We recently caught up with DK Sharma, the President and Chief Operating Officer at Kore.ai, which focuses on providing conversational and generative AI value to large enterprises, enabling them to deploy AI responsibly, creating substantial value in customer support, employee interactions, and enhancing sales and marketing capabilities.
DK Sharma has a 27-year career in banking at CitiGroup, focusing on payments, digitalization, and modernizing core systems. In 2017, he transitioned to entrepreneurship, seeking firsthand insights into how the move to a cloud-based architecture, microservices, and AI-powered applications that are shaping enterprises. He invested in various companies and joined Kore.ai’s board, gaining hands-on experience with the latest technology innovations in Conversational AI and Generative AI (CAI/GAI).
GAI’s emerging market opportunity led him to his current role as President and Chief Operating Officer at Kore.ai.
Our conversation with DK Sharma is shared below.
Crowdfund Insider: You’ve overseen various technology rollouts. What challenges do financial institutions commonly face when implementing innovative technologies, and how can these challenges be mitigated?
DK Sharma: Enterprises often are attracted to ‘shiny objects’ or new technologies without a clear business case, which can lead to wasted resources. To address this challenge, it’s vital to anchor technology initiatives in well-defined business value drivers and ensure alignment among the C-suite, including the CEO, CDO, COO, CTO, and key stakeholders. Establishing a fully aligned steering group is key to keeping technology initiatives on track.
Rushing into implementation without careful design and planning can result in wasted resources and information security risks. Therefore, starting with a well-thought-out design and architecture that aligns with long-term objectives while safeguarding user data is crucial. Addressing design, talent, or governance gaps during the project can be costly and time-consuming, potentially leading to delays and doubts about technology effectiveness. So, assembling a skilled, diverse team with expertise in both business operations and technology is essential.
Crowdfund Insider: How do you see the role of technology evolving in the banking and financial sector, and what are the key driving forces behind this evolution?
DK Sharma: Technology’s evolution in the banking sector has been evident, shifting from investments in purely internal functions to direct digital customer engagements on web-based or mobile device-based experiences. CAI and GAI technologies now play a role in personalized customer support, aiming for a ‘zero operations’ model.
The role of the CIO has transformed as well. Today’s CIOs are well integrated into executive business teams and focus on leveraging technology for transformative business value, working closely with business units to achieve an exceptional customer experience. Some CIOs even take on the role of Chief Transformation Officers or Chief Digital Officers, collaborating with business teams to seamlessly integrate technology capabilities into their strategies. This represents a significant change from the past, where CIOs had a more functional utility-oriented role.
Crowdfund Insider: How can traditional financial institutions balance the adoption of technology while maintaining a personalized customer experience?
DK Sharma: Personalization is essential in banking to avoid becoming a commoditized provider. Every customer has unique needs, which vary across different segments, from high-net-worth individuals to retail clients and small businesses. To meet these diverse demands and achieve hyper-personalization at scale, technology plays a pivotal role.
Historically, institutions used manual efforts or separate teams to deliver personalization, which can be ineffective. With the right technology, real-time data gathered during customer interactions can drive personalization and reduce inefficiencies. GAI allows for real-time hyper-personalization, constructing context-specific dialogues at scale, and adapting responses and communication styles to individual customer needs and emotions. This is the focus of our organization, which aims to democratize personalization for banks across various channels through AI.
Crowdfund Insider: Could you elaborate on the concept of “knowledge and resonance” in the context of customer-bank relationships? How do AI technologies like large language models contribute to achieving this?
DK Sharma: In the realm of customer-bank relationships, knowledge and resonance are pivotal. Consider this scenario: A wealth manager is overseeing a customer’s portfolio, and the customer is worried about market fluctuations due to geopolitical conflicts. AI technologies, like enterprise applications that utilize Generative AI and large language models (LLMs), play a crucial role here. They can swiftly and easily connect the customer’s portfolio and specific concerns with market trends, providing a human-like interaction to explain potential impacts and offer reassurance about the resilience of long-term market performance.
This level of personalization and resonance can occur in real time, whether the customer is using an app or communicating with their relationship manager. It empowers these managers to have informed conversations with clients, easily accessing relevant insights and adding their expertise to the information collected.
Crowdfund Insider: Conversational AI has gained significant traction. What are some of the most impactful use cases of conversational AI within the financial industry? How is it being used to enhance customer engagement?
DK Sharma: CAI has significant use cases in various industries, enhancing customer engagement and productivity. It plays a pivotal role in transforming customer interactions, offering seamless support via voice-based, chat, and messaging apps while also streamlining employee-facing processes. By automating administrative tasks, it allows employees to focus on critical tasks while automating access to knowledge and company resources, and routine functions such as IT helpdesk and procurement. This automation significantly frees up employees’ time, boosting overall productivity and job satisfaction.
CAI’s value extends to B2B interactions as well, simplifying complex negotiations and enhancing outbound communication processes in various industries. For instance, in the context of a construction project, a company might need to negotiate with a retailer for appliances. Conversational AI can assist in creating customized packages and providing information on the best way to deliver and access these products. These complex interactions are simplified and made more efficient through CAI.
Another example could be the use of AI in healthcare, as it improves medication adherence by sending reminders and tracking fulfillment, benefiting healthcare providers, payers, pharmacies, and patient health. Powered by generative AI, CAI has untapped potential to drive efficiency and enhance customer engagement in diverse use cases across all sectors.
Are conversational AI and generative AI more efficient when paired together?
CAI paired with GAI enhances user-friendliness and efficiency. This combination streamlines processes, making them more user-friendly. It’s important to note that generative AI complements, rather than replaces, CAI. GAI improves test case generation, automated testing, and dialogue creation, reduces workload for business analysts, and enables the orchestration of complex dialogues without pre-built intents.
When deploying these technologies together, it is important to prioritize responsible AI use, privacy, and personal identifiable information (PII) protection, along with lifecycle asset management. When done correctly, this approach greatly benefits sectors like banking, healthcare, and retail, making conversations more accessible and comprehensive while accelerating the entire process.
Crowdfund Insider: Security and privacy are critical concerns in the financial sector. How can conversational AI and other emerging technologies maintain a high level of security while delivering a seamless and personalized customer experience?
DK Sharma: For financial institutions, it’s vital to prioritize automated processes for enforcing privacy and regulations. Technology offers consistent execution, and actually minimizes security risks in comparison to human errors.
Choosing well-tested and secure technology solutions with robust data protection frameworks is crucial. Careful inspection and certifications are necessary to guarantee consistent, reliable, and compliant performance. This approach provides a dependable strategy for financial institutions.
Crowdfund Insider: Looking ahead, what do you envision as the next big leap in customer-bank interactions through technology? How can financial institutions start preparing for digital innovation?
DK Sharma: In the future of customer-bank interactions, it’s crucial to acknowledge that banks currently allocate a substantial budget for customer support, dedicating roughly 30-40% of their operations budget (often reaching millions for larger banks).
Banks are looking to reduce routine operation costs, enhance employee motivation, and boost customer satisfaction.
This transformation requires significant investment in talent, infrastructure, and technology. To accomplish this, banks must direct funds toward hyper-personalization, innovative customer engagement, wider service expansion, and a more cost-efficient business model underpinned by advanced AI technologies like CAI and GAI.