I have a number of fond memories and really terrible memories from my first job. One of the not so great memories involved software.
My first was a fancy-pants ‘Corporate Customer Care Manager’ managing some of the company’s largest ‘key’ accounts in the region. One of my month-end routines involved physically collecting payments (yes that!). My collection visits sometimes involved hours waiting for the cheques to be signed and some last minute requests. Needless to say, one has to maintain calm, always being of help even whilst collecting payments that were overdue for services already rendered. (All collections specialists have my deepest respect!)
In one such visit, I had to wait over three hours chasing a cheque after successfully negotiating renewal terms to prevent a competitor from undercutting prices and taking away our customer. I finally got the cheque and made the 5 o’ clock return to our office to process it with a customer service representative.
The customer record and call centre system we used then was called Clarify. It was terrible or terribly implemented (very politely put). Anyway, that evening we were unable to get Clarify to input the collected cheque against the customer. The system took ages to load and the individual I sat with could not figure out where to input renewal details. That night I did not sleep well knowing we missed the month-end deadline just because of a slow, confusing, customer management tool.
'A bad carpenter blames his tools’.
After working with some very inspiring colleagues and leaders across the years, I appreciate the above phrase literally and in another light. A bad carpenter would blame a sub-par tool, but we should spare a thought for the passionate carpenter who silently works with, or finds a way out of the bad tools to still deliver great work. And sad too is the case of the carpenter who remains silent but fails to deliver because of sub-par tools.
The effect of having great tools, processes, colleagues and culture at work is not just felt when you are at work enjoying everyday, these workplaces also deliver remarkable, exponential results.
An opportunity of a lifetime comes knocking
I always wanted to create a great workplace and business of my own. My junior primary school essays had dreams of owning supermarket chains :).
After taking a break from Freshworks in early 2021, I had a number of opportunities open up but it was a call from a long-time friend and colleague Sunil Kumar that grabbed my instincts. Sunil was checking with me if I’d be game to start up with him and two of his friends. Sunil is the kind of person you can jump off a plane with just one parachute. He would figure out super quick how to land it safe for us and he’d have your back no matter what. Very smart and a solid mate.
I got connected with Naveen and Bharathi Kannan (BK) both of whom I had admired from afar while working at Zoho and Freshworks. We exchanged ideas on the type of team, company and culture we each wanted to create and live through. Every call between us kept building on the positive, special vibe Sunil’s first call had. Within a few meetings I made up my mind that this was the team I wanted to realise my entrepreneur dreams with.
First lunch as a team!
So what are we cooking? The four of us have built and taken to market platforms that are today used by thousands of customer-facing teams across the globe. Just as we enjoyed seeing our products used and loved by teams, we also saw ‘tool sprawl’ hinder their overall efforts in creating great experiences for their customers. This is especially true in the last three years when organisations were forced into managing the pandemics' digital way of life.
Forrester’s US 2022 Customer Experience Index rankings revealed that CX quality fell for 19%
of brands in 2022 which was the highest proportion of brands to drop in one year since the
inception of the survey. CX quality had actually fallen back to early 2020 levels.
As innovative companies source best-of-breed solutions to serve their customers better, tool sprawl will continue.
Tool sprawl = too many data points, much stale data, wrong insights and actions = poor customer experiences.
Bettercloud’s 2020 State of SaaSOps report
has it that the average number of SaaS applications used by organisations with 100 to 499 employees is 47. Organisations with over 1000 employees use more than 177 SaaS applications.
Tool sprawl is inevitable. But what if we could prevent the poor customer experience that comes with it and instead build confidence in businesses to continue to innovate and acquire the best tools for their customer?
ZEPIC - your Single Source of Truth and Engagement
No matter how excellent carpenters are, if they do not have visibility of the piece of wood they work on, they cannot progress, let alone deliver.
Similarly, customer-facing teams can only serve their customers best, if equipped with the latest and most comprehensive detail about their customer.
We are at work creating a customer data and engagement platform that we hope will one day become the ultimate Single Source of Truth and engagement for all go-to-market teams. Out-of-the-box connectors and no-code philosophy throughout ZEPIC will allow for rapid integration with existing customer management tools to present the best possible 360 degree view of the customer. From there, customer-facing teams will be able to use ZEPIC’s inbuilt engagement channels to reach out and create exceptional customer experiences. Good tools, great carpenters, happy customers!
We’re still figuring out the industry categories for our platform. A Customer Digital Experience Platform? A delivery CDP? A Personalization Engine? Or should we even conform to a category? We’ll know in sometime, but for now, we continue to build ZEPIC.
hyper-personalised, multi-channel campaigns for sales, marketing and customer success
the most complete and real-time view of the customer for Operations
a true Single of Source Truth for insights for Data analytics and management
a versatile platform for developers to bring in any customer data and build applications on
If you have strong views on how your customer data and engagement infrastructure should work, or would like to discuss any challenges you face today, do send us a note at hello@zepic.com. We are looking for participants in our Early Access Program and look forward to your support, suggestions and ideas!
FUN CORNER
Thank you for stopping by and reading so far! As a thank you, here is a screen capture of the names and domains we shortlisted before we finalised on ZEPIC. Some great names there if anyone is looking for one. We will share more on the naming journey another day!
Desperate times call for desperate Google/Chat GPT searches, right? "Best Shopify apps for sales." "How to increase online sales fast." "AI tools for ecommerce growth."
Been there. Done that. Installed way too many apps. But here's what nobody tells you while you're doom-scrolling through Shopify app reviews at 2 AM—that magical online sales-boosting app you're searching for? It doesn't exist. Because if it did, Jeff Bezos would've bought (or built!) it yesterday, and we (fellow eCommerce store owners) would all be retired in Bali by now. Growing a Shopify store and increasing online sales isn’t easy—we get it. While everyone’s out chasing the next “revolutionary” tool/trend (looking at you, DeepSeek), the real revenue drivers are probably hiding in plain sight—right there inside your customer data. After working with Shopify stores like yours (shoutout to Cybele, who recovered almost 25% of their abandoned carts with WhatsApp automation), we’ve cracked the code on what actually moves the needle. Ready to stop app-hopping and start actually growing your sales by using what you already have? Here are four fixes that will get you there!
The Painful Truth: You're probably losing about 70% of your potential sales to cart abandonment. That's not just a statistic—it's real money walking out of your digital door. And looking for yet another Shopify app for abandoned cart recovery isn't going to fix it if you're not getting the fundamentals right.
The Quick Fix: Everyone knows you need multi-channel recovery that hits the sweet spot between "Hey, did you forget something?" and "PLEASE COME BACK!" But here's the reality—most recovery apps are a one-trick pony. They either do email OR WhatsApp, not both. And don't even get us started on personalizing offers based on cart value—that usually means toggling between three different dashboards while praying your apps talk to each other.
Enter ZEPIC: This is where we come in. With ZEPIC's automated Flows, you can: Launch WhatsApp recovery messages (with 95% open rates!) Set up perfectly timed email sequences (or vice versa) Create personalized recovery offers not just on cart value but based on your customer’s behavior/preferences Track and optimize everything from one dashboard
Fix #2: Reactivate past customers today
The Painful Truth: You're probably losing about 70% of your potential sales to cart abandonment. That's not just a statistic—it's real money walking out of your digital door. And looking for yet another Shopify app for abandoned cart recovery isn't going to fix it if you're not getting the fundamentals right.
The Quick Fix: Everyone knows you need multi-channel recovery that hits the sweet spot between "Hey, did you forget something?" and "PLEASE COME BACK!" But here's the reality—most recovery apps are a one-trick pony. They either do email OR WhatsApp, not both. And don't even get us started on personalizing offers based on cart value—that usually means toggling between three different dashboards while praying your apps talk to each other.
Enter ZEPIC: This is where we come in. With ZEPIC's automated Flows, you can: Launch WhatsApp recovery messages (with 95% open rates!) Set up perfectly timed email sequences (or vice versa) Create personalized recovery offers not just on cart value but based on your customer’s behavior/preferences Track and optimize everything from one dashboard
Offering light at the end of the tunnel is Google’s Privacy Sandbox which seeks to ‘create a thriving web ecosystem that is respectful of users and private by default’. Like the name suggests, your Chrome browser will take the role of a ‘privacy sandbox’ that holds all your data (visits, interests, actions etc) disclosing these to other websites and platforms only with your explicit permission. If not yet, we recommend testing your websites, audience relevance and advertising attribution with Chrome’s trial of the Privacy Sandbox.
Top 3 impacts of the third-party cookie phase-out
Who’s impacted
How
What next
Digital advertising and acquisition teams
Lack of cookie data results in drastic fall in website traffic and conversion rate
Review all cookie-based audience acquisition. Sign up for Chrome’s trial of the Privacy Sandbox
Digital Customer Experience
Customers are not served relevant, personalised experiences: on the web, over social channels and communication media
Multiply efforts to collect first-party customer data. Implement a Customer Data Platform
Security, Privacy and Compliance teams
Increased scrutiny from regulators and questions from customers about data storage and usage
Review current cookie and communication consent management, ensure to align with latest privacy regulations