Women in Design Thinking - VerteXD CEO Kiran Uppuluri Talks Creating a World-Class Customer Experience and TIE Con East 2021
“It takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a network to grow your career or your business! Start building your network and keep at it!” Meet today’s woman dreamer, Kiran Uppuluri, a thought leader with expertise in experience design and business strategy, and one of our amazing Women Who Win Fall 2021 mentors! Kiran shares her journey as a woman in the human-centered AI world, her expert tips to businesses on how to create a world-class customer experience, and her exciting role as Chair of TIE CON East 2021! A dynamic female founder, Kiran shares her top 4 tips to the next generation of entrepreneurs - Kiran writes, “Look for opportunities and do your part for Equity. Men will welcome it and the Next Gen girls AND boys will appreciate it.” Some much needed Monday Motivation - enjoy her story!
1) You have led quite a career in strategy management , and guiding companies on creating a good customer experience. You are the founder of VerteXD consulting. Tell us your journey. What were some exciting moments in your life that played a role in who you are today?
I am not usually one to actively think about the past, because there is so much opportunity in front of us that I try to intentionally focus my energy on looking ahead. But I do get this question from time to time, and it has allowed me the opportunity to reflect on my journey and really think about who I am.
Every single year has enriched my learning and I am grateful for interactions with incredible colleagues and mentors and the related experiences that have shaped my life. I suppose the entrepreneurial seeds were sown early in my life. I was very fortunate to have received some extraordinary lessons by witnessing and observing my parents, who were both social entrepreneurs. My father, a college professor, was very passionate about education and believed in its power to lift people and to transform the quality of life for the community and society. He taught me about purpose, grit, and resilience. And I learned the beauty and value of empathy from my mother. They instilled in me the value of serving. They were human-centric and design thinkers to the core of their being, way before these character traits were adapted as business skills and tools. The power of designing student experiences and outcomes through their eyes won the hearts and minds of the region. Students simply adored them, and recount stories of the impact they have had on their lives, whenever I meet them even to this day. My passion for design-thinking and human-centric experience building likely goes back to those roots in my formative years. And years later, I found its application in Corporate America.
More than two decades in the corporate world talking to customers and end-users, I realized that taking a human-centered design thinking approach integrated with data and analytics, was the most compelling way to innovate and sustain, regardless of whether you are in the business of a product, process, or service offering. While the mega corporations have started to incorporate the fundamentals of design thinking into their organizations, I realized that the companies in the mid-market, startup and non-profit sector would be left behind in this movement. That’s when I decided to start my company, verteXD. Whether it is business strategy, building customer journeys or designing signature experiences at key moments of truth, taking the design-thinking approach to solve for it, transforms organizations to deliver durable solutions to compete tomorrow.
2) You have mentored numerous entrepreneurs, and will be leading a TIE Con conference this Fall. Why do you believe mentorship is important, and what are some things you seek to teach the next generation of entrepreneurs?
There’s a quote by Oprah Winfrey that rings true in my case: “A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.” I have been incredibly fortunate to have several mentors who have appeared at the right times in various stages of my life to show me that hope; to inspire, to encourage and to push me in the right direction. And the experience of life teaches you a lot. Here are a few learnings based on my own life experiences….what I would tell a 21 year old me.
Develop an attitude and mindset of risk-taking and believing in the journey.
Sometimes things don't work out. In fact, as an entrepreneur, one becomes intimate with failure (over and over again) before tasting success. Growing up, I was simply amazed by how my parents would just pick up and keep going. Regardless of what happened along the way, they continued to hold a strong belief in their purpose and what they were setting out to do. It is important to develop that attitude of “just believing in your journey and keeping at it” and it automatically shifts you into that process of focusing on what you're trying to solve for vs. worrying or getting demoralized.
2. Start building your network early and keep at it.
This I find to be true especially for women, myself included, who tend to deprioritize building a network. Partly because we treat work and life as two mutually exclusive circles that do not intersect. It takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a network to grow your career or your business!
3. Find mentors. Make it a priority.
and don’t stop trying (to find) until you find ones that align with your need, purpose and vision that you have for your business. Mentors are great as they help you focus on the “wildly important goal” at any given point in your career. I have had both male and female mentors in my life as they bring in different perspectives and diversity of thought.
4. Look for opportunities and do your part for Equity. Men will welcome it and the Next Gen girls AND boys will appreciate it.
For TiECON, the team and I have tasked ourselves to aim for 50% representation of women, thought leaders and subject matter experts, on all panels…and we have been successful! We have a brilliant lineup of speakers and panels of men and women leaders who are doing some incredible work. I know many women who are approached for Board roles or to speak on panels. Often, they shy away as “it does not fit into their schedule” or “now is not a good time”. We must do our part. If the response is consistently no, the opportunity(ies) will slowly fade.
3) You have a lot of experience in experience design and creating an optimal customer experience. What are some trends happening in this space? What are your tips to businesses on how they should create a good customer experience that resonates?
I believe creating a world-class CX is about developing human-centric experiences at the intersection of data, design thinking, and empathy. Customers are experiencing the world in new and different ways. As a result, they are expecting similar experiences regardless of industry: Simple and easy access, In-control and dynamic, Personalized services and products, Real-time response and service, Consistent high-quality service, Unique and Differentiated, Trust.
We are living in an experiential economy, where today’s consumers prefer experiences over products.
Marketplaces are responding by transforming their businesses from product-centric to customer-centric models, shifting how and where value is created. It starts with developing (a) a clear understanding of customer’s needs, powered by (b) the intelligence of multi-dimensional data (quantitative, qualitative, behavioral, and contextual), and innovating from (c) a human centric standpoint. These are the new rules of engagement that any company – whether it is born-digital or a traditional company – must embrace to prosper in this digital age. For those who adapt, the future is bright.
Not long ago, I wrote a blog about cooking with my teen and how it was, in many ways, a design thinking application. As humans, we are subconsciously always collecting and building a data repository in our heads about people and things we care about. In my cooking example, I had been collecting this data wrt people’s food preferences all along - a comment they made at the dinner table, a way they described the food when talking to others, the number of times they helped themselves to one dish over others, the types of dishes they ate more of, the ethnic backgrounds they came from, the conversations it sparked, the emotions it evoked – joy or humor or zzzz, and many more data points, voice analytics and sentiment analysis that started to slowly form patterns and mental models for me.
At the core of it, I had been using a (crude version of) “AI meets Design Thinking” approach to getting the job done? I was squarely focused on the people I was creating for, generated a lot of ideas, conducted constant data and voice analytics in an unbiased way, prototyped, experimented and iterated, all along wedged in a deep sense of empathy for my “customer”. Instead of concentrating on a competitive set (what was everyone else making?) or a traditional product-centricity (let’s cook what the food shows do not offer, and it is bound to be a hit.), I had adopted a design thinking style, that started with (a) a clear understanding of my customer’s needs, powered by (b) the intelligence of multi-dimensional data (quantitative, qualitative, behavioral and contextual) on them, and innovating from (b) a human-centric stand point.
The quest for human-level AI is at its peak, and the hype is unavoidable. Big Tech is investing heavily in the hopes of profoundly transforming the business landscape, and in return AI is learning way faster. Billions of dollars are being raised to invest in start-up accelerators such as Y combinator.
However, in the absence of empathy and a desire for some serious design thinking, we will be building new yet indistinguishable products and services that don’t carry sustainable gains with competitive advantage. Today’s companies have relentless earnings pressure from Wall Street. Appetite for design thinking is often stemmed as a result, compromising on real growth. When AI compliments itself with humans, organized around customer’s unmet needs and pain points, and a clearly articulate “Job-to-be-done”, design thinking can do wonders to innovate and generate transformational experiences. It encourages organizations to focus on the people they're creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes.
4) Women are increasingly going into product management, and user experience. Women certainly bring a unique perspective to this field. Why do you think we need more women in experience design, and what do women specifically bring to the field?
Actually, UX is one area of tech where women I feel are well represented. Although we don’t see the same level of representation at the leadership levels of UX or experience design, and the reasons are no different from other areas of tech leadership. Depending on the category (fashion, beauty etc.) i.e., if they are women-centric products, then women are able to connect with the customer better. I believe women/men that are creative, empathetic, and data-oriented are poised for a rewarding career in experience design.
5) What is your next big dream?
I think I am living my dream. As we are emerging from the pandemic, securing ourselves and our companies, we are poised to accelerate into the future with the lessons learned along with a wealth of incredible innovation. Our mission at verteXD is to help our clients to reimagine and transform businesses to a human-centered perspective. I believe verteXD is well positioned to actively contribute to this post-pandemic era of human-centric design and innovation.
Personally, I am looking forward to even more diverse opportunities to serve as well as learn from the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs through my ongoing mentorship, Board roles, as well as education platforms. Thank you!
Bio: Kiran Uppuluri, Founder and CEO verteXD. Kiran helps businesses reimagine business strategy, customer journey mapping and experience design with a relentless focus on human centeredness and an intrinsic design thinking approach. A thought leader in the industry, she built verteXD based on years of leadership experience at some of the most innovative companies such as Deloitte Consulting, Fidelity Investments and Citizens Bank. She and her team serve clients in the mid-market segment as well as startups in the Financial Services and Healthcare sector.
Kiran holds an MBA from University of Maryland Smith School of Business, Masters from Clemson University and a Bachelors from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. She is also TIECON East 2021 Chair, MIT VMS mentor, Customer Experience educator, sports enthusiast, mom of 3 boys, vocalist, avid culinarian!