What Anika Agarwal teaches about privacy-first marketing

My next guest is Anika Agrawal, Senior VP and Head Marketing, Digital and Direct Sales at Max Pupa Health Insurance. A seasoned marketing professional, Anika joined Max Pupa in 2011 and has been instrumental in positioning the brand as a top-notch family health insurer in India. She conceptualized Max Pupa Walk for Health which was one of the most successful health initiatives in the country. Welcome to HTM. Thank you so much. Anika, you know, in my experience and as popular adage goes, you know, financial services are always sold, not bought.

But in this world of information, also defined as the world of the internet, where everybody has access to, you know, the last detail, there is all the opportunity in the world to start building brands that are actually bought and not necessarily sold. And just taking from where Ajay left us, you know, for interacting with customers, for letting them tell us what they want. In this new age, and I'm defining it as the age of the internet, but that's a loose definition.

It is actually the age of information because we have more and more access with or without the internet thanks to technology. How do you go about building a brand that's actually bought, not sold? So I think information always existed. The question that you have around financial services and why it is sold and not bought is because of the nature of the product. I think all of us treat it as complex. We don't want to get into the information. The information is available. And largely a trust deficit which exists. I don't understand it.

I don't know what you will do with me. I'm buying it now, maybe using it 10 years from now. So there's a large trust deficit which exists. And that is why traditionally the role of the advisor in the area of insurance and so on and so forth. So I think the important thing for brands to be bought and not really sold is actually three things. One is that, you know, you need a financial advisor. I think, you know, in the age of internet and this whole thing of DIY, people say that, you know, let's forget the advisor.

I'm going to talk direct to the consumer. I think there's a large role that an advisor still plays when you're buying a financial product. He gives the trust. He gives the comfort. So how do you really enable your advisor or your distributor in between with information, with your customer experience? I think that's a large part of brand building. That's point number one. If you look at your DIY platforms and, you know, enough education and information, I think it's also about consistency of customer experience.

Because you look at word of mouth today, I think one bad customer today on the social media for you is actually, you know, doing all the disservice to the brand that you can get. So consistency of service, consistency of experience, I think that's the second thing they can build in the age of internet. And how do you really demonstrate that to the customer? And I think third and a large part essentially is crisis management. So how do you really handle the one bad case that comes through as a business?

And I think all these things together, if the marketer can build them in the brand conversation, that's how financial services brands would be built in my mind. Lovely. Lovely. What's the role of technology in this relationship between companies and, you know, the distributors, the advisors? So I think when we look at the role of technology today, it's also the role of an enabler. And I think Ajay spoke nicely about the fact that, you know, it continues to be high touch.

So between, you know, technology and making it low touch, it will always be high touch if you need to build trust. I think the idea is that, you know, when the customer comes back to you, there is enough information available with the person who's interacting with the customer. Now, whether it's a distributor or whether it's your customer services team, to actually give that high touch to the customer.

So when we talk about technology and specifically now coming to insurance, for example, and, you know, we sell health insurance today, there's a large ecosystem involved, right? There's a seller or an advisor there. And finally, the service or the, you know, promise that you're giving to the customer, you're not actually servicing him. It's the hospital, which is the end point. So technology actually gives us three things. Technology gives us, you know, the ability to create an ecosystem today.

So how do you really connect the dots between your advisor, between the hospital who's actually really servicing the customer, and create an ecosystem which talks to each other? How do you really use that ecosystem then to have a conversation with your customer and actually do personalized engagement or personalized products for him? And the third, of course, is in the area of customer service. So when I touch you, when I feel you, do I get a consistent experience?

So I think those three things actually are building the financial services brand in the age of internet. I'm going to take a segue on language and ask you this question. We've done an episode on languages and vernacular and adoption of languages on the internet. And a lot of the research that got quoted in that episode said that 80-90% of people across categories prefer transacting in a language of their choice. Are financial services today available in language of choice? Are you available in language of choice?

So if you look at the journey, I think there's a fair distance to cover there. Because today what's happening in financial services is there are large sets of challenges that you're facing today. Are there enough people buying? The people who are buying you today, are they spending enough with you? How do you really get more out of the same customer that you have today? I think those are the challenges that financial services brands today are struggling with. To get scale and to get large scale and the language of choice and conversation.

I think that's a distance we need to cover. Just purely from a language point of view. But I think language is more about Hindi, English, Marathi, Gujarati. I think language is also about talking to me about my need and my voice. And I think that's something that's dramatically changing now. Sure. Fantastic. Thank you, Anika. Thank you so much. That was really nice. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.