Amidst the AI revolution, e27 presents a new series showcasing how organisations embrace AI in their operations.

Raviteja (Ravi) Dodda is the co-founder and CEO of MoEngage, an insights-led customer engagement platform built for customer-obsessed marketers and product owners.

Dodda has over ten years of experience leading global teams and managing products. Before joining MoEngage, he co-founded DelightCircle, a localised retail mobile app.

He has been included in the BW Disrupt 40 under 40 and Forbes 30 under 30 lists.

In this edition, Dodda shares how MoEngage has embraced Artificial Intelligence.

Edited excerpts:

How do you perceive the AI revolution and its potential impact on your industry and workforce?

From my perspective, I find Artificial Intelligence to be nothing short of a revolutionary force, completely transforming the way businesses approach their marketing strategies. It empowers them to reach unprecedented efficiency, personalisation, and overall success.

Thanks to AI, companies can now swiftly gather information and take decisive action in their marketing endeavours. Marketers, in particular, can harness the power of AI to gain real-time insights, allowing them to prioritise crucial aspects like customer value and revenue.

Furthermore, the wonders of AI and machine learning extend to understanding customer preferences, enabling brands to send messages at the perfect time and through the most effective channels, ultimately leading to improved Return on Investment (ROI).

By embracing AI’s (automation and optimisation) potential, brands can delve deep into customer behaviour, accurately engage the right audience, and establish personalised connections at every stage of the customer lifecycle. This level of personalisation fosters stronger customer relationships, engendering loyalty and trust in the brand.

As I see it, the impact of AI and automation on the workforce in the customer engagement industry could bring about specific changes. While AI can handle many routine tasks, I believe that humans will continue to play an important role, resulting in a fusion of Human-in-the-loop (HITL) decision-making that leverages human and machine intelligence to create optimal results.

To thrive in this evolving landscape, I think the workforce may need to embrace this shift by acquiring new skills related to AI, data analysis, and customer experience management.

In what ways has your company embraced AI technologies to improve operational efficiency or enhance business processes?

We are ahead of the curve, and our customers have been leveraging our Sherpa AI engine and machine learning to power their consumer brands. It helps them optimise their conversion, reach customers at the right time, and move to predictive customer engagement, fueling their business growth.

Sherpa lets you protect your customer base by identifying customers likely to churn, convert, or become inactive. Sherpa can boost your ROI by identifying customers ready to buy and upgrade. You can even set up custom prediction models and test the accuracy of those models with our built-in Prediction Quality Scores and more.

Can you share specific examples of how AI has been integrated into your workforce to streamline operations or drive innovation?

We have a task force to leverage AI for our business and customers. The GenAI task force at MoEngage is a good example of how a diverse representation can drive varied opinions, eliminate bias and ensure a system balance.

Also Read: AI is not about job displacement but job augmentation: Nick Eayrs of Databricks

With this, we strive to guarantee that all employees go through the same recruiting procedure, receive equal compensation, and have equal opportunities for career advancement.

What challenges or concerns did you encounter when implementing AI technologies within your organisation, and how did you address them?

We are in the learning phase to identify the right problems we want to solve with GenAI. For both our internal teams and our customers, we want to be able to add value that helps drive growth.

So, we are not focusing on just adding a layer on top of Open AI to solve things already addressed by the tools like ChatGPT, among several others.

How do you ensure transparency and uphold ethical considerations in using AI technologies within your organisation to mitigate privacy concerns?

Employees’ privacy is at the core of everything we do with AI technology. We’ve worked hard to create clear and honest privacy policies explaining how we handle user data – from collection to storage and sharing. We always ensure to get explicit and informed for any data utilised for AI-powered analysis because respecting user privacy is paramount.

We’re vigilant about collecting only the necessary data for AI-enabled tasks. We go the extra mile to anonymise (PII Tokenised Sending and Masking) it whenever possible, reducing the risk of privacy issues.

We take great pride in following ethical guidelines, ensuring fairness and responsibility in the development and use of AI technologies. We keep our employees up-to-date through ongoing education and training, fostering a culture of awareness and accountability regarding privacy concerns and the ethical impact of AI-powered technologies.

How do you ensure that AI technologies complement your workforce’s existing skills and expertise, rather than replacing or displacing human workers?

Based on historical experiences – such as the industrial revolution – we can infer that technological revolutions initially result in disruption, which leads to job losses, but ultimately results in job growth and prosperity over the long term due to improved efficiency.

Also Read: AI has its advantages but it can never fully replace humans: Asnawi Jufrie of SleekFlow

To ensure harmonious integration of AI with the workforce, we adopt a strategic approach, identifying roles where AI complements and enhances human capabilities. We foster a continuous learning and innovation culture, encouraging employees to see AI as a valuable tool that augments their skills, not a job threat. Prioritising human-centred design principles in our AI development, we create intuitive, user-friendly solutions that promote collaboration between humans and AI, preserving human expertise.

At MoEngage, we actively encourage team members to propose novel ways to integrate AI and recognise and reward ideas that strike a harmonious balance between AI and human capabilities. Through this balanced integration, we drive prosperity and growth in our organisation and beyond.

How do you envision the future collaboration between humans and AI? What role do you see AI playing in augmenting human capabilities?

Envisioning the future collaboration between humans and AI foretells a remarkable transformation in our work and life in general. AI has the potential to become an invaluable tool, augmenting human capabilities and leading to unprecedented advancements across diverse fields.

However, it is vital to emphasise that AI’s role is to enhance human capabilities, not to replace humans. Striking a harmonious balance between AI and human involvement will be paramount to unlock the full potential of this collaboration.

For instance, the AI-powered capabilities showcased by our recommendation engine Sherpa not only help marketers and product owners (from consumer brands) send the right message to the right customer at the right time on the right channel (thus optimising RoI) but also save them time to focus on improving the conversion funnel and working on novel strategies to drive business growth. This is where I feel AI can augment human capabilities.

What advice would you give to founders looking to leverage AI in their workforce?

It is vital to understand that while AI-powered technologies can make life easier, improve productivity and drive operational efficiency, they must be balanced well with the human element.

Ensure that the processes for which you want to implement AI-enabled technology are ultimately helping human operators maximise the potential of their work. AI shouldn’t be considered a replacement but rather a complementary effort to drive better business results.

Leaders and founders also need to ensure the ethical implementation of AI, where the technology only serves to improve and elevate the level of expertise of team members and not aim to sideline them effectively.

The AI-enabled processes should allow for the analysis of large data sets and provide actionable insights faster, thus helping individuals and teams (across consumer brands) focus on providing seamless and relevant customer experiences.

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