Sunitha Krishnan’s Prajwala celebrated its silver jubilee

 

Sex trafficking as well as human trafficking is one of the oldest crimes in the world and is at present a $150 billion industry annually. In India, 16 million women are victims of sex trafficking in a year. Most often the victims are illiterate and belong to very poor families. Forced into the trade of prostitution, they are again exploited with low wages, harassment, and torture by traffickers, customers, and society with reduced life expectancy. Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE) or sex trafficking is a ‘rape for profit’ trade, in which victims are kidnapped, coerced, deceived, transported, or detained to be sexually exploited for commercial gains. This heinous crime denies millions of women and girls their basic rights to liberty and education and causes serious health problems. 

Standing upon five pillars of prevention, rescue, rehabilitation, reintegration, and advocacy, Prajwala is a pioneering anti-trafficking organization working on the issue of sex trafficking and sex crime. Prajwala (eternal fire) began as a rehabilitation center in a converted brothel in Hyderabad. The organization extends moral, financial, legal, and social support to victims of trafficking and ensures that perpetrators are brought to justice. In its 25 years of journey, the NGO has assisted the police in rescuing more than 24,000 women and girls from sexual exploitation and facilitated their journey for recovery. The organization has also helped rehabilitate a total of 14,800 women. 

Sex trafficking is a criminal offense under Article 23 of the Constitution of India. If the victims are minors, perpetrators can also be tried under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. Irrespective of the laws, sex trafficking is on the rise in this country. Prajwala is working in this sector for more than the last two decades to end sex crime. Founded by Sunitha Krishnan and Jose Vetticatil in 1996, the organization now has a 300-strong team and has educated over 8,000 children who are the children of prostitutes, children of vulnerable communities, and children at risk of being trafficked. To add to that, Prajwala’s community-based education program has influenced millions of people in gender relations. The organization’s grassroots rescue work is strengthened by the Rape Victim Support Programme (RVSP) provides a framework, so that the police, the courts, and activists can coordinate to rescue victims of trafficking. 

In its 25 years of glorious journey, Prajwala has been successful in setting up several milestones by rescuing, rehabilitating, and directing the victims to a normal flow of life. In 2015, because of the NGO’s efforts, a PIL (56/2004) filed in the Supreme Court of India enabled government to issue comprehensive anti-trafficking guidelines for the entire nation. Its Plastic Toy making unit set up in 1997 is considered the first economic empowerment of the women rescued from forced prostitution.

 

During the beginning of this century, Prajwala set up its first Safe Home for Adults at Engine Bowl and started expanding its transition centers. At the request of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, this organization pioneered the setting up of Voluntary Counselling & Testing Centers (VCTC) for Andhra Pradesh AIDS Control Society in 2002; 1500 HIV Counsellors were recruited, trained, and deputed to the VCTCs as a result of this effort. As a new innovation in prevention, 11 drop-in centers in red-light areas were set up and used as the learning centers for the children. To add to that, the corporate social partnership was explored to provide employment opportunities for the survivors. The first corporate partner of the NGO - Amul India Action Research “The Shattered Innocence” paved the way for an Anti-Trafficking Policy (GO MS 01/2003) in Andhra Pradesh and a state-wide campaign was initiated targeting adolescent girls. In the same year, Prevention programs expanded to sensitization efforts, and Anti-Trafficking Program was set up. First Crises Counselling Center with Police Department was established at Afzalgunj Police Station and the first docu-fiction “Of Freedom & Fear”/Swecha Kani on HIV/AIDS was released. 

In 2004, the organization felt a need to establish an economically viable and sustainable economic unit with non-conventional trades for women. At the same time, Economic Rehabilitation Unit with printing, welding, and carpentry was also established at Falaknuma and a number of documentary films on sex trafficking were also released this year. Nine more Corporate Companies joined the mission to provide employment opportunities to survivors in 2009 and the government-appointed ‘Prajwala’ as the state nodal agency for economic empowerment of survivors. In the year 2016, Prajwala introduced “Swaraksha,” a community awakening caravan to counter trafficking in Telangana, Odisha & Andhra Pradesh. Later in 2017, the organization Joined hands with Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi for Bharat Yatra, a nationwide movement for Safe India. 

The NGO and the films made by it have received several international, national, and state awards and accolades. Krishnan has been awarded the fourth highest civilian honor, the Padma Shree, in 2016 by the Government of India. “We will continue to fight for a safe world for our women and children having complete faith in your trust and solidarity. Together we will end sex slavery across the Globe!” Krishnan shows her firm belief on the home page of her brainchild, Prajwala.

Barnwal's Saga of constant struggle against sexual shame and prejudice

 

Sex educator, intimacy coach, and TEDx speaker, Pallavi Barnwal is a visionary who is in a constant struggle to create a world where sex can be accepted as a normal act of human life rather than something to hide from others. In 2006, being a fresh college graduate, Pallavi idealized but could not find the smooth and accessible ground to educate Indian people about the safe sex norms, the role of men and women in an intimate relationship, and the need of educating children about sex to ensure a long and happy conjugal association in future. The year 2018 was a U-turn for her, as society became more open towards discussion and giving priority to individual thoughts. She completed a sexuality education course from TARSHI in that year and started working as an educator guiding people on their intimate journeys. Sex, often considered taboo and only a duty to reproduce, has seldom found limelight in Indian society. Pursuing a career as a sex educator was not an easy job for this small town girl, but the daunting social rules could not extinguish the fire of determination inside this girl hailed from Steel City Bokaro. In her Ted Talks session, Pallavi mentioned a time when she was leaving for her college hostel and how her father was wrapping the mangoes freshly plucked from their garden. That process of careful plucking and wrapping inside soft papers tells a lot about Indian girls and how they are raised in an overprotected traditional setting. In India, women need to be guarded and guided by the men of their houses. Leave alone sex, they mostly are trained to not have an opinion on anything under the sun. Irrespective of men and women, talking about sex openly and letting others know about their sexual desires and choices was a dark dungeon in Indian society Barnwal put the light on.

 

In her interview with Times of India, Barnwal said “In a sex repressive, patriarchal society like us, where there is a complete absence of sex education, the approach to sex is fear and judgment-based, and porn is the de facto learning material for sex and pleasure. Consent is almost non-existent. Unfortunately, the taboo around the world is so ‘high’ that the minute you read the word sex, it blurs your judgment and you cannot differentiate between sexual education and sexual solicitation!” This traumatic situation because of the orthodox thought process encouraged her to start RedWomb, a platform featuring uninhibited talks of sexual and intimate pleasure. RedWomb works towards bringing happiness into a relationship through their informative discussion and psychologically aided tools. Founded in 2019, RedWomb took a pioneering role in educating parents with knowledge and communication skills to become primary sex educators for their children. Along with launching these sensitization and awareness drives, this wellness platform has also published an FAQ compendium on commonly misunderstood aspects of sexuality.

 

Barnwal believes that sex education is essential for our mental fitness and health. If taboos and stigma are not associated with sex-related discussions, people can express their inner thoughts more easily and can find a solution more constructively and positively. A guided approach can only help them land into a healthy and intimate relationship.

In one of her articles, Barnwal portrayed her journey as a sex educator as widely criticized, condemned, and unaccepted even by her partner and close relatives. Her immediate family did not object as she was determined to come out of a dead marriage and remained firm in her decision of continuing as a relationship counselor, but her relatives and close ones cut all ties with her. In a society where hiding the ignorance and confusion about your own body is considered normal and initiating the most intimate relation with a stranger in the name of arranged marriage is celebrated through centuries, Barnwal’s role as a sex educator raised a lot of eyebrows. In her article, Pallavi narrated how the shroud of disapproving silence that hangs on sexual expression had affected the lives of her and the dear ones. Her classmate ran away from college, leaving her education midway, as pictures of her sexual encounter with another classmate got ‘leaked’. The engineer-brother of her roommate took his life immediately after his relationship ended. Sexual repression, especially in a country like India, has jeopardized so many lives but could not alter the mindset of a conservative society.

After completing her MBA in Marketing, Barnwal continued with a corporate job and had no distinct plan of becoming a sex educator. However, she used to write blogs on unconventional ideas and poetry. Motivated by one of her friends, she penned her real-life saga about a sexless marriage. In her own words, “my unfiltered rendering was massively shared and many people (men and women) both reached out to me and said they lived and are living in a similar state but unlike me cannot own this for fear of social judgment, for the fear of being seen as a failure! I started writing more on sexuality and with the monumental outpouring from people I received, I decided I have to step in and take the plunge to do something to clear the mess in this sexually unhealthy society.” 

        

 Her saga of success continues, as they have joined hands with a leading contraceptive company to do the event titled #righttopleasure. Apart from several interesting as well as enlightening activities of an intimate relationship, their panel discussions celebrated sexuality in its most authentic, natural form, sharing their personal stories of confusion on vaginismus, penis performance, and sexually awkward adolescence while growing up in a Brahmanical family in Banaras.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible. Pallavi understood in her early days that most Indian women are detached from the importance of sex and its connection to happy married life due to their prejudice. They consider sex as a duty like other household chores. Pallavi had written several blog articles in the last few years to eradicate this idea of shame and self-denial. She has discussed issues like faith in marriages, polyamory, desire, and many such things on her personal Facebook page. Her spreading awareness through diverse social media platforms is gradually opening the closed doors of minds. She also conducts private and group counseling and awareness sessions offline across age groups and genders, and is also reaching out to schools and colleges throughout India.

 

Doctor Couple Helped Millions of Covid Patients by Collecting Unused Medicines

The pioneers of social reforms show us how a simple idea can be proved benevolent for millions of people who are suffering due to a shortage of medicines and the absence of any possible means to earn a livelihood. Despite being the most fatal disaster of the century, COVID 19 and its possible impact brings out the stories of a number of heroes who did not think twice to devote their time and spend earnings during this difficult time to help the people in dire need of food and medicines.

Mumbai-based doctor couple, Dr. Raina Ranney and Dr. Marcus Ranney, are two such good Samaritans who used their knowledge of the medical field and zeal to aid helpless people to create a Covid relief platform called MedsForMore that is aimed to collect excess medicines from Covid survivors and provide them to the patients who can’t avail those medicines because of their high price range. Meds for More collects all types of unused medicines including paracetamol, Fabiflu, antibiotics, inhalers, pain relievers, steroids, vitamins, and antacids, among others that are being used by doctors to treat COVID-19 patients.

 

In a country like India where the population is close to 1.3 billion, a pandemic like COVID 19 no doubt drains the medical professionals and healthcare resources. As a result, several cities of India had to experience an acute shortage of medicines, vaccines, hospital beds, and oxygen cylinders. On the other hand, these expensive medicines and injections go to waste as soon as the patient recovers from the disease. This thought influenced the doctor couple to make a bridge between the needy and surplus. With the help of its more than 1000 ambassadors, this initiative spread across 12 cities has been able to recover more than 500 kg of medicines to date. 

It started when Dr. Marcus was working as a BMC doctor in the slums of Mumbai during the first wave of COVID and was really touched by the plight of underprivileged communities who were suffering due to the inaccessibility of basic facilities. He discussed this sad situation with his wife Dr. Raina Ranney and together they started this initiative on May 01, 2021, after their domestic worker’s son was tested Covid positive. To help him out, they sent a message to their building WhatsApp group asking for surplus medicine as there were three patients in the building who came out from their isolation at that time. When the leftover medicine helped that guy to survive, they wanted to start it on a large scale and within ten days of its launch, they had received contributions from at least 100 buildings and collected 20 kg of medicines. At the same time, they received lots of requests from across the city to implement the same in their neighborhood too.

 

The procedure of collecting and segregating the medicines was not an easy task at all. Starting with only eight volunteers and 45 buildings, Meds for More, initially known as Robin Hood Army, collected the required medicines, checked its quality and expiry dates, and sent them to the NGOs from where it is sent to the health centers to donate to the underprivileged. Donors from across the cities can visit the website, register with their addresses, and can donate anything mentioned in the list of medicine and equipment that the project is accepting. The medicines can be collected from a donor’s house through a logistics and transportation partner. Volunteers are welcome from any of the societies and buildings. Once they sign up for the project, they will receive a starter pack with all the instructions on how to collect the medicines from their respective buildings and drop them at the collection center.

Presently, Meds for More has partnered with a number of NGOs like Goonj, Doctors for You, Ratnanidhi Charitable Trust, Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, and Rotary Club Queens Necklace to ensure these collections reach primary health care centers in rural India.

 

 

 

 

Sarita Kashyap – A Single Mom Who Feeds Her Number of Children Living on Street

 

An automobile salesperson for 17 years, Sarita Kashyap did not have enough funding to start a non-profit organization but she had the intent to serve the poor and needy with her limited means. Life had offered her various struggles but Sarita was determined to not dwell in the sympathy of others. Instead, she started her own Rajma Chawal stall with her limited savings. In her own words, she is not an efficient cook. She knows to make only a few dishes in the kitchen but one thing that she does not lack is her self-confidence and readiness to tread on any path ignoring the inhibitions implanted by society.

After leaving her job in the automobile sector in 2019, she indulged herself in the field of Network Marketing for some time and lost all her savings in that. She could not be successful in that field because it needs her to resort to dishonest means, which were against her ethics. When she started her makeshift food stall - Apna Pann Rajma Chawal, she did not even have enough utensils to make food and carry it from her home in Meera Bagh to Peera Garhi bus depot in west Delhi. She travels in her scooter, which has a portable table and carriers, where she carefully places large drums of steaming Rajma-Chawal. Sarita loves driving and wishes to buy and drive a jeep someday, which, according to her, can be used both for her personal and business purpose.

Kashyap starts her day at 4 a.m. After finishing her household chores, she prepares Rajma Chawal, salad, and chatni for around 100 people. At around 11:30 a.m., she starts operating her stall at Peera Garhi Bus Depot. The stall runs for around 3-4 hours. As she sets up her stall at the bus stop, the local slum children wait at one side of her stall to feast on delicious rajma chawal in aunty’s stall. Due to the taste of her food, her kind behavior, and welcoming manner, and her honest initiative to feed hungry road children, rag pickers, and homeless people, the entire food is consumed fast, and generally, by 2 pm, Sarita closes her food stall. She manages the operations single-handedly.

Within four months of its commencement, Apna Pann’s food has become well known in the locality and hungry customers line up at the location even before Sarita arrives. With half-plate priced at Rs. 40 and full at Rs. 60, Sarita’s Rajma Chawal is a delicacy accompanied by homemade chatni and onion salad. Her daily income was around Rs. 3,000-Rs 4,000 before lockdown. She spends a larger portion of it on providing free food to street kids. She feeds her customers and hungry road children waiting in separate queues at the same time.

Feeding the underprivileged motivates Sarita to go on with her laborious daily duty. “I sell a minimum of 100 boxes a day out of which almost 60 percent is sold to paying customers and the rest is served for free to the children and homeless people,” says Sarita. Inspired by her selfless act, many people donate money to feed hungry people on their behalf. Kashyap has also been trying to educate these street children through some basic tutoring. She admits the difficulties in doing so, but she is determined to help them dream a better future. Thanking social media, Sarita says, it has played a huge part in her success. After leaving her job, she used to follow lots of motivational speakers on social media. When she started the food stall, she did not have enough resources to feed enough street children as she needed to survive and save money for her college-going daughter with that income alone. With more people assembled in her stall due to her work being promoted on social media, Sarita is now able to feed a good number of hungry people for free at her food stall.

Apart from providing free food, Kashyap plans to empower women by providing them with an opportunity to set up their own food stalls. Sarita is working on the idea to supply her homemade food to unemployed women who would then set up their stalls which will function on the same lines as hers. It will give a sense of fulfillment to her to see more and more women feeding the hungry while being able to earn. She is now planning to start a home delivery segment of Apna Pann Rajma Chawal soon and is working on acquiring the prerequisite food licenses. “If you can’t do the great things, do small things in a great way” – West Delhi’s Sarita Kashyap is a living example of that.

 

Sridhar Vembu, the Man Behind the Success of Zoho Corp, the Largest Software Product Company in India

 

 

Sridhar Vembu founded AdventNet with his siblings and Tony Thomas, in Pleasanton, California in 1996 to make software products at a time when IT services were the rage. AdventNet acquired the Zoho.com domain in 2002 and morphed into Zoho Corp in 2009 to reflect the transition from a software company serving network equipment vendors to an innovative online applications provider.

Headquartered in Chennai, Zoho has over 60 million users worldwide and counts Whirlpool, Ola, Xiaomi, Levi's, Amazon, Philips, and Zomato among its clientele. According to Friday Magazine, an online publication, the company continues to be bootstrapped but commands a valuation of nearly $1 billion.

Vembu graduated out of IIT Madras in 1989, completed a Ph.D. in Princeton, and started working as a wireless systems engineer at Qualcomm. After two years, he co-founded AdventNet with two of his brothers and three friends. At the time of launching his company, he noted that in spite of having a number of talent, India never produces any software products. He felt that in order to be economically advanced, India should start producing software and take up complex tasks. Vembu moved to the US in 1997 to build sales and marketing for Adventnet. However, Zoho had their product development and product management departments always in India. They kept building the products out of India from their early days and build these complex technologies from India. This was the differentiating factor between other companies and Zoho Corp.

Zoho university was formed in 2004 and later known as Zoho Schools with an aim to train and onboard students with skillsets and abilities. Students of this university receive a free-of-cost education and are provided with a stipend of ₹10,000 throughout the tenure of their two-year course. The university focuses on the eagerness to learn than their previous skills. The Zoho School was started with six students and two professors but today more than 800 students have graduated from these schools and are employed with Zoho Corp. Out of the 9,300 employees of Zoho Corp, 875 are students from Zoho Schools. 15 to 20 percent of their engineers do not have any engineering degree. They are all trained in-house. Zoho Schools that are going all digital now have allowed them to bypass colleges and secure a decent livelihood.

Zoho is now able to provide cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solutions and more than 40 apps for online accounting, human resource and inventory management, and more. Their products like Zoho Desk, a customer service software, were built out of the Mathalamparai office, as Vembu believes that we need not be in the urban hubs to develop world-class products. His vision encouraged more people and facilities to shift to villages as the tier 1 cities already started to face major challenges. The pandemic reinforced this belief of the Zoho founder as people moved to their hometowns to continue operations from their small towns and villages.

The 54-year-old entrepreneur moved to Mathalamparai, a nondescript village near Tenkasi, in 2019. From Tenkasi the company has built advanced products like Zoho Desk. Zoho has earned its reputation of being the first software product unicorn. Forbes valued Vembu’s 88 percent stake at $1.83 billion in 2019. In the same year, Zoho reported profits of ₹516 cr. on total revenue of ₹3,410 crores. The company recently has 50 million users globally for its apps. The most recent of which was launched before the Covid pandemic and is suitably called Zoho Remotely.

Nine years ago his company purchased 4 acres of land in Mathalamparai village which is 650 km away from Chennai to begin operations from the village.  Vembu’s days begin at 4 am when he completes calls to the US offices and goes for a long walk or swim in the village well at 6 am. Strict to his village life routine, Venbu goes for a walk in the morning and evening and keeps his gadgets turned off for a few hours, as he interacts with villagers and enjoys village ponds and creeks, teaches in Zoho schools, and rides an electric auto-rickshaw during that time. Vembu steps out to the fields to grow paddy, vegetables like brinjal, okra, and tomato, and fruits such as mango, coconut, and watermelon.

Presently, Zoho has two rural offices in Tenkasi and Renigunta in Andhra Pradesh with 500 of its 9,300 employees globally working out of these. The company has a larger plan for its 8,800 India-based employees working out of non-urban India.

Sridhar Vembu said in an interview that his motivations to go rural are two-fold: “One, I want my employees to live in these villages because it brings a lot of cross-fertilization of ideas.  Once some high-earning people come in, they bring in good and bad habits.” After the mentoring and coaching of the staff in the city, Zoho recruits the pass outs to work from their village. With this great idea in mind, Vembu has gradually moved back to his rural and agrarian roots over the past 15 months. He was recently conferred with the Padma Shri award, the fourth highest civilian award in the country, by the Union government, and is appointed as a member of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB).

21-year-old Manju Patra is fighting against child marriage and domestic violence in an Odisha village

History shows us that the paths of pioneers were never smooth. However, these indomitable souls never stepped back to fight against challenges and worked courageously to become the torchbearer of progressive society with equal rights and opportunities for everyone. Manju Patra, 21, a village girl from the Gond tribal community in Odisha is one of such motivators. Hailed from Kalahandi district of Odisha, which is infamous for famine and starvation deaths to be known as the "Ethiopia of India", Manju has experienced a dark environment of violence against women and children as well as early and forced marriage of both boys and girls. This darkness is intensified with other disparities that are primarily rooted in the backwardness of the communities that live here. To fight against these deep-rooted evils, she joined a collective of adolescent girls mentored by Oxfam India in 2017, which was working in her village to eradicate VAW (Violence Against Women) and CEFM (Child, Early, and Forced Marriage).

Manju’s fighting is driven by the sad story of her mother Sivararti Patra, a child marriage survivor. Sivararti was married to Nichal Patra at the age of 14; Manju’s father was also17 at that time. Deprived of education, agency, and any knowledge about reproductive health, Sivararti gave birth to 14 children, out of which only four survived. It was found in the 2015-16 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) that about 22.9% of women aged 20-24 were married before they turned 18 in this district and 5.7% of girls are between the age of 15 and 19 who were already mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey. This pain, helplessness, and emotional and physical challenges faced by the women here inspired Manju to change the narrative of her own life.

 

 After her higher secondary exam, she got an opportunity to get associated with Oxfam India and NAWO that has exposed her to feminist research on SRHR. It helped her to spread messages on the necessity of choice and consent in relationships, sexuality and ending period taboo. As a youth leader, Manju believes that only education can bring change, and awareness must begin at the school level. In Borbhat village, girls are not allowed to study beyond the 10th standard and get married before they even attain puberty. Manju was also dissuaded from studying further and her extended family wanted to get her married at the age of 15. Oxfam India has been a strong pillar of support in Manju's fight against backwardness in the region. With Manju’s courage and motivation, villages girls can write, speak up, and study further now. Manju herself is pursuing her bachelor's in business management and has a keen interest in laws related to domestic violence, women’s rights, child marriage, and the right to education. As the president of the women’s group formed by the National Alliance of Women’s Organizations (NAWO), Odisha, she took the noble responsibility of sensitizing people via workshops and meetings about the negative consequences of gender inequality and child marriages.

She not only fought against child marriages and elopements in her village but enlightened the villagers about the importance of menstrual and sexual reproductive health in the meetings. Though there was a very low turn up in these meetings initially but it increased with time and now at least 20 members turn up every time. Apart from meetings, she spreads sex education among young girls, conducts workshops on gender-sensitive issues, and continually fights to abolish domestic violence. Her initiatives are not accepted openly by the villages and faced a strong backlash from them. She was even surveilled, followed around, and threatened to be defamed on social media using her picture.

Last year February, she met the CDPOs, police, and other stakeholders to stop a 20-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy from getting married in her village. She was insulted and threatened by the boy’s parents, and a group even vowed to kidnap her. Nevertheless, there were many people in her village who have always supported her. For her endeavor to end CEFM in her village, Manju was felicitated by the Kalahandi district administration on Women’s Day this year.

With time, she has evolved as a brave and determined champion who has forged various change actions. She is no more humbled and threatened to hide her opinion and speaks her mind against social evils like CEFM and about sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). She is spearheading change in her community by mobilizing young girls and boys for a better future. The pandemic has made it worse as the students stuck at home for a long time lost their interest in education. “This has led to many of them getting marriage proposals,” Manju says.

Manju feels highly satisfied when her youth collective is able to convince parents to give up discriminatory and superstitious ceremonies that isolate girls during menstruation or when the villagers allow their daughters to continue education. She says, “Until 2017, before these projects came into being, no girl in our community could ever imagine going to school beyond a certain age. What we are now seeing is the beginning of a revolution.”

 

 

 

 

 

How AI and Digital Transformation Drive Customer Experience

What is digital transformation?

Digital transformation or reimagining of business in the digital age is the process to initiate new or modify the existing business culture, process, and customer experience to meet evolving business and market requirements. It starts and ends with how you think and engage with your customers. In the wave of digital transformation, we moved from paper to spreadsheets to smart applications only to reimagine our business with an engaging customer experience by adopting digital technology.

Digital transformation is a complete rethinking of business processes involving improvised technology like Machine Learning and Deep learning to accelerate basic business performance.  These sweeping changes are radically attempted in pursuit of new business models as well as new revenue streams, driven by new customer expectations around products and services.

As technology’s greater power is in complementing and augmenting human capabilities, Artificial Intelligence is fulfilling this aspect taking a vital role in the transformation of business processes. AI is beneficial in accomplishing tedious grunt work, such as collecting data and doing a preliminary analysis, freeing human claims processors to focus on resolving complex cases. In essence, advanced robotics and digital bots are doing what they do best: handling routine cases, analyzing huge data sets, and performing repetitive tasks. On the other hand, humans are doing what they can do best: dealing with unsatisfied customers, resolving ambiguous information, and exercising judgment in difficult cases. This kind of emerging symbiosis between man and machine is unlocking the wave of business transformation.

How AI is impacting customer experience:

Can you remember the last time, you restricted yourself from shopping online or went without checking your mail for a whole day, or did not respond to a notification on your smartphone? In the last 20 years, the Internet has brought that vast change in our life that can only be defined as transformative.

Artificial Intelligence comes into the picture in impacting our lives in the same way.

AI is leading the transformation that is driving the whole world towards a digitally connected era. This may be quite innovative for customer engagement but organizations are facing challenges in adapting to this new shift toward the AI-driven world. Today’s customers are so accustomed to receiving the right message at the right time that every business needs to be well prepared for generating the most relevant and targeted messages, as these personalized experiences can only determine the rate of success and failure in this digitally transformed world.

The impact of Artificial Intelligence is not only limited to any specific industry or business but it’s effective in transforming customer experience across industries like healthcare, finance, transportation, manufacturing, retail, and many others.

AI can add value to customer relationships through these 6 levels.

·       Curation of content

·       Right piece of information

·       Personalized and pre-emptive targeting

·       Prediction (machine prediction)        

·       Automation

·       Contextual Analysis

 

Curation of Content

Artificial Intelligence allows access to complete customer details including their buying patterns, individual preferences, and demographic data. The best example of this is Facebook. Facebook decides what you will see, not you, and they curate the content as they know what you will like to see. It is quite like the old way of Google search where you have searched for something and google provides you a whole bunch of links related to your search. Google is also curating its content through AI but it is a lot more invisible than what is there on Facebook. Based on the customer data, businesses like Facebook can segment their customers based on personas and offer personalized products or services to them while topping it up with cross-selling activities. With AI, any business can segment and address its customers without being a data scientist.

The right piece of information

AI helps to get the right piece of information that we need at a specific moment. This can be automated like reminding you over your phone for the next meeting and calculating the time you may need to spend due to traffic. Apart from that, there are applications like Google Home and Amazon Echo where you can ask the question to the apps to get the exact answer instead of going through zillion links to find out that particular piece of information. Marketing teams also receive exact information through the data-driven system for precise targeting parameters based on demographic and geographic data. By using machine-learning technology, these systems collect historical consumer information and translate it into comprehensive datasets for more accurate audience insights.

Personalized and pre-emptive targeting

You may have experienced it on Amazon, Netflix, Flipkart, and many other E-commerce sites that AI helps predict customer needs and offers the relevant choices to help customers make the right choice. Artificial Intelligence provides insights into each customer and helps the business target them with the offer they would most likely be interested in. This level of personalization creates loyalty through relevant experiences and assures higher conversions along with repeat business.

Prediction

AI helps to develop a unique customer experience in real life from feedback loops i.e. feedback from customers. At scale, digitally, this requires machine learning systems. AI is used to make predictions to fulfill the personalized experience for each and every customer. The positive or negative reaction of the customer provides feedback to enable the system to adjust its prediction models for the best-enriched experience for each individual.

In order to deliver this enriched personalized customer experience, AI at scale helps to interpret the innumerable amount of data. It is only through this massive scaling and massive feedback loops, that constant refining of predictions about how to create a natural organic feel to each and every individual’s experience becomes possible.

Automation

The task of brand management becomes a breeze with automation. Marketers continuously try to understand the consumer’s opinions about their brands. AI helps to automate the analysis of all the content across the Internet regularly to identify critical issues. Similarly, AI is enabling customers to interact with businesses in real-time through intelligent chatbots. This allows businesses to provide customers with human-level interactions without having to manage real humans. Equipped with Natural Language Programming enabled Artificial Intelligence systems, chatbots will soon be intuitive and comprehend the context of interactions like humans.

Contextual Analysis

Contextual analysis is the last phase of the AI revolution that is still a dream world. Till now, AI is able to understand a certain pattern in our choices and thought processes by gathering data, but when there is an alteration in our thought system and we feel differently, machine learning is still unable to comprehend that. For example, being a warm person, you love happy and fun music; consequently, the recommendation that you receive falls in the same line. However, on a certain day, if there is a tragedy in your life and you would like to listen to slow and sad music on that particular day, AI will be unable to predict that. Hopefully, in the coming years, Artificial intelligence will be equipped with contextual analysis too. According to experts, with contextual and omnipresent AI, the relationship between humans and computers will be more interactive and collaborative.

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence and digital transformation complement each other, but a combined effort is required to maximize the strength of this mutually beneficial relationship. To provide the best customer experience, digital transformation must include new technologies, new structures, and a new mind to offer an entertaining and engaging experience to the digital-age customers.

Under such circumstances, AI must flourish by exploring new insights and creating personalized experiences to enhance the capabilities of the marketing departments.