problems
04:03where we would be only able to address a certain set of clients rather than, you know, addressing a large
04:09mass of clients, which we are addressing today.
04:12That adaptability came only when you receive feedback and you accept feedback as information, which you need to act upon,
04:19that is a, then the second phase of the external feedback came upon that there's a limitation.
04:25How many people in the client engagement team can update how many clients?
04:29There is a volumetric.
04:30So what we did is we took assistance of technology.
04:35So we developed a sort of a MIS where every client has a dashboard of himself, of their organization.
04:44Uh, it is uniquely identified with a client ID, we've given a login ID password and all your progress of
04:52your project is uploaded real time on the dashboard.
04:56That dashboard is accessible from your phone.
04:59It is optimized for your iPad, for your web, anywhere.
05:04Uh, the industry at large has never heard of it.
05:10And I'm still telling you, they don't have it even today, except us.
05:13There is no company in our sector, which operates with that.
05:17So we are earth shakers when it comes to this kind of adaptability and the complete credit goes to the
05:23team because they are always on a lookout of how can we create easiness of doing work.
05:27This is external feedback, right?
05:29Now we have started another fight.
05:32How do we incorporate AI in it?
