Virat Khullar on customer experience and brand trust

a huge welcome to virat CMO of Hyundai India welcome to trailblazers thank you Jasper thank you beyond for inviting me transparency is this sort of absolute term where it sounds like the brand should unburden themselves of all of their knowledge but of course it's it's quite limited in and you can overshare how do you think about transparency in Hyundai or other brands you've worked with there at so just good to be specific about transparency trust is actually a very very very large topic and I think transparency is just one of the pillars that tries to build in trust for any organization I would think that being over transparent is also not a bad thing especially in a category like cars

which is a high involvement category and somebody who invests in a category like cars even a brand like Hyundai will not only be a customer but his or her entire family will be a consumer in lot of different and it will be resulting in a lot of different experiences so by over transparent I mean that a you should give out all the relevant specifications on a product but also for people who want to research more who want to compare more there is no harm in the company coming forward and giving more information for somebody who is a little bit more of a discerning buyer or a discerning owner here I mean not only things about the specific product in consideration but also things about the brand the heritage the

legacy the scope of operations something that we learn in marketing about the augmented product it's not only the Hyundai Creta or the Hyundai Verna that you'll buy you will also buy into the network you will also buy into a lot of the brand experiences we give you the consumer may choose to read through them or not read through them but when you put them in black and white on your website it delivers a very strong message that we are putting it out for you very clearly what we offer it's your choice or your family's choice to experiences or to live with it or not but I think it's good so it's good so you almost kind of you you were on the side of sort of sharing more than the then sharing less but but for

that before we get deeper into the topic automotive industry right to two people implicitly in the automotive industry not always the most trusted industry right I mean we all remember a time when we were buying diesel cars because we was told that was a better idea then it wasn't a good idea how do you think about trust and that and that heritage is is it just the ups and downs or is it no as I said it's a category that that will come into your house it will stay with your family for five to seven years at a minimum so how will trust come to be believed by the consumer a whatever he has bought into from a specs point of view from a price point of view he gets the delivery also he's bought into a regulatory and a

safety framework of the of the region of the country the consumer is in so if the company is talking about adhering to those regulatory safety emission frameworks I think it is the responsibility of the organization to be saying true to what they have written as a word and when I say we are being transparent and we are being trustworthy I think it is the duty of the company and as you do have a company like Hyundai to be part of the framework that we are operating in some organizations across categories can sometimes have known or unknown errors to this point but I think that's a sad situation we strongly believe that what we commit we should clearly deliver if not over deliver and and how do you say so you

know automotive businesses like many businesses are very spec driven you know it's the nature is the nature of the beast we're at but how do you ally values and all the things in an organization to the point before where people really mean it with the spec how do you how do you create that sort of yin and yang so it is a it is always a feature benefit relationship the feature is the engineering side of the product the benefit is what the consumer will drive out of it I'll give you an example in India now we are we have the largest vehicle park of connected cars in the country which is more than 400,000 cars on road our latest cars offer about 60 blue link features which are which is the connected part of the car now that is

just I would say the engineering side of it or the or the technical side of it there since very recently we are sending our consumers monthly a vehicle health report now that tells you is your airbag system okay is your parking brake working fine is your engine dynamics working okay it just gives gives you an okay okay okay okay scorecard to tell the consumer that we are not only giving you the tech we're also giving you the benefit of that tech oh it's like it's like a personal health app but it's but it's feel it's for the car and you will not believe it we all we are all marketers we do things like email marketing the open rate on something like this is really really good people are concerned to know that if you've

got a product which is that innovative and technologically advanced in your in your in your garage how is it doing sitting there so these kinds of again transparent proactive communications for the brand really gives us repeat purchase what is going to happen in the end of the day you need brand advocates as consumers and you need repeat purchases today our statistics tells us that one-third of our cars are repeat purchases which is a big thing in a heavily competitive industry okay but let's let's try and let's try and kind of do a little beauty parade you work for Renault you work for Tars you worked Hyundai why would I trust one more than the other so it's a consumer journey obviously we know from awareness to purchase when you start

getting into buying a mobility option you will obviously start from I will do shared mobility or I will do own mobility when you get into own mobility you will go psychographically demographically what you want to buy suppose you land on a segment or a body type then from our point of view a consumer looks at at least three different brands or three different I would say product brands it comes down to budget it comes down to specs it comes down to ownership experience word of mouth and ultimately a lot of his it is under the umbrella of trust Jasper owns a car Virat owns a car Jasper liked it but I didn't like it etc etc etc but when the car reaches the household then you start to get in loyalty you start to getting

advocacy which is coming out of your ownership experience it becomes an emotional absolutely all other things are equal and then the x factor is an emotional and we do a we do a brilliant thing nowadays is that we are seeing this in a lot of categories also in cars it's not the customer or the buyer who makes the decision it's the children it's the spouses it's the relatives and a lot of these decisions are what not to buy rather than what to buy so we also have to convince or talk to all the other members of the family it's sort of becoming like an ecosystem of trust absolutely and in that sense fear I mean you're um I hesitate to use the term veteran because sometimes people you're very experienced marketeer

but was it easier when you started Vera and the kind of pre-digital age to to create trust in a way I would say it is not easier to be very frank because in the non-digital age you have also got restrictions on me means of communication means of communication were slow and far apart in the digital age if the company has the right mindset you can communicate faster you can communicate complete and you can communicate convenience to the consumer so I believe as marketeers the screens are smaller and the screens are many but I think it is more convenient and I think is more clear for the consumer on what you want to communicate okay I mean we're coming into the we're coming into the home straight of of

the conversation Vera here but I want to pick a particular area which is electrical vehicles we talk a lot about on the show you may or may not know anything as a consumer but you have this sort of nagging fear that you're going to run out of road right how do you guys on that particular topic of range anxiety create trust so the good part of electric vehicles is that we will not get the first time buyer to an electric vehicle mostly the consumer would be using ice an internal combustion engine before he comes into the EV bandwagon so yeah he's not had so much range anxiety in an ice vehicle because he will find a fuel pump at the right corner the range anxiety only gets fuel from the fact that we are not aware where is

the next fueling point of an EV that's the main thing so as a conscious organization we are setting up EV charging obviously at our dealerships obviously at the consumers homes but on key highways we are doing a large EV expansion for network in our home state in Tamil Nadu but I would suggest to you it is it is not it is a reason to buy or not to buy but range anxiety is something that will evolve very fast when more and more consumers start to come into the EV space today it is I don't think the top reason of not to buy there are several other things that come into the EV product but as an organization we just need to give them charging we need to give them fuel timing or refill timing on the cars and where is the

nearest charging station we can provide I see and and I mean we should finish on this point because it's very interesting listening to you because a bit like uh Deepak you come back to the same thing which is it's a long game right and it's it's always changing the range increases and I think the other thing we're taking from this is is this idea that you know trust is a composite of many things right it's not a trust is a composite of the product the experience the promise the heritage um can I call up somebody in the brand and and talk about a problem that I have uh and all the and then over delivery on whatever we promised so transparency I think is just one of the tools to achieve trust

in today's environment well said Vera I'm uh I'm thinking of getting a new car I might just I might just get a Hyundai based on now we're talking business perfect now we're talking thank you so much