The Rise of the Fourth Varna

With Knowledge comes Power.
This is when the priests, scholars held the highest position in the society. The currency was Information. They banked on information asymmetry to rule over all. Since, knowledge can’t be stored in a vessel, it spread. A few were able to put it to gain power.

With Power comes Peace.
We all know the kings and queens who were not just literate but a great military tactician. The currency was Strength. As they ruled over us with their might, with fear or with love, they taught us that fighting isn’t good always. Hence, regulations were put to place. With Peace, people started exploring places.

With Peace comes Trade.
Trading has always been a great tool. It helps you travel, interact with people peacefully. We are living in it now. The currency is Money. Everyone wants to earn more, save more and spend more. A few had been lucky & skillful enough to become the Business Class Elites

Well these are the 3 varnas who had taken turns at ruling the world. And, Time which usually turns the table is flexing his muscles. Soon, we shall see how the Fourth Varna comes to rule the world with the Next Currency.
Here’s my take on that. I believe it shall be Empathy.

With the wake of the industrial revolution, it was evident that competition will be stiff and it has been a fierce market so far so long. Companies have tried to woo customers with a bunch of tools; with product superiority(Apple, Google), marketing brilliance(HUL, Cadbury, Intel), service delivery and recovery(Amazon, Maruti) and operational efficiency(Amazon). A few were even able to breakthrough with brilliant campaigns which entirely changed the way we look at the product. Basically, the motto is to make a deep sustaining impression in the consumer’s mind.

Now, we are standing at a juncture where disaggregation of operations with aggregation of services are going to take over the world. This is primarily to boost the efficiency and the service delivery. That makes sense too. With the gamut of information available these days and the concept of best practices transfer, product superiority or marketing will have little to no effect; even if they do, it is often short lived. Hence, the sustainability can be achieved only with the service delivery being the primal reason of customer stickiness. Take Amazon for that example.

With that thought in mind, I would like to dive down to my topic — . With the digital world booming since the late 90s or early 2000s, it was evident and inevitable that the companies has to invest in right technology with caution to stay at par with the competition.

Since smartphones and apps, every company has paved its path towards reaching out to the customers using these tools. The drawback that has crept in is that, there has been too many navigation interfaces to learn. Every one has their own approach to make it “user friendly”. But that’s not gonna work. It has to be uniform. While that problem was at hand, AI has come into the picture with the solution of a lifetime.

With AI, every interfaces can be navigated with a simple voice/text command. Hence. the simplification will be as easy as a daily conversation. The race is not to alter or influence the consumer perception & make them sticky with product usage boundaries. The race is to become as easy as their native tongue. Multilingual personalized experience with a contextual approach is the way forward.

Every company is invesitng in chatbots. Everyone has their own cusotmer journeys. But then with so many chatbots, it will be difficult for the customer to remember interfaces. There has to be aggregation, discipline and a standard capability to decipher the customer’s actual intent, context and preference.

If you ask me, I believe that the chatbots of the world is like the Bada OS before the Android. Going forward, the chatbots will become the base upon which the services or products will be delivered. These will be interface-free.
For example, you placing an order at your refrigerator while cooking or booking a movie ticket from your car while on the way or perhaps paying the toll in advance.

AI will be offered as a SaaS which will be uniform and all it needs to be done is map these to your existing voice user interface (the existing journeys). This is achievable when there’s a regulator, a few tech firms which have the license and of course, 5G and above communication modes. Only then, there will be capability and boundaries within which the consumer will need not require to worry about interface friendliness or be dependent on a person to fulfill it; human error and delay. It shall be automated, fast and convenient.

Looking at the future, I’d say, it is always advisable to choose a smart and scalable user journey. This shall help anyone stay at par with the competition, if not ahead. Going by the pace of the competition, it is better to serve your customers better than outwitting your rivals with promotional offers.

One might argue, why personalized? or how?
Well, automobiles come up with customizable seats, medical world is investing in stem-cell research, restaurants now have DIY meals. At the end of the day, we are all craftsman, we carve our life the way we want; we love it, we relish it. We like to plan our trips the way we want. We like our clothes fitting. We like our homes painted the way we want. So why not these touch can be while opening a bank account or medical treatment.

Every industry from financial services to tailor shops, from medicines to tourism will be measured under one banner of service delivery. The product going forward will have to be personalized hence, the competitive edge of superiority will be at individual level.

When that happens, the Fourth Varna will take over the reigns of the world.
We, the people. The currency shall be Empathy.
Well, let’s hope at least.

But here’s the flipside, with disaggregation of operations, our work will be limited; hence, the knowledge. And one day the table will turn with gamut of information asymmetry.