Transforming customer experience: A story of ambition, values, beliefs, and digital capabilities

In this interview with Piyush Gupta CEO of DBS, we explore the bank’s market-oriented transformation journey from an underperforming mainly local Singaporean bank to becoming a globally significant Asian-based player earning accolades such as “World’s Best Bank.” We explore Gupta’s role in promoting market orientation and his focus on customer experience. We learn why market orientation became so central to the transformation and how it guided the steps along the way. We also learn of the role of technology in reshaping market orientation and particularly in enabling much enhanced inter functional co-ordination and the significance of storytelling in maintaining the momentum of customer-centricity. Gupta shares with us how DBS, as an orchestrator of ecosystems created to enhance customer journeys, utilizes behavioral data and real-time insights to anticipate and address customer needs. The paper concludes by proposing future research directions, including the impact of technology on market orientation, the role of storytelling in customer centricity, and the use of behavioral data by ecosystem orchestrators.