Adobe India’s head of customer solutions shares her top two lessons for delivering success in 2021

The key to delivering solutions that work for our customers’ unique needs lies in understanding them and their problems. Streamlining this experience and providing the customer with exactly what they’ve been searching for is where Anuradha Pentareddy’s role as the India head for Adobe Customer Solutions comes in. Here are her lessons for delivering exceptional experiences.

I often get asked what the heart of delivering customer success is. In my 25 years of working in the IT industry, I’ve realized that it is about having a keen ear for what customers are looking for and a sharp eye for cutting edge technology that can be leveraged to change the way our customers engage with solutions. In my personal and professional life, being focused on this principle has helped me identify workable solutions for the most pressing problem areas and needs. Here are my top two tips for enabling this in your customer success strategy for 2021.

Engage

As part of my approach to problem solving, I take every opportunity I get to engage with customers directly to understand their problems. My customers’ challenges have always been my one driving force and the centre of every decision I make. Every challenge that I have ever encountered has helped me hone my problem-solving skills and create an effective delivery of solutions. How do I do this? By listening, constantly communicating, and anticipating needs. Not only do I engage with my customers on a regularly basis, but I also understand their needs by using data-based insights from our very own Adobe products and solutions. Engaging with customers and coupling their challenges with data is how we create tangible and long-lasting solutions.

Unlearn

We can all agree that the pandemic has inspired us to think in new ways. When the pandemic began, I was of the firm opinion that working remotely would not be an effective approach. This stemmed from a belief that the best solutions are shaped when minds are under the same roof. Yet, we have delivered some of the most impactful customer engagements from our home offices in the last few months. The pandemic has reminded us to unlearn old methods to make room for innovative ones. Although we were physically removed from the workplace and from each other, we were united in our focus on building customer centric teams, finding solutions that were specific to their needs and the realities of this new world. Our past experiences can often make us constrained, and we continue to think, model and propose solutions built on those limited past experiences—don’t! Customers are changing every day and to be able to keep up with the ever-evolving demands of the market, it is crucial to keep adding new learnings to our arsenal.