Welcome Akanksha Rastogi, Head of Data and Insights, foodpanda, sharing her insights on Customer Data, Data Privacy & Customer Experience as part of the MarTech Thoughts series.

How do you describe your job to a 5-year-old?

I make sure when you feel hunger pangs, you can find the best restaurant to order online your favourite yummy treats. It reaches you fast and you don’t have to think twice about it. We find you a rider who can drive to the restaurant real quick, who shall reach there just as the food is ready and then take the best route to get the food to you real quick.

What is the one marketing platform/app/solution you can’t live without? Why?

I believe the social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are here to stay and play an even larger role in our lives.

What are the key challenges when it comes to implementing Chatbots for the first time?

The challenges remain in terms of multi-lingual training, lack of empathy in initial experience, and confusion on linguistic nuances, resulting in limited, inaccurate responses. Also, we need a diverse set of data to train the bot before we launch in production to control for any adverse impact on customer experience.

What is the best use of technology you have seen during this time of uncertainty and changes?

I have seen technology being used to drive large-scale automation, ML-driven real-time resolutions and real-time prompts for human intervention to the right stakeholders.

How much of your marketing is data-driven?

I would say a high proportion of our marketing strategy is data-driven and so is a lot of tactical and on-ground execution.

As mobile and internet use rapidly expands; how do you track customer behaviour change?

We use both 1st and 3rd party data to track customer behaviour change. Being an e-commerce platform, we believe the former is much richer and more relevant than the latter for customer behaviour change analysis.

What challenges do you see in processing data coming from different sources? How to overcome?

Data coming from disparate sources is often messy and is not easy to reconcile. Also as we are often following the product, we have to choose carefully the data points we would like to capture to be able to get a good picture without blowing up the costs. We nail this by ensuring stricter controls on data quality and working very closely with business and product stakeholders to capture eventual use cases.

With more consumers being conscious of their data being shared, how do you overcome the growing concern?

In my experience, most customers are willing to trade their data for a better and more seamless experience. It is when we use the data to push a potential upsell which doesn’t seem relevant that the customer gets frustrated. So, we deal with the data responsibly, using it only for the purposes where explicit consent was taken, protecting personal data privacy with principles of least privilege and also ensuring the customer is at the heart of every decision (data-backed or not).

What data enrichment strategies can you suggest that work effectively from your experience?

Data enrichment is an essential step to make sense of the humungous amounts of data that we are generating today. I believe that enrichment should enable the execution of the larger strategic vision of any organization. It should be preceded by clear alignment on its objectives, value and precision to drive the envisioned use cases. Also, enrichment strategies are iterative and benefit tremendously from feedback.

How do you connect, engage and build a persistent relationship with your customers?

We believe in the customer being at the heart of every interaction. We are personalising app elements and entry points to capture different user cohorts, customer journeys and behaviours while ensuring they have a seamless experience. We also work towards communicating with customers proactively and are working towards building a customer 360 view.

How do you tackle department silos when it comes to looking into CX proactively?

‘Create magical experiences’ is one of our values and we make sure we are proactively breaking silos when it comes to customer experience and business coordination. We completely understand how frustrating it can be as a customer when it seems like you are repeating yourself to different people with no resolution in sight.

A big thank you to Akanksha Rastogi, Head of Data and Insights, foodpanda, sharing her insights on Customer Data, Data Privacy & Customer Experience as part of the MarTech Thoughts series.

If you want to connect with Akanksha after reading her MarTech Thoughts, please reach out to her via her LinkedIn Profile!

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Last updated: Nov 2023