‘Adoption of generative AI key for customer centricity’
Most chief executives want to adopt GENAI across human resources, finance and technology
Global enterprises in technology are undergoing what experts referred to as “the year and the decade of artificial intelligence”—in which generative AI has begun making inroads across various sectors. This was the theme that all panellists agreed upon at the Mint AI for Business Summit. The event was done in association with IBM.
Speaking at a panel discussion titled ‘Responsibly transforming enterprises with generative AI’, Mohit Kapoor, group CTO of Mahindra Group, said while GENAI has made headlines in the past year, overall development of AI has played out across various Mahindra Group entities for much longer—in areas such as connected cars, precision agriculture, new generation financing and lending tools, and more.
“There are four clusters of generative AI which we’ve successfully scaled up— the first of which is customer service with the human in the loop. We’ve done this to improve how our customer service agents on live chat or call can give better advice to the customer. The second is technical—we have machines in factories that have large manuals written in foreign languages. We’ve gotten all the machine manuals and 10 years of log on how a particular problem may have been addressed on the shop floor. We are also equipping our service centres run by dealers with generative Ai-powered troubleshooting. Any problem that is logged can be searched by a supervisor of a service centre, who can read all the articles to find the problem. Finally, we’ve used it in an ales and marketing analysis, as well as in finance,” Kapoor said, highlighting areas where Mahindra has focused on AI.
Rajkamal Vempati, president and head of human resources of Axis Bank, added that GENAI is now making inroads into consumption. “There is no vyapar (business) without vyavhar (behaviour, usage and consumption), and the beauty of generative AI is in making inroads in vyavhar,” she said.
“Content generation and creation would take two months to get the syndication done, and understand what needs to be done in terms of learning objectives. With generative AI, we’ve reduced it to 20 minutes. This leaves us with huge productivity gains, but there’s a lot of learning associated with generative AI at the moment,” Vempati added.
Gobind Jain, CFO, Indusind Bank agreed, adding that the potential of generative AI “is unlimited, provided you have got the necessary data to feed it”.
“If you have captured the data, it has application in every field you can think of. You can improve on the customer interactions and tailor-make your products according to customers’ needs. Your call centre can be replaced with generative AI, which can make a call to a customer based on specific requirements. When you build that empathy into generative AI, it makes for an amazing customer experience,” he added.
Rishi Aurora, managing partner for India and South Asia at IBM Consulting, said generative AI currently has strong resonance with business leaders. “About 90% of chief executives say that they want adoption of generative AI, and I’m hearing the same from across departments—be it human resources, finance or technology. Further, 85% of these executives believe that their customers have either already embarked on these journeys, or will start using AI in some shape or form over the next two years. Adoption of generative AI is, therefore, key,” he said.
Kapoor echoed Aurora’s analysis, “Many things, which we thought would take years to accomplish using traditional AI, have been fast-tracked with generative AI. If data is available, accessible and actionable, we apply AI on it— whether it’s traditional or generative that can be decided later. We’re focusing on customer centricity, sustainability and innovation. When returns on investments (Rois) will come is important to consider for the future, too.”
However, while each of the executives read GENAI as a key tool for business growth, they also said there are questions to be answered. To this, IBM’S Aurora said, “How do you really start adopting AI? People are going to drive adoption of AI, so as Vempati mentioned, it’s important to upskill your people and ensure that AI is not only productive for your organization—it’s also creative. Then, it’s important to drive innovation across your organization, but it has to be ethical. How do you trust AI models and their outcomes? The second investment has to be made in the right technologies.”
Jain also added caution in terms of progress of innovation. “We have limitations of budget, and everybody competes for the same resource. The key thing here is the philosophy of the organization—how does it want to thread this journey, and what is the problem statement? We need long-term plans, and can’t think in the short-term for one year or so.”
Mint AI