Arjun Sen
Arjun Sen is an American marketing expert, professional speaker, university professor, and the author of Raising a Father. A former CEO of several restaurant chains based in the United States, Sen is perhaps best known for the "leaky bucket report," an annual report on profit losses in several major restaurant chains. He is owner and president of the marketing research firm ZenMango and the founder and president of the Restaurant Marketing Group. Since December of 2013, he has been President and Board Member of PanIIT USA, an umbrella organization representing Indian Institute alumni.
Early life
Arjun Sen attended The INDIAN Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India where he earned an undergraduate degree in aeronautical engineering in 1986. He began his marketing career in India at the Tata Iron and Steel Company where he conducted market research and developed management information system models. By 1990, he had emigrated to the United States and earned a Master's degree in Business Administration from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
Chief Executive Officer
Sen's career continued at Pizza Hut where he conducted the market research behind Bigfoot pizza, Fastino's, and Pizza Boli. In 1994, he moved on to Boston Market (formerly Boston Chicken, Inc.) where, as marketing research manager, he developed customer satisfaction strategies, managed sixty market national tracking studies, and developed an initial kiosk model. In 1996, he became director of consumer insights at Einstein Brothers before becoming Vice President of Marketing and Operations at Papa John's International. In that position, Sen managed a system-wide e-marketing and e-commerce program which increased national online sales five hundred percent in the last half of 2000. As manager of Papa John's "competitive warfare" project, he increased store sales by 150 percent.
In 2001, Sen became Senior Vice President of Jillian's Entertainment, where he developed a data mining model for guest retention and realigned event sales business that increased the brand's sales by thirty percent.
Sen served as the Vice President and Member/Officer of the Board of Directors for PanIIT from 2011 to 2013 before becoming president of the same organization. He also served as the co-chair of the Colorado State Governor's Small Business Council.
"Leaky Bucket"
Owned by Sen's proprietary business, ZenMango, the "Leaky Bucket" measured the customer base of individual restaurant brands and their competition for five years. Customers who demonstrate a less than 50% probability of returning to the brand are identified as "leaks." The survey also asks why they will not return. The Leaky Bucket rejects the traditional five point scale—definitely will, probably will, might or might not, probably will not, definitely will not—and instead uses a research method that Sen says, "allows a clearer understanding of a customer’s true return intent." The report was provided to restaurant chain chief executive officers to help them predict profit gains and losses in the food industry and to address customer satisfaction concerns.
The "Leaky Bucket" report started out examining 58 restaurant chains. The 2007 bucket report surveyed 2200 United States residents online and found that only half of them were certain they would return to chain restaurants they had been to. The report was widely considered a red flag of potential loss because recruiting new customers is more expensive and labor-intensive than keeping existing customers.
The 2009 report surveyed 5600 customers and found that customer leakage was up from twenty nine to thirty six percent. "Consumers are saying, ‘OK, I’ll go two miles farther if you treat me better and give me a better deal.'" Sen said.
But the 2010 Leaky Bucket reported good news. One hundred, forty six restaurants brands were surveyed and the number of customers uncertain about their brand loyalty fell from thirty six percent to thirty two. However, in a Nation's Restaurant News article, Sen cautioned that forty eight percent of customers were less likely to eat out than previously.
In 2010, Sen published an article in which he recommended several responses to the compiled results of the report. Specifically, he advised that restaurant management reckon with increasingly sophisticated customers who demand better-quality food than in previous years. He also challenged the restaurant industry to use social media to improve brand loyalty. "The time to get on the social media bandwagon is now," Sen wrote.
Consultant
Sen has become a spokesperson for the restaurant industry. As a founder and president of ZenMango and board member of the Restaurant Advisory Board, he is frequently quoted on the subject of customer care and branding in industry news. Sen's message is that service industry providers can not pay too much attention to the needs of their customers. Customer satisfaction often comes down to small details. And the customer's perception of his experience can be as important as his actual experience, Sen avers.
Raising a Father (Memoir)
Sen's autobiographical Raising a Father examines his relationship with his daughter Raka. In this memoir, Sen confesses that he first thought one had to sacrifice one's personal life in order to be extremely successful in the corporate world. But one day, his daughter reported that their relationship was "not good" and that he did not know her. She gave him a three-question quiz to test his knowledge of her likes and dislikes, and he failed the quiz. When Sen saw that his relationship with Raka was eroding, he left big business and started his own home-based consulting firm ZenMango. He made Raka the manager of this business. The theme of "Raising a Father" is that business men and women need not sacrifice their home lives and closest relationships in order to succeed because it is possible to have both career success and a close relationship with family.
Professional Speaker
Sen is frequently invited to speak on the subject of business success, branding, and customer satisfaction. His lecture "Winning Big In a Down Economy" draws upon his success as Vice President of Papa John's. This talk addresses how business owners can stay successful despite a poor economy. In his speaking engagements, Sen frequently cites his trademarked theory of "Marperations" which he defines as "a unique space where marketing and operations intersect to share a common passion for the customer." He also emphasizes "guest experience enhancement" as the key to doing successful business in the 21st century. He defines guest experience enhancement as "considering and optimizing every aspect of the customer’s experience." In "Winning Big," Sen recommends looking at strategies that work in other industries and being the first to incorporate them into your own industry. Sen also speaks on the lessons he wrote about in "Raising a Father."
Marperations
Sen coined and trademarked the term "marperations" to describe the intersection of marketing and operations. Marperations offers a systematic way to measure business success and growth. In a paper co-authored with Herb Rubenstein, Sen writes that marperations "opens the door for the world of business to benefit from a cohesive system; one in which marketing and operations are two sides of the same coin."
Marperations theory proposes three rules for creating an efficient assessment of business functionality: the measurement should be a leading measure, not a trailing measure, it should be uncomplicated and communicated to all employees of the company, and both marketing and operations departments should have their own report card, and they should understand how their performance relates to the company's overall success.