Design Thinking and customer experience transformation: Ajay Agarwal, KPMG

At The Times of India's Star FLOW Festival 2020, Ajay Agarwal, Design Thinking – Practice lead, KPMG India, conducted a workshop on Design thinking and how it affects modern marketing. The workshop shed light on what design thinking is and how it relates to brand building and marketing strategies.

In an interactive session, Ajay Agarwal cited multiple examples of design thinking and illustrated how technology is not necessarily the disrupter. “People keep telling us that technology is the key to disruption, however, it is not actually true. Consumers are the real disrupters.”

Demonstrating how the marketing designs are fundamentally human-centric, Agarwal pointed out to the gradual, yet subtle changes that are often incorporated within the marketing strategies by brands and corporations.

Brand Experience Journey: Speaking on the impact of interactions between consumers and how it affects consumer behaviour, Ajay opines, “Interaction points between consumers and brands are what build the brand reputation. So it is therefore important to create a system that enables consumer satisfaction.”

As an example, Ajay referred to the credit card experience that audiences were acquainted with, showcasing all the steps that go into the issuing of the credit card to its usage and building. Pointing out all the steps involved in the process, Ajay suggested how the entire procedure is only operational if it has a good design behind it.