Cherry Picking

Phani Nagaraj is a well-travelled and well-heeled businessman. On a recent visit to Chennai, he and a colleague went out for a late night dinner at an upmarket restaurant belonging to a national hotel chain. "I was shocked at the service level and, mind you, this at a restaurant in a five-star hotel chain."

So, when presented with a tablet to offer feedback at the end of the meal, Nagaraj did not hesitate to be candid. Even before he could grab his coat and exit, the chief manager was at his table, duly apologetic, promising to improve the restaurants service standards. Nagaraj was offered an expensive bottle of wine as a recompense.

A miffed Nagaraj was mollified "not because of the bottle of wine - though that did help - but because they had reacted so quickly to address my issues." The manager had thought on his feet and reacted in real time, based on feedback, which he had seen on his phone. All that had been made possible because of real-time analytics provided by CloudCherry, an Omni-channel, SaaS (software as a service)-based customer experience management (CEM) platform. CloudCherry helps brands track, measure and enhance customer experience and delight.

Vinod Muthukrishnan, Co-founder and CEO of CloudCherry, says that while CEM space has been there for a long time, "nobody had effectively addressed this opportunity. Customer experience (CX) is the game-changer for a brand's success today and till we came around, there was no single unified way to track CX and measure the impact on profitability. What we offer is a complete CEM platform."

CloudCherry claims what sets it apart from conventional feedback mechanism are a few things. "We are omni-channel, real time and SaaS- based. Since we are a product, we can deploy within 30 minutes at the click of a button and measure metrics across a range of things and various touchpoints," claims Muthukrishnan.

Some of CloudCherry's marquee customers attest to it. "CloudCherry helps us in truly understanding our customers. We are now focusing largely on our Net Promoter Score metric provided by CloudCherry and it has helped us in organising ourselves to serve our customers better," says Nirmal Lobo, Head of Retail Operations (Watches & Accessories) at Titan Company Ltd.

Mithun Sacheti, CEO of Caratlane, a portal that sells jewellery online and which recently got acquired by Titan, also says that CloudCherry's CEM was easy to use and it provided actionable analytics. "As a customer-centric brand, we are also about a great customer experience. With CloudCherry, we got the perfect tool to understand these experiences after every customer interaction whether on our website, our stores or during delivery." Caratlane was using CloudCherry's analytics even before Titan acquired it.

Since it is a SaaS-based product, pricing of Cloudcherry's offerings vary depending on a number of factors, including things like number of touchpoints it is deployed at, the customisation - if any - required and other features. The company has till date raised `5 crore from IDG Ventures, Chennai Angels and Capillary Technologies. Globally, it competes with the likes of Medallia and Qualtrics. In India, apart from some of those global players, it also headbutts in the marketplace with MaFoi Servesmart.

Muthukrishnan says the company has 100-plus customers and 650 touchpoints are being used including by the likes of Axis Bank and Future Lifestyle Fashion. "What we offer is something very fundamental and critical to the success of any brand. Customer experience will determine which brands will thrive and which will fall by the wayside. What we offer is a way for organisations to measure and improve on it."

Manu Gupta, National Retail Operations Manager of The Collective, which is a part of Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, concurs with Vinod and explains the utility of Cloudcherry's offering. "As a luxury retail brand, we are expected to not only offer great products, but also an amazing shopping experience to match. With Cloudcherry, we are able to understand exactly what our shoppers are looking for, address any issues they might face, and ensure that we always give them a great customer experience."

The company has a revenue run rate of about half a million dollars currently and is aiming at $5 million ARR by 2018. "As we grow, the focus is on continuing to get the right kind of talent and retaining our culture," adds Muthukrishnan.