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How Asking ‘Why’ Five Times Saved Swiggy’s Customer Satisfaction (and Could Save Yours Too)

Improving CSAT at Swiggy — The Power of the 5 Whys

A couple of winters ago our CS dashboards at Swiggy started flashing red.
Complaints were climbing. CSAT was sliding. Everyone was working harder… yet customers were angrier.

We tried the obvious fixes — hired more agents, rewrote scripts, launched new features. Nothing stuck.
So we paused, took a breath, and asked one deceptively simple question: “Why?”

If you’ve ever watched your metrics nosedive despite heroic efforts, you’re not alone.

But we didn’t stop at one “why.”
We asked it five times, peeling back layer after layer:

  • Why were customers unhappy? Orders were delayed.

  • Why were orders delayed? Restaurant prep times were mismatched.

  • Why were prep times mismatched? Our system was using outdated averages.

  • Why were averages outdated? No one owned the data feed.

  • Why did no one own it? We’d never assigned accountability during the last org redesign.

By the fifth “why” the real culprit surfaced — a simple ownership gap costing thousands of unhappy customers a day.
We fixed it. Six weeks later, CSAT had climbed 11%.

A handful of well-placed “whys” can expose the invisible leaks draining your customer experience.

Try the 5 Whys This Week

  1. Pick one stubborn metric (CSAT, NPS, churn).

  2. Gather your frontline team.

  3. Ask “Why?” five times in a row, jotting each answer on a whiteboard.

  4. Don’t settle for the obvious — look for ownership gaps, processes, or incentives.

  5. Commit to fixing the root cause first.

Great CX leaders aren’t firefighters — they’re detectives.

Next time your numbers slip, resist the urge to add dashboards, scripts, or discounts. Ask “why” — again and again.

What’s one problem in your CX world that’s been nagging you for months? Try the 5 Whys and tell me what you uncover — comment below or tag me on LinkedIn. I may feature the most interesting stories in a future post.

Why It Works

In ops and CX, it’s tempting to patch symptoms instead of solving what’s really wrong underneath. That’s exactly why the 5 Whys technique — originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda at Toyota — is so powerful.

How it works:

  • Identify the problem clearly

  • Ask “Why?” it occurred

  • Use each answer as the basis for the next “Why?”

  • Repeat until you uncover the root cause

  • Fix the root, not just the symptom

This simple discipline prevents recurring issues, saves resources, and boosts both efficiency and customer satisfaction.

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