Meet Anija Jalan, still photographer-turned-director

Mar 8, 2024 By Admin in Photography

When she started pursuing her passion, she was not aware that it was a rarity. Anija Jalan, a Kochi native, has been slowly developing her skills by taking pictures while on trips even though she was preserving memories.

When she enrolled on the visual communication course at Maharaja Women’s College, Erode, photography was part of the curriculum and she followed it up with great zeal. Anija eventually joined CM Developers, a construction company in Kochi, and photography was part of her profession as she had to produce brochures and promotional materials.

All these experiences were slowly shaping Anija into a professional photographer. Soon, she turned to wedding photography. Incidentally, her assignments were mostly in Dubai, where women had more scope in the profession, “My assignments in Dubai turned easier as taking the photos of the bride during the wedding ceremony was mostly restricted to women photographers. Apart from brother and father, not many male individuals are allowed near the bride during the solemn ceremony,” Anija says.

However, when she started her own studio and focussed on her vocation in Kerala, she encountered strange responses. “I started facing strange looks and strange queries like, ‘What is this doing amid the bunch of photographers?’. It dented my confidence a bit and I started having second thoughts. But then I decided not to quit.”

When she found that the pictures she took were well received she regained her confidence and cemented her place in the field. She slowly spread her wings too. Anija’s fascination for cinema slowly took her to still photography in movies. “I stopped feeling the cringe of being a woman photographer and continued my job with ease and joy. I faced some sceptics only on a few occasions. But that too vanished after they saw my work,” Anija says.

Anija started still photography in films with Nivin Pauly-starrer ‘Love Action Drama’ and has completed the role in five movies so far. Now she is eyeing donning a director’s hat and becoming a DOP.
The musical documentary, ‘Yosha’, which saw Anija as the scriptwriter, director and DOP was the first step towards the next phase of her professional life. The all-woman crew video song dedicated to women empowerment was released on Women’s Day in 2022 and featured former health minister K K Shailaja, businesswoman Beena Kannan, and actors Lenaa and Sandra Thomas.

At present, she is doing the post-production of her upcoming short film ‘Panjimittayi’. The song ‘Kanatheeram’ rendered by Vineeth Sreenivasan and Ancy Sajeev is already popular on social media. ‘Work hard to achieve the dreams,’ is her sole philosophy.

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Double Vision: How the McLaughlin Sisters Took the Photography World By Storm

Mar 8, 2024 By Admin in Photography

The McLaughlin twins were at the beginning of a several-months-long publicity tour for their book, Twins on Twins, when they appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in March 1981. They had already launched a highly praised show of pictures from the book at a New York gallery and had been widely interviewed, by the New York Times, Good Housekeeping, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and NBC’s Today Show, among others.

They would conclude the tour a few months later with a joint lecture and slide show at Manhattan’s International Center of Photography, located in a mansion on the upper reaches of Fifth Avenue’s Museum Mile, where they were introduced by the organization’s founding director, the photojournalist Cornell Capa.

He had known both twins for years, he said, but now, confronted by them both in the same room, he confessed he had no idea which was which. “I’m completely befuddled,” Capa said. “I can’t make out the difference.” He finally advised the audience that the one in pink was Kathryn, the other was Frances, and that if anyone bought a book that night, they would “get two signatures for the price of one.” Frances tartly chimed in, “But no cut rate on the price.”

At that moment in New York creative circles, twins were regarded as somewhat freakish curiosities.

Yet the high point of the twins’ tour arrived on March 30, 1981, running over into the following night, when they received a full hour of airtime as subjects of a two-part interview hosted by Dick Cavett, the thinking person’s talk show host, whose face, as a New Yorker ad promised, had “launched a thousand quips.” Cavett was known for hosting some of the world’s most revered names in music, politics, and show business, from Groucho Marx and Katharine Hepburn to Bobby Seale, the cofounder of the Black Panthers. Cavett did one two-part interview a week: just before the twins, he devoted it to the African American novelist Toni Morrison, who had recently won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon; just after, to the Italian director Federico Fellini.

Now, as upbeat theme music played, photographs of twins flashed across the screen—twin cheerleaders, twin pianists, twin ballerinas, twin basketball players—until twin Cavetts appeared, a double image produced on the monitor by engineers in the control room. The audience laughed hysterically.

“This is Dick Cavett saying good evening, and don’t touch your TV set, there’s nothing wrong with your picture,” said the host in his flat Midwestern accent. “You’re not having double vision either. You may have deduced by now that you are looking at pictures of twins.”

The camera panned straight to his interview subjects, Frances McLaughlin-Gill and Kathryn McLaughlin Abbe, the twins who had taken the pictures.

Still beautiful at sixty-one, they looked remarkably alike, with the same strongly modeled cheekbones, arched eyebrows, and carefully coiffed shoulder-length blond hairdos—although Frances’s was more of a pageboy, with the ends turned under, and Kathryn’s more of a bob, with the ends flipped up. They were dressed almost identically, too, in pink flowered blouses and tan skirts, differentiated only in that Frances wore a scarf around her neck, while Kathryn wore a vest.

Yet as soon as the conversation began, their dissimilarities became clear. Kathryn smiled and gushed, telling Cavett straightaway, “I like you as twins!” Frances looked politely bored, her eyebrows raised in a slightly haughty fashion, as if echoing the supermodels she had photographed for three decades at Vogue. She only warmed up when Cavett asked which twin jokes they hated most. As Kathryn offered up lots of ideas—“The worst thing you can do is call them ‘twinny’ or make up nicknames” or tell them, “I must be drunk, I’m seeing double!”—Frances tersely said, “Which twin has the Toni?,” a reference to the old home-permanent ad campaign featuring twins, then lapsed back into silence.

Both McLaughlins were among the fairly small group of women to have enjoyed long and successful careers as photographers. Frances had spent thirty years as a photographer for the Condé Nast publishing empire—ten as the only woman among an otherwise all-male top-level staff. Kathryn, after a brief career in fashion, was best known as a photographer of children, with lucrative projects at general-interest magazines such as Good Housekeeping and Parents’.

They were not on the show, however, to discuss their unusual careers. They had been invited to talk about being identical twins, and about their book, for which they had photographed twenty-six pairs of twins and talked to hundreds more about their relationships. Twins such as Samuel and Emmanuel Lussier, who at the age of one hundred were then the world’s oldest identical twins; Fay and Kaye Young, pro basketball players, who had told the McLaughlins how shocked their mother had been by their birth; Peter and Paul Frame, dancers with the New York City Ballet, who spoke of the difficulty of always being seen as the same person, rather than as individuals; and the Rowe and the Richmond twins, who had married one another and lived together in the same house.

“I think if you’re going to go off and marry twins, you set yourself up for quite a bit of attention,” Kathryn said.

“Of course everyone wants to know about the living arrangements,” Frances said to Cavett. “I’d like to know about yours, but you don’t get asked.”

The McLaughlin twins had written their book, Kathryn said, because…nothing had been written that looked at the world from the twins’ perspective.

At that moment in New York creative circles, twins were regarded as somewhat freakish curiosities. The photographer Diane Arbus, whom Frances had photographed several times before Arbus committed suicide in 1971, was now celebrated for her pictures of “social and biological oddities—identical twins, dwarfs, nudists, transvestites, carnival freaks and retarded women,” as Hilton Kramer, the New York Times art critic, had written, on the occasion of her 1972 Museum of Modern Art retrospective; Arbus’s most famous picture depicted a pair of eerie-looking identical girls. The previous year, in Stanley Kubrick’s horror movie The Shining, the central character, played by Jack Nicholson, had experienced a vision of twins as he descended into madness.

But the McLaughlin twins had written their book, Kathryn said, because, while there had been many scientific studies of twins, nothing had been written that looked at the world from the twins’ perspective, on their own terms.

“We’re not scientists—we’re photographers who’ve written a book,” she told Cavett. Their approach, she continued, “is emotional, or really letting the twins speak for themselves.”

“Would you say one is lucky to be a twin?” Cavett asked.

“We think so,” Kathryn said.

Frances disagreed: “Twins are not born by choice.” Most of their subjects had achieved “an equilibrium, where it isn’t completely a burden or completely a pleasure.”

Then the host stepped into more adventurous territory. “Do you know—I blush to even mention this on such a polite program—that there’s a pair of twins who make pornographic films?”

If he thought he’d get a good answer, like the time he’d asked Bette Davis how she’d lost her virginity, he was sadly mistaken.

Both twins looked at him steadily, as though he’d made one of those bad twin jokes they’d heard many times before.

Kathryn politely feigned surprise. “No!”

“Really?” said Frances coolly, as her eyebrows notched somewhat higher. “Men or women?”

Cavett claimed not to recall.

Then Frances stepped in and took control of the interview. “We haven’t talked too much, Dick, about twins in the same career. And as you know, we are both photographers. We decided to become photographers at about the age of eighteen and have never had any other career interest.”

Finally, he asked what they had clearly wanted to discuss all along: How did it begin?

__________________________________

Excerpted from Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines by Carol Kino. Copyright © 2024 by Carol Kino. Reprinted with permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Why Leica’s SL3 mirrorless camera is all things to all photographers

Mar 8, 2024 By Admin in Photography

Leica’s SL3 – the latest release from the German camera master – is simultaneously novice-friendly and professional, as Nick Hendry discovered firsthand

These days, it can feel like every single moment of our lives is thoroughly documented. Many, if not most, of us enjoy sharing our experiences on social media; some of us even try to convert those shares into a lucrative secondary income.

Even those who have managed to resist the grasp of Zuckerberg et al will want to capture memories and moments for their own enjoyment. Whatever your motivation, quality is key so you will naturally look to equip yourself with the best kit available: step forward Leica, and their brand-new SL3 mirrorless full-frame camera.

As the name would suggest, the SL3 is the third iteration of a Leica range intended to blend the worlds of photography and videography, delivering professional-standard results alongside market-leading ease of use.

Dispensing with the mirrors from DSLR-style cameras has made equipment lighter and processing times quicker, so these cameras are perfect for both people who value portability and people who need high-end results for their work.

As I headed up to The Gleneagles Hotel to experience the new camera myself, I couldn’t help but feel a little underqualified to be testing new kit so clearly built for serious, even full-time professional, users, given my relative lack of knowledge about the finer aspects of photography. As it turned out, the upgrades and advancements made to the SL3 as a result of Leica’s quest to best equip the pros has made it equally suitable for a user as casual as me.

From a technical perspective, the SL3 is pretty powerful. Images can be captured up to 60MP with an ISO range between 50 – 100,000, meaning crisp detail even in low light. Three different auto-focus technologies combine to offer dynamic adjustments which allow excellent capture of moving targets, and a new “animal mode” enhances the potential for amazing nature photography.

Video can be captured up to 8K and will format (if desired) in Apple ProRes, allowing for seamless transition to your Apple products for editing and processing. While all this is certainly impressive, arguably the most practical and desirable improvements are to the user interface and accompanying Leica Fotos app – two factors which made the most difference to my own experience of shooting with it.

I shot with the Leica SL3 for two days as part of a group of journalists invited to have an advance look at the new camera. After a brief but informative presentation we were given our first opportunity to put it through its paces: shooting a display by the on-site falconry team at Gleneagles.

The ease with which I navigated the menus and settings on the touch screen – which boasts razor-sharp clarity to check your images after shooting, and tilts to different positions to act as viewfinder when shooting from awkward angles – were an immediate plus point, enabling me to switch between modes and features almost as quickly as the birds were moving.

The “animal” setting on the autofocus was thoroughly tested here and, while it wasn’t quite quick enough to keep up with a peregrine falcon in flight (to be fair, neither was I) it did easily identify the faces of each bird and grab some spectacular portraits.

Nick Hendry

After a few hours spent wandering the estate and experimenting with the different functions it was time for dinner, and an opportunity to take advantage of the low-light capabilities of the SL3. A candlelit dining room is the perfect setting for moody, atmospheric photography and again the camera performed admirably – automations took care of all necessary adjustments and the results turned out beautifully.

Shooting at night has always been a weak area of my photography, so to see such good results as a result of top-end equipment was a refreshing and welcome change.

The next day saw us up bright and early to mount a fleet of Land Rovers and head up into the Perthshire hills for some beautiful views. Sadly the fog across the mountains that morning put paid to that plan, but did offer an opportunity to discover the robust, weatherproof construction of the camera. There was wind, there was rain, it was cold – nothing had even the slightest effect on performance. While we may not have captured the majesty of the panorama which hid behind the cloud we were engulfed by, the greens, browns, and purples of the landscape around us contrasted brilliantly with the hard grey steel of our Defenders, and the SL3 picked all those details up with ease.

As we made our way back down the mountain and headed to the warmth of the hotel I took the opportunity to transfer the images from the camera to my phone before (reluctantly) handing it back. Using the built-in wifi to connect to the new and improved Leica Fotos app took seconds, and the transfer of 1.3GB of images less than a minute. This is another major plus point for both professional photographers working with quick client turnarounds and recreational users excited to get their work up to Instagram, and another example of how the SL3 is equally suitable for either.

Other professional enhancements include the ability to connect to mains power and a timestamp interface to synchronise with other sources of footage, very handy for those who wish to film extended video clips.

The materials and design used for the construction make it equal parts stylish and functional. Every little intricacy of form and function on the SL3 has been crafted after discussion and collaboration with a panel of global photography experts – the result is a camera which will both satisfy their demands and allow casuals like me the chance to feel close to their league.

The Leica Sl3 starts at £5,920. For more information see leica-camera.com.

Visit Transcontinenta UK at the Photography Show 2024 in Birmingham

Mar 8, 2024 By Admin in Photography

As in previous years, Transcontinenta UK Ltd. will be present, with a large stand (G500 Hall 2), at the Photography Show 2024 in Birmingham from 16-19 march. This year we will be bringing our brands Tamron, Peak Design, Think Tank, Zhiyun-Tech, Leofoto, Lexar and broncolor. Visitors will be able to try out the latest equipment, get advice from our experts, and play an exciting high speed game of Batak in the Lexar area.

Lexar has been the world’s leading brand of storage solutions for more than 20 years. They understand how quickly data is changing our world. Their award-winning product line includes memory cards, USB flash drives, readers, and solid state drives. Whether you are shooting photos, recording video, or simply transferring and sharing files on the go, Lexar memory solutions deliver the performance and reliability you need to get the most out of your digital devices. We will be showcasing the latest blazing-fast SL500 portable SSD, high-end CFexpress cards, and matching card readers. Lexar is all about speed, so we are giving you the chance to test your own speed with our Batak game. The fastest make a change to win great Lexar prizes!

Peak Design is always an eye-catcher and attracts many fans, users and enthusiastic photographers. As well as the famous Straps, Clips, Everyday backpacks, and slings, we also showed the Duffel and Travel bags. The unique and ultra-compact Peak Design Travel Tripod continues to amaze people with its highly practical design. Visitors to our stand are able to see and test them all.

Tamron offers a wide range of lenses for Sony, Nikon and Fujifilm mirrorless cameras. These can be seen and tried out at the Transcontinenta stand. Among others, we will have the new Tamron 17-50mm F/4 for full-frame Sony E-mount, the new professional Tamron 70-180mm F/2.8 G2, the Tamron 150-500mm for Nikon Z and the great travel all-in-one Tamron 28-200mm F/2.8-5.6 zoom for full-frame Sony E-mount.

Leofoto tripods all have 10 layers of carbon and a 10-year warranty. They also offer excellent value for money. The wide range of tripods offers something for every photographer and every shooting situation. From table tripods, macro tripods to long telephoto tripods, stable and high tripods. Leofoto also offers very practical accessories such as a gimbal, macro focus rail and extra clamps to attach and use in combination with the tripods. Ask our experts for advice to find your perfect match.

broncolor has been a well-known global player in the international professional lighting market for over half a century. Designed and manufactured in Switzerland since 1958. Swiss quality and attention to detail are present in all products. broncolor lighting solutions offer consistency in your production setup, combined with accurate colours. You can control the light precisely with the wide range of light shapers and accessories. They are used worldwide, not only by renowned photographers, but also in many museums and institutions. Talk to our experts and see how broncolor can improve your lighting challenges.

The Zhiyun gimbals always attract the attention of our visitors. The range of high quality and very practical gimbals offer a better and more professional way of filming. They range from the Smooth, Weebill and Crane models, for mobile phones, compact, mirrorless and full DSLR cameras. Ease of use, unique features and great value for money make these gimbals a great choice. In recent years, Zhiyun has started to produce fantastic compact, and larger high quality LED lights. These can be used for everything from macro to studio, or on location model photography.

Think Tank designs camera bags, backpacks, trolleys, shoulder bags and carrying systems for photo and video professionals. Their products come from the minds of professional photographers and product designers. For example, their MindShift range is specifically designed for the outdoor photographer. Think Tank also has a new range of travel bags and wheels. At our booth, you can try out the new and unique Think Tank Press Pass bags, which can be carried in a variety of ways and offer great mobility.

Visit Transcontinenta at the Photography Show!

Transcontinenta is offering a 20% discount on the standard ticket price until 14 March. Please use the discount code: TRATPS24 when ordering tickets online.

We look forward to seeing you at our stand G500 Hall 2!

Psychologist turned photographer is bringing nature into classrooms for better learning

Mar 8, 2024 By Admin in Photography

Children’s interaction with nature and physical exertion rejuvenates their minds and bodies. Despite so many benefits, in recent times, it has been noted that children’s participation in outdoor play has been significantly reduced. The kids are getting pushed towards gadgets rather than engaging with nature. Former school psychologist Ernesto Rodriguez opposes these behavioral patterns and believes that for the good of children, it is vital that they develop a relationship with nature, per CBS News. Through his endeavors as a photographer, he is attempting to bring a change in these patterns and get children to enjoy the beauty of nature.

Representative Image Source: Pexels | Luis del Río

In his experience as a school psychologist, Rodriguez has seen many classrooms with no windows. These kinds of setups harm children as nature acts as a great agent to remove anxiety. This assertion has been comprehensively proven by research conducted by MaryCarol R. Hunter, per Frontiers. The former school psychologist dismisses the arrangement after experiencing the power of nature in his present job as a park ranger on Southern California’s Catalina Island. On the job, he has also taken up landscape photography, where he attempts to capture nature’s appeal and spread it to others.

The character of a student’s environment is key to learning and mental health. Take a one minute tour of Leslie Snyder’s classroom, 2023 teacher of the year in PSUSD, to see how bringing nature inside has transformed her classroom. pic.twitter.com/SQ1p8yXPpw

— Nature In The Classroom (@ClassroomNature) December 18, 2023

Being within nature, he slowly began to study it more and found out that the age-old contempt against students losing their focus and looking outside the window was unfounded. It had major benefits. “Kids who have views out windows to trees do better academically, emotionally, and creatively. And more graduate and go to college,” he said. “I thought, why isn’t this being used?” It was then he decided to take up the pursuit of bringing nature to the classroom. He took hospital curtains and printed the landscapes he had captured on them. The photographer zeroed in on ceilings to fix those curtains. “Having been a school psychologist, you don’t touch teacher’s walls. You do that and they cut your hand off–both of them,” Rodriguez quipped. “So I thought, well, let’s use the ceiling because they don’t typically use the ceiling.”

Rodriguez’s landscapes mostly feature tree canopies and when children look up at the ceiling, they quite literally feel that they are sitting under a tree. Moreover, he ensures that he incorporates all the elements science has proven to reduce anxiety, from warm tones to soothing colors. The photographer does his work through “Nature in the Classroom,” a non-profit he established. Till now, he has installed canopies in 10 school districts. The latest one is Taft Elementary in Santa Clara, California. After he showed his installation to the fifth-grade classroom, they were elated. A student, Octavio, appreciated the change. “It is surprising to see because any time you’re inside of a school, you mostly don’t see plants. Or trees. But now it’s surprising to see that there are trees here,” he said. “I would say that it’s pretty great and beautiful.”

What kids think about green classrooms: “I really like sitting under the trees. I really like the sunshine peeking through”. “The trees are so beautiful and peaceful”. “The trees are soothing”. “It feels like we’re outside”. “It calms me up”. @LAUSDSup #BelievelnLAUSD #WeAreCTA pic.twitter.com/9IW4nLFK8y

— Nature In The Classroom (@ClassroomNature) December 16, 2022

The instructor, Logan Earnest, believes the installation will increase children’s interest in the classroom. “I think my attendance is going to go up. I think kids are going to want to come in here more frequently. Overall, I think the kids are going to be happier,” he said. Rodriguez loves that he can bring both of his professions together in some way and encourages others to test the power of nature by stepping outside.

CBS News “The Uplift “ documented Nature In The Classroom’s recent tree ceiling installation at Taft Elementary in Santa Ana. They captured 5th graders coming and reacting to seeing their new eucalyptus ceiling. The story will air in the coming weeks. pic.twitter.com/Sc1v5yh9eb

— Nature In The Classroom (@ClassroomNature) October 29, 2023

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The week in wildlife – in pictures: a stinky frog, a curious gopher and bald eagle eggs

Mar 8, 2024 By Admin in Photography

Introducing Odorrana leishanensis, a new species of odorous frog that has just been discovered in south-west China. As the name suggests, these amphibians have a characteristic smell which has been likened to rotten fish. But herpetologists are finding it’s worth holding their noses to study these frogs: their skin is unusually rich in antibacterial substances, with potential implications for medical science

Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

Conversational commerce: The art of turning chats into sales

Mar 8, 2024 By Admin in Art World News

Conversational commerce: The art of turning chats into sales, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity

Conversational commerce has gained popularity because it sits at the intersection of two booming areas of digital activity among consumers: mobile shopping and messaging (both text and voice).

According to most projections, conversational commerce is poised for significant growth. Gartner research estimates that in 2022, 70 per cent of customer interactions will involve emerging technologies, such as machine learning (ML) applications, chatbots, and mobile messaging (up from 15 per cent in 2018).

Sales made via conversational commerce channels like chatbots, digital voice assistants, and messaging will grow more than sevenfold from USD 41 billion in 2021 to USD 290 billion by 2025, according to Juniper Research.
In a panel discussion at ET CX+ Summit 2024, organised by ETBrandEquity.com, session chaired by Varun Markande, senior executive – content communities at ETBrandEquity engaged with panellists Mohit Singh, product lead – engineering, Ubona Technologies; Tanvi Jain, head – customer success at Sprinklr; Ashish Pawar, head of marketing, Tata Mutual Fund; Jyoti Arora, head – customer experience, Borosil; Abhay Tandon, digital innovation and partnerships officer, TVS Motor Company and Kinjal Shah, head – digital business, analytics and marketing, Kotak Mutual Fund to understand the trend shift in consumer preferences and turning chats into sales.

Sprinklr’s Jain remarked, “People shouldn’t have to worry about where they started the conversation, who they started with, they have to worry about the outcome. How do they get their problem resolved and that is what we do.”

Ubona Technologies’ Singh spoke about the framework of omnichannel strategy to engage with the customer. “Voice is still a very important conversational channel for India primarily because of two reasons, one is larger demography is included in this. Second is the immense linguistic diversity of our country where the voice channels make it very convenient for the customer across India,” he added.

There are some limitations to certain aspects of conversational commerce, however.
Singh highlighted the importance of intelligently using different channels at different stages of the sales.

From a customer’s point of view, investing is supposed to be boring but Shah from Kotak Mutual Funds shared the opportunities and challenges that eliminates the friction for the customers to get their hands on, easily.

“When we look at conversation commerce, it has started with awareness as a category. It is still at a very high level of awareness and consideration. Conversations are happening maybe to an extent when it is about investments,” Shah added.

Shah stated, “The challenges in terms of having an end to end journey for conversions on conversation right now, it’s still far fledged when it comes to investment.”

Tata Mutual Funds’ Pawar added to the same stating, “There are a lot of regulatory guidelines which allow us to do certain things and not do certain things. While getting transactions, the first thing we should listen to is we need to make sure that we need to try to solve the customer’s problem.”
Presently, the regulatory landscape is evolving and the marketers’ are betting on the platform thinking that it might be an opportunity to bring in the conversions to customers to enable commerce on the platform.

Borosil’s Arora mentioned the reason to use WhatsApp as their conversational channel, which is a direct channel.

She stated, “A lot of customers were primarily homemakers. We also have a lot of customers from tier two and tier three cities wherein some part of a sales is online, but primarily it’s all offline. Getting data from these customers and being able to push that communication. WhatsApp is the easiest channel because everybody uses WhatsApp and understands it.”

Arora highlighted the challenge in gathering customer data. She said, “For communicating with the customer, you also need a lot of customer data. We sell a lot of lines through the Amazon and Flipkarts of the world. Gathering the customer data is a challenge.”

The journey if it can be completed enough to clicks then WhatsApp becomes a key channel to drive conversational commerce.

Traditionally, there was a human agent to bring a nuance and carry the customer to the end of the journey. Now, with AI and GenAI that part of the journey and its complexity have been shifted at some level.

Jain stated, “With AI, we can visualise a world where everything is personalised but that is the middle of the journey. It is all about understanding the intent and then engaging with it depending on the context.”

“Intent detections at scale and even closing a conversation, it’s all possible through AI,” she added.

TVS Motor Company’s Tandon shared how organisations have a process of persistent memories of a customer. “WhatsApp is just one channel and for driving the sales you need to have multiple channels in the game,” he added.
Tandon further added, “With the intelligence that we have developed over the years [we have based on that. We create a journey. We try to reach out to the customer with the appropriate channel. And for some cases it could just be a single channel, but in majority of cases, it’s generally two or more channels and we ensure that the data is synced across the channel so that the customer has the same experience across channels and not all the channels are running in silos.”

Arora shared that these incidents are one of the challenges every industry faces. There’s also an out calling or outreach that is planned,” she added.

Arora said, “We will let it rest for a while because that data will keep churning. If it’s not happen today, it’ll happen tomorrow. So maybe one week down the line, there’ll be another match. We definitely try not to bombard the customers’ channel.”

CX+ Summit 2024: CEOs dwell on CX as a pillar of growth

Customer experience has emerged as a key differentiator for brands in every industry. Today, brands are focused on engaging their customers for a lifetime, making them more resilient to competition and economic headwinds. At the ET CX+ Summit 2024, Puneet Gupt, COO of Times Internet, engaged business leaders to explore how CX is driving their business forward.

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Conversational commerce, also known as chat commerce or conversational marketing, represents a way for online retailers to unleash the potential of conversation to sell their products and services. A recent survey has found over 80 per cent of customers are willing to pay more to get a better experience, suggesting that in the modern world of commerce, it is not always the products or prices that have the most significant impact on conversion but the positive customer experience a brand delivers.

Updated On Mar 8, 2024 at 01:00 PM IST