S1:Ep89 Designing Agentic AI to Rehumanize Customer Experience & Sales: From Automation to Meaningful Transformation

Today, we are exploring how to design Agentic AI to rehumanize customer experience and sales - moving beyond automation toward meaningful transformation.

Meet Dikshant Dave from San Francisco, California - a brilliant tech visionary and accomplished serial entrepreneur whose journey redefines what it means to build platforms with purpose.

Dikshant is the Founder and CEO of Zigment, the Agentic-AI Marketing Transformation Platform empowering marketing teams worldwide to scale tenfold through intelligent automation and genuine human–AI collaboration.

His innovation extends far beyond marketing. He has also founded and led groundbreaking platforms in natural medicine and home and interior design, bridging technology with wellbeing, creativity, and sustainable living.

This rare fusion of business, soul, and systems makes Dikshant not just a tech founder - but a multi-dimensional creator shaping the future of conscious innovation.

🔑 Key Topics Discussed

• What agentic AI really means, and how it differs from traditional automation 
• The shift from efficiency-driven design to meaning-driven AI architectures
• Why most customer experience systems reduce friction but fail to deepen human connection
• Reimagining the customer journey with AI that amplifies empathy, trust, and presence
• How automation unintentionally stripped authenticity from sales, and how agentic AI can restore it
• Designing AI agents that support human-centric communication and relationship-based selling
• Encoding human values into AI systems
• Moving beyond data points toward true personalization through contextual understanding
• The evolution of AI from recommendation engines to proactive relationship builders
• Ethical integrity, alignment, and governance as AI systems begin to act and decide autonomously
• The future of work in rehumanized CX and sales
• The uncomfortable truth about job displacement and the urgency to redefine human contribution
• One core belief leaders must unlearn to move from automation to meaningful transformation
• Practical advice for leaders

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dikshantdave/

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose Of The Show
• 1:26 Introducing Dikshant And Zigment
• 5:28 Creator Mindset And Founding Story
• 9:35 From Problems To Platforms: Wellness To AI
• 12:48 Defining Agentic AI And Goal Orientation
• 16:36 Shifting From Efficiency To Meaning
• 20:00 Rehumanizing Customer Journeys With Empathy
• 24:36 Restoring Authenticity In Sales
• 30:00 Loyalty, Long-Term Strategy, And Brand Love
• 35:20 Human Qualities To Encode In Agents
• 40:00 Coexistence, Jobs, And The Future Of Work
• 46:00 Context Graphs And Personal Attention
• 51:00 Ethics, Memory, And Value Alignment
• 56:00 New Roles: Orchestrators And Copilots

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Digital Transformation and AI for Humans with your host Amy. In this podcast, we delve into how technology intersects with leadership, innovation, and most importantly, the human spirit. Each episode features visionary leaders who understand that at the heart of success is the human touch, nurturing a winning mindset, fostering emotional intelligence, and building resilient teams. Today we are exploring how to design Agentec AI to rehumanize customer experience and sales, moving beyond automation toward meaningful transformation. My brilliant guest today is Diksand Day from San Francisco, California, a brilliant tech visionary and accomplished serial entrepreneur whose journey redefines what it means to build platforms with purpose. Dikshant is the founder and CEO of Zigment, the Agenc AI marketing transformation platform empowering marketing teams worldwide to scale tenfold through intelligent automation and genuine human AI collaboration. His innovation extends far beyond marketing. He has also founded and led groundbreaking platforms in natural medicine and home and interior design, bridging technology with well-being, creativity, and sustainable living. This rare fusion of business, soul, and systems makes Dikshan not just a tech founder, but a multidimensional creator shaping the future of conscious innovation. I invite you to join us as we uncover his remarkable journey from building venture-backed startups supported by Axel and Qualcomm to pioneering the next era of Agentic AI and explore how human intelligence and AI can truly co-create meaningful, scalable transformation. Welcome, Dikshant. I'm so happy to have you here in the studio today.

SPEAKER_00: 2:02

Thank you, Ami. Thank you for that glorious introduction. I think it was beyond modest, so thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08

I know you're humble, but you've done all that and you should be proud. Let's start the conversation and transform not just our technologies, but our ways of thinking and leading. If you are interested in connecting or collaborating, you can find more information in the description. And don't forget to subscribe for more powerful episodes. If you are a leader, business owner, or investor ready to adapt, thrive, and lead with clarity, purpose, and wisdom in the era of AI, I would love to invite you to learn more about AI Game Changers, a global elite club for visionary trailblazers and change makers shaping the future. You can apply at AIGamechangers.club. Dikshant, to start with, I'm truly happy to have this conversation with you today. And I would love to start with hearing more about yourself, about your passions, about everything you're working on today.

SPEAKER_00: 3:07

Thank you, Amin. I have been driven by uh creation, I think, and I'm glad you kind of you know added the tag of creator, you know, at the end of your introduction. Uh, because at the end of it, uh, whether it's uh you know business or entrepreneurship, I think it is creation as a process that drives me the maximum. And uh that was that kind of explains like why I have chosen the path that I have so far, kind of doing dabbling into multiple things throughout my career. Uh and it has been uh you know a problem to solve or create a create a solution for a problem that I saw you know in things around me or or life, you know, lifestyle or life that existed around me. So most of things have kind of driven from the personal experience, uh to be honest. And uh, you know, so back in the day, you know, started Cure Joy, which was uh a wellness platform. And the origin story of that is uh as I moved from my 20s into 30s, uh suddenly the focus of you know the attention was on personal health. You know, so on and off, my co-founder back then and I, we would discuss about these small little niggling issues that we were facing, like, oh, like I couldn't sleep well last night, or or it could be like uh, oh, I've been having this backache, just not relenting, not going out. Uh and and those things were uh some things that don't kind of you know push you to go to a doctor because you know this is too small, but uh bothering enough to hurt your lifestyle. And we thought that okay, if we are the ones who are facing it, maybe there are others in a similar space or like some similar kind of a problem area, uh maybe we should do something. And that gave rise to Pure Joy, which you know was a wellness platform. And then fast forward from there, the journey has been home interiors, which was again emerged from my own kind of a drive to find or a better way to design my own house. Uh or now uh Zygment, which basically emerges from the problems that I had in my previous organization, which was how do we reach these prospective customers or prospects uh who are interested, clearly, because they have filled this form, they've given us a lot of information, but uh they're not buying. And uh the Straloo stayed with me. And uh, you know, back in 2023, when AI came about, Chat GPT was the experience was like, wow, okay, this is now such an intellectual or intelligent kind of a piece of software that you can do so many things. The the first thing that, or like, you know, one of the top things that was there for me to kind of answer was that, okay, I had a problem where I had a lot of these people who were coming to me, uh asking, like, you know, like you know, giving out information, but there was something stopping them from buying. And now with this particular technology, can we solve that? And and solve that with empathy, meaningful interaction, you know, and and genuine kind of a helping approach. You know, that was kind of a reason or a genesis of Zygmunt where we are right now.

SPEAKER_01: 6:21

Beautiful story, and um, what you're working on today is truly exciting. We often hear that AI is automating customer experience, but when we speak of agentic AI, we move beyond automation toward autonomy and co-creation. How do you define agentic AI and what shifts when we stop designing for efficiency and start designing for meaning? You just mentioned empathy and meaning, so I would like to hear more about it.

SPEAKER_00: 6:54

Sure. I think uh agenc AI is very new as a term as well. So a lot of different flavors of definitions exist, but I think from where we are and what how I see, I think it's a piece of software or technology that is now driven or governed by an objective and not task. So to differentiate or kind of give I can explain this better, uh, earlier pieces of software that we wrote, you know, or we created were more task-driven, where you knew that this was a task to be accomplished. I need accounting, kind of a spreadsheet, and there was that particular thing that would do it. Uh but what would the end objective be was still with you. With Agen DKI, we are now moving into that autonomous zone where you are at a level of slightly higher level of abstraction where you're saying, I need this task accomplished, uh or kind of a goal to be met. And with Agen DKI, we are now capable of kind of you know accomplishing that goal or meeting that goal. Uh, in that process, you could be doing multiple tasks or no tasks at all, and it's AI that is determining whether what it has to do. So you're not defining a path for that, or you're just defining like more of a goal. So that's kind of a simplest explanation of agentic AI that I would kind of give. From a particular point of moving from efficiency to meaning, I think uh it's a great point. And I guess with efficiency or a focus on efficiency at a cost of meaning, uh to me, kind of always felt like a it's a penny wise pound foolish that you are for a very short-term kind of incremental goals, you're missing out a larger picture. And we've experienced that in terms of where businesses have focused on their own efficiency at the cost of user experience, right? So customer support, like for say for simplest example, we know that the experience is far from kind of you know ideal. That is because the systems that have been created to achieve that so far have been for gaining efficiency. That okay, like I need to resolve this ticket in like the shortest amount of time because time if is money, and we need to reduce that time. What happens in that case is that you are keeping the primary goal, which was to resolve somebody's query or a problem, which should have been the primary thing, becomes secondary. And suddenly you are now shifting the pose that, oh no, no, we need to be efficient. We need to kind of reduce the time of this customer support executive because we need to kind of it needs to be that way. Thankfully, with AI, with agent GI, now we are going back to saying that okay, the goal still remains that resolve this user's query or a problem and uh do whatever it takes to kind of that that cannot be compromised. So I'm sure we're gonna kind of now drive towards the future which kind of you know takes the end goal or the larger picture, you know, more seriously than incremental efficiencies.

SPEAKER_01: 9:56

This is very interesting, and I like your approach. Dikshant, most customer experience systems were built to reduce friction, exactly as you mentioned, not to deepen connection. How can we re-architect the customer journey so artificial intelligence amplifies empathy, presence, and trust rather than just convenience and efficiency?

SPEAKER_00: 10:22

Yeah, I think uh, you know, again, extending my you know previous answer, I think uh we are uh when we start kind of keeping that meaning or the end goal, which is the larger goal, which would I mean like you know, in case of customer support, it is like supporting the customer. The name, you know, the tag itself is like, you know, do you got to support a customer? And that's of paramount importance. You know, everything else should be secondary. With Agen DKI, now when we kind of keep that as a goal, that customer support is the goal and making sure that we are resolving customer's query in a most efficient way for customer, not necessarily for the business. That starts kind of shifting our own perspective in terms of how we are handling and building these processes and systems. So when we start kind of saying that, okay, this customer query uh needs to be addressed, uh, we are now going to kind of say that uh how do we make the person feel that he's heard, he or she is heard, and you know, thereby sowing some seeds of empathy that we are we are here to first of all listen to you and and then kind of provide a best possible way to resolve that. And that in a way kind of leads us to the path of empathy. Of course, this is I won't say it's an absolute empathy, but at least it's leading to that path of where somebody is feeling or the user feels that okay, like you know, this is meaningful. They are respecting my concern and keeping that at the top of the uh the concerns that we should have.

SPEAKER_01: 11:52

I see many AI-driven solutions today and agentic solutions which are truly mostly focused on uh performance, and uh empathy is just falling out of that equation. So I'm really happy to have this conversation with you because your solution is going to change so many businesses and experiences for specific customers. So, of course, it is important to highlight how others can also learn from your experiences and see how those solutions can be better aligned with our human core nature. In sales, automation often strips away the human spark that builds loyalty. How can Agentic AI restore authenticity and human centricity in how brands communicate and sell?

SPEAKER_00: 12:52

Yeah, this has been time since we have a civilized world, you know, there have been businesses, there have been brands, and then there are consumers. I think uh best brands are the ones who have built like a very strong loyalty. And those have come emerged from certain things that they have done very well, you know, which is basically most like most in most cases, it is keeping the user or a customer at the at the center of everything. And you know, alluding to the previous points as well, that you start building loyalty when you have a great way of addressing your prospects or customers' concerns and questions and finding out a genuine way of helping them in that journey. So even if you kind of think about a customer today who's in the market of like or who's thinking of buying something, uh just imagine, you know, and we could ourselves in that shoes, like we know that there are so many choices, right? There are hundreds of choices for everything that we think about. And it's cognitively heavy, right? So every decision making is like, okay, should I should we be buying this or A versus B? And like there is so much of research happens. It's a pretty heavy decision, like you know, so most of larger ticket items that you would buy. Uh so first is that the brands need to empathize with that fact that okay, as much as you know, brands are under pressure to kind of serve, you know, sell more, the customers are also up a lot of pressure of kind of you know figuring out the right choice, best choice. And what we have seen is the best brands or the businesses are the ones who have genuinely helped the prospect or the user in that journey of pie. That may mean that uh the best product might not be your product at all. But you just kind of genuinely help the customer in that process of uh knowledge, you know, gathering, kind of you know, information gathering, making a wise choice, and then leave it out to them to kind of make that the final choice could be your product, you know, possibly. Or it could be, it may maybe some other product, right? And I think that consistently we have seen that brands who done well, they have done these things much better, but they are hard. So you take the example of American Express or like some of the bigger brands, they've done these hard things, and other companies have not been able to replicate this because this is hard. If it was very simple, everybody would be doing it. But these are hard things. With agentic AI now, some up, we have now that tool and ability to actually get you know these brands start adopting or start implementing these aspects of customer engagement and helping customers in a more efficient way. We are going to see that there's uh the relationship between the customer and brands is gonna get much better because now simply you can kind of do all of that. Another example of the brand and customer engagement part is that uh for any brand today, customers engage with them through multiple panels, right? They could kind of come to you from on a website, they could engage with your Instagram post, uh, they could call up your phone lines directly or send you a WhatsApp or some other different message in email. How do you create an environment of like one brand, one voice, and and engage that first of all, that every channel kind of resonates the same brand voice, and then also have systems in place where you recognize it's the same user, that the same user had sent you like two mails, and then that person she is calling you again on a phone line. These are the elements that start building a great user experience and thereby started brand love, which will eventually most likely turn into a brand loyalty. So I think we are kind of now much closer to that reality N-MAS than we ever were, is how I see the today's scenario.

SPEAKER_01: 16:46

I like your philosophy behind running business because those priorities are actually so human-centric. And typically, even if it might sound a little bit counterproductive for those who are just purely focused on conversion rate and all those hard KPIs, but for businesses which are really truly focused on their customers and that experience they can offer the loyalty is much higher. And uh as long as loyalty is there in place, the long-term development of their brand and growth of their business is much safer and uh they get much more successful than their competitors.

SPEAKER_00: 17:39

I agree, yeah. And I think it's like, you know, uh when I've spoken with this with some other friends from the industry, uh they've tried kind of saying that, okay, like this is a righteous path, you know, may not necessarily be the right path for business. And my answer is that business or a brand building uh or being in business is like a marathon. And you know, it's not a sprint, it's not a hundred-meter sprint that you somehow win the race. You have to kind of think of like, okay, I'm I'm gonna have uh run like 10 miles and think about that, you know. And you know, when you have to think over 10 miles, you're gonna pace yourself in the right way. And uh I think that although this path kind of supposedly feels like righteous and stuff, but I think it's a more even business-wise, it's a smarter way to kind of go about it because uh if there is no brand loyalty, if users don't think you you care for them, they don't love you, I don't think you can build a business eventually out of it.

SPEAKER_01: 18:35

That's so true. And as you rightfully highlighted, I see many businesses which are focusing on uh tactics, more than strategy, just because in this AI-driven era, it's also much easier to lead in shorter-term perspectives and push for something that is easier to turn into clear results. And the areas which somehow softer, they are not really front and center because uh it's difficult for those who are in charge for PL to present those in terms of uh short-term results because that takes time, that takes effort, that takes a lot of alignment within the company. And uh sometimes it might not show up on the quarterly basis, but still it is important. You know, e-technology reflects our intentions and that design is so important. What human qualities must we encode into the next generation of AI agents if we want them to elevate and not erode our capacity to connect?

SPEAKER_00: 19:53

Very interesting question. I think the primary thing that we now have is that we have ability. To listen. I think as we have gone into the past 25 years of development and stuff, the ability to listen as human beings is kind of going down. We kind of, you know, the attention span is going down. And the net result is that you rarely find some people who are like actively listening to you and like you know meaningfully engaging that conversation. With AI now, as a business at least, one quality that we now can bring in is that you can now listen to your users, your customers, and uh bring that first quality where you listen and you make them feel heard that okay, we are here, we are listening to you, uh, whatever you have to say. Uh nothing is left unheard. Uh if you think about it, like you know, so many examples of you know, even personal experiences you might be able to relate is that you call up a somebody that something that you've been able to wanting to buy, you fill a form or like you know, uh for a services or a product, and you somebody reaches out to you and they do not have a context. They they ask you some questions again. You might have kind of provided that information in an email and stuff, and then you feel that you haven't repeat that information again. Somehow you feel that okay, like, but I had already mentioned this to other person in your company, or I had left a note, like that communication doesn't happen. With Richard TKI, we can now actively provide create systems which are listening, uh, first of all, listening at all the touch points of your you know, business users might reach out to you. Uh, I think that's the step number one. And then from when you listen, you can create meaningful conversations from there on, you know, where uh somebody knows that okay, you've been listening, so I will then I'm serious about it, like you know, and then I'm gonna engage. And to this point, uh at least when AI came about, there was this skepticism that, oh, nobody wants to talk to an AI, you know, like your people are not just gonna reject stuff. And rightly so, they were like, you know, it's all new or you know, that was happening around. But when you kind of take or consider, like in so many businesses and areas where uh even interactions with humans are are so like not so great, like you know, the quality quality of conversation, or when you feel that oh, that person is not listening, or person is not able to kind of understand clearly what what you are saying or not attempting to understand. We can now solve a lot of those problems with with uh you know the technology we have. And I think that is only getting better from there on. So, our again, as product creator, our focus has been on this very fundamental aspects of human interactions. And we think that uh it's ultimately the conversation, the engagement, quality of engagement that drives business. Example of that is that you go to a restaurant at a server, the beta there uh is so good, and you you go back home with that memory that uh you that experience was such a great experience, and you feel like I want to go there again. You know, I I will go again and stuff. And uh so ultimately it is it is not the place, it's not the uh kind of you know uh stuff that was there, the brand name, it is that experience that you had as a human being. And so we feel in conversations, in this listening, in actively engaging with customers, if we can generate these experiences, you will see more attachment, more love from customers eventually. So I think that's what like just focus on basics and rest will fall in place.

SPEAKER_01: 23:37

Definitely. I love how you describe it, and that comparison is brilliant because exactly we have those memories, we have those connections human to human, heart to heart, and that's why we are willing to get back to certain places, to certain brands, and uh invest into our co-creation, and uh actually we don't invest into those businesses which don't care about our experiences and uh about ourselves. Sometimes you just feel neglected and ignored, and then of course you're not going to take your money back into that business. But I'm wondering as well, how do you see it from the perspective of humans? Because there are so many conversations and so much fear around replacing humans with those agentic solutions. So, how do you see that part when you mention that AI solutions can actually create that empathetic experience and generate the communication on the level which humans not always can stand for? So, how can we find that safe balance and uh move forward into a future in a way where we don't want or don't plan to replace humans with technologies?

SPEAKER_00: 25:10

Yeah, I think uh wow, this is a loaded question, you know, and you know, uh very hotly debated and and discussed uh everywhere. And then we we think about it actively, of course, working with our customers. This is the part that's always uh at the forefront of how this will pan out. Uh one honest answer is that yeah, I mean it's very in a very early stage of this evolution, I would say infancy. This is going to pan out in in some form or the other. But the future, the version of future that we see is that uh there's gonna be coexistence for sure. If you again go back to the previous example of the even with other human kind of interactions where there is a experience is not of great quality, and when you kind of feel that the other person is not interested in most cases, of like you know, not doing their bit to engage actively. If you think about it, like what would be the reason? Like another reason would be that okay, that person is just not interested in in whatever that person is asked to do, right? So uh your first step, we kind of go back to that, okay. So whatever employment we had created in a lot of these areas, we are putting people, but it's very unnatural for most of them to kind of be interested, right? To answer angry queries or customer problems, you know, taking your tenth call of the day, it's already eight o'clock, and you're having to kind of address an angry customer. You can't expect a level of motivation like when you start in the morning. So uh clearly there is a problem with that overall aspect of what kind of work there has been so far with AI coming in, and AI is gonna kind of replace some of that part of work or kind of you know coexist in some cases, place in some cases. But in all, I feel that it is going to complement the businesses or the processes that we create are gonna be created in a way that humans and AI coexist and complement each other in that sense. In short term, we might see some, I would say, disruptions or chaotic uh environment. But I think we will arrive at an equilibrium state sometime soon where uh we are going to see that effect or kind of emphasis from rather than replacing or displacing human employment, it will be kind of creating way more. In simpler terms, that with this technology, we just don't have to think that, okay, I was doing this work with my 10 employees, and now I can do the same thing with two people. I think we can now think that okay, 10 people were able to do a certain amount of work, but now those same 10 people actually can kind of do like 10x more. And uh thankfully, and I you know this is very heartening because uh to see that every customer that we worked with, they have this in mind. Like, you know, they are thinking about like how to just do may more than what we were doing because it would be kind of uh fairly myopic to just think that okay, just reduce cost. I mean, you know, now that you have such a large technology, large invention, let's go all out, let's do way more than what we were doing because now it's possible. So we are going to see that uh there might be some disruptions in in you know short term, but we will see that we are way large, like you know, in productivity, in efficiency, in just doing a lot of stuff. We are NX, 100x, or even 1000x more, and thereby in that process creating way more employment overall. Different domains, different things, to be honest. For example, like you know, back in the day in the 1930s or 50s, there were people just on the calculator calculating you know things. There were there were like you know, thousands of people employed by financial institutions to just do calculation because that was a job. And uh that went away eventually. But we know that we are far better off than we were in the 1930s, uh, with way more employment, way more larger GDP, global GDP than we were earlier. I think AI is gonna bring us a similar results eventually. So I'm pretty hopeful and quite bullish about the future that we live in. And this is me talking as a human, you know, you know, purely not an you know an owner of a company, you know, which is building AI agents.

SPEAKER_01: 29:25

Actually, it gives me hope when a person who is standing behind an AI agency uh solutions company has this type of mindset and priorities. And when you mention that most part of your clients are also keeping human centricity in mind, it is important because that's also been a role model in this completely new way of running business and developing technologies, where it's obviously difficult to come to the optimum from the first try, but at the same time it is crucial to keep in mind what really matters, and that's actually the human factor, the human centricity. And then from there already develop those solutions which can create better options for business growth, but at the same time, so many benefits for those humans who are already a part of the business. So that is really something many businesses should uh listen to and see as a great example of how to build the future through technologies in a sustainable way. Dikshan, true personalization is not about data points, but understanding the person behind them as uh you just shared with us. And uh of course that's the core of any successful business. But how do you see AI evolving from recommendation engines to proactive relationship builders besides being a part of those chatbots which can replace a part of the communication between the brand and the customer side?

SPEAKER_00: 31:28

I think the question leads to one of the things that we talk very strongly internally as a company, which is context. We have a technology called a context graph, which basically where we are trying to solve uh in non-technical terms, we're trying to kind of feel that how do we track and build a context, kind of a journey of the user throughout the time that the person is kind of within the organization. Now, for a smaller organization, this is like a simpler project. If you have a small shop, let's say you know the customers very well. Uh, you can tell them good morning, you can ask them what happened there, school admission, et cetera. But as the scale increases, you lose this personal part. Do you lose this kind of a personal connect uh because it's very hard to retain context across the same millions of users that you might have as a business? How do you do it? And traditionally, it's it's a kind of an almost impossible solution. It's just not possible to build a system which can remember everything about every user, then build a personal context. Although, from user's point of view or the customer's point of view, they are very important. They want to feel important and they want to get a personal attention from the company. With AI now, at least under how AI is evolving, we now have the ability to actually retain that context and give a very personalized impact, you know, very not personalized, I would not say personalized. Uh personalized is a very technical term. I would say very personal kind of an attention and approach to the users, where as a business or that at AI layer, you have all the information about that particular user right from the day one, which would have been like 10 years ago, and you know everything. And with the super intelligence that you have at your disposal, now you can talk about that context. You can talk about what they did last year, or what is the support query that they had put out like you know, three months ago, and you can ask them, hey, like I hope that's kind of you know that there's no further issue that happened, you know, after that. And like, you know, if there is anything, let us know. And by the way, here is uh coupon code that we want to share with you. Just building this meaningful interaction through retention, which is basically building a large kind of a memory around that particular user, I think is going to be like a very defining way how businesses approach that engagement with every customer. And uh from our point of view, I think uh we feel that's important. And purely uh even if we keep the business aside, just as a user, I feel that that problem needs to solve. As a consumer, I feel that I wish there was a way that you know business or the institution or organization that I am engaging with knows about me better. So before they send me, uh send me uh a kind of another marketing mail, uh, I wish they addressed the query that I had or at least refer to that query that I had posted, you know, and then build a context rather than kind of blindly sending me stuff. So just as a consumer, we want to solve that. With the AI, that's a possibility. So we are going in that direction. A lot of companies like us are kind of solving these human problems with AI and something that we did not have before. So it's it's evolving, and I think this evolution part of evolution is very exciting.

SPEAKER_01: 34:48

And this is truly exciting. And I would love to dive a little bit deeper into this part around context. As AI systems begin to act, decide, and even feel in context, how do we preserve ethical integrity and ensure alignment with human values?

SPEAKER_00: 35:10

At a tech at a systems level, we can retain the memory, we can build everything around that customer journey within the business. So, you know, the kind of queries they put, kind of conversations kind of you know they had uh during conversations, uh, what are the mood switch that they had? Did we sense urgency? Did we sense frustration? Did we sense anger? And all those kind of recorded into the system. So that's one part of complex graph. Now, what we do with that is we can do a lot of good things and you know, we can do right things. But I think on the ethical front, we will see a lot of companies taking a very different path, you know, altogether. And I'm not necessarily in a good or a bad way or a right or wrong way. Uh, there could be a lot of nuances there. There is this classical problem in in psychology, which is uh, you know, you might have heard that you are driving a car and there is a woman with her children, and you have two choices whether you're gonna kind of save them, putting your life at a risk, or you save yourself and kind of put their life at risk. And there's no right or wrong answer, and there have been hotly debating things around this. With AI, we're gonna have a lot of these ethical questions that will come up, and different companies will take a different stand. But I think we we've kind of seen, we have had some history now, so in the civilized world, of we know that okay, what are those absolute wrongs? So hopefully we will not see those. Also, from government side and system side, there are these almost quasi-ethical boundary regulations that are coming in that what you can do. Uh, one example is that okay, disclose that it's an AI and things like those. But I think we are gonna be in that space, and I I don't have a very clear answer around it because I myself kind of wonder about like, okay, we have choices in every implementation. We could build AI because ultimately it's us who are designing these systems, and we can cross that line if we wish to, right? And then so how are we gonna kind of you know hold the right, you know, probably uh a stand where we are doing the right thing all the time. We will have to see how things kind of evolve from there. But uh these are valid questions, and I think a lot of companies kind of discuss this, are discussing it, even the larger organizations are starting to kind of put their thoughts around it. But yeah, I think from an ethical point of view, at least the customers we work with, there's a very clear line. Most of them tread a very fair line that okay, let's not try and optimize or or build like a super efficient system. Let's just do what is also right in a lot of senses. So that gives me a lot of hope and a positive outlook. The future that collectively, as humans and then people who are, you know, in some form or the other shaping this future, we'll take the we'll take the right stand, we'll do the right thing. So hopefully I'm sorry, like in the long-winded and convoluted answer to your you know, it's rather simple question, but it's loaded.

SPEAKER_01: 38:13

The question was actually very complicated because as you mentioned, there are many dilemmas out there, and of course, it's not obvious. And uh, when you step out from the space of uniquely human decisions in the space where agentic solutions are also having a certain level of independence, and you are designing those systems, so it's up to you to choose what to include or exclude. It is, of course, a very difficult question, not only technically, and even less so technically, but much more difficult from the perspective of human centricity and uh those core values we would like to keep in place. So I'm happy to hear that not only yourself as a business person and developer of these type of solutions, but also your customers are prioritizing these discussions and look not only into here and now and not only into the profits but also into more deep philosophical questions and how to solve them in a human and promising way for whole the humanity as such. If we rehumanize customer experience and sales through Agentic AI, what will the future roles of human employees look like? We already touched upon this topic, but I would like to hear more from you. Will they become orchestrators? Of intelligence, experience designers, or something entirely new? And how many people will lose their job before we truly redefine what those roles mean? How do you perceive it and what do you see around you? Through those who are developing those similar solutions and through those who really need those solutions for their businesses?

SPEAKER_00: 40:24

Again, heavy question. Again, not right or wrong answer. And this is because it's a more of a prediction for the future. I think from where we are seeing, uh I I've initially, when we started, we did not have a grasp of how big this technological evolution is. Like it felt like a software tool and stuff. And so the initial this thing was okay, this is something that another powerful tool that will now come to our disposal as, and we are going to use it the way we have done with other softwares. But I think the single most aspect of autonomy, where like you know, you can just define a goal and you can design agentic systems which will figure out the best way or the most possible good way or a right way to kind of achieve those goals, make them autonomous, and hence thereby almost leveling up with the human counterparts, right? Because our unique ability as humans was that you could give them a vague criteria and say, hey, I need to get this done. And you know, your trusted employee would be able to do it. And they would use softwares, but trust would be on the person to do it. We now have systems can autonomously handle you know, not all tasks, but like you know, a lot of the similar tasks or a lot of the tasks in that that area where you we initially felt that only humans can do it. So uh we are going to see a stiff competition there where you know we will see AI working hand in hand or kind of in parallel with their human employees. In many cases, with our customers also, the way we are seeing this evolving is that okay, we have these cohort of potential customers, and we think that through a lot of uh these machine learning and stuff, we've kind of figured out that the set of 20 customers are like our 20% of those customers are real high value. They need kind of strong attention. So we will deploy our humans, all effort of the human employees on those because we cannot afford, or we need like our best effort there. For the rest of them, we will kind of deploy AI. It's something that you would not have done anything at all, or we might have sent them a mail or some like use an inferior way to kind of communicate. But now we'll have AI kind of you know engage with them. So uh I feel that we are already starting to see that coexistence where like you know, let AI handle some of the tasks and let humans handle some of the tasks. The trust still is on humans more that, like, okay, you know, this I would not entrust on, you know, like AI. I would rather have my you know trusted colleague or or kind of a subordinate handle those tasks. So that's happening. So I kind of feel the future looks kind of an enlarged version of this where we are going to see that uh a lot of places where humans will have assistance from the AI co-pilots and AI tools, they will have these agentic systems which are sitting in parallel and executing a lot of these tasks. But because now we are capable of handling so much more that that overall volume of tasks are going to kind of increase. So, as I was kind of citing you know earlier, that most companies are feeling that customers are seeing that we could do like X amount of work with these 100 employees, and now with the same hundred employees, now we can actually expect like let's get 100x more or like 10x more. And thereby now I can tell my marketing team press the accelerator on your campaigns because I'm not gonna say no now to kind of more leads that each other because there were these constraints in the system. Now those constraints are taken off, so everybody has like a longer leash, you know, in that sense. We are gonna see this coexistence, we are gonna see a world evolve with like humans, AI agents, and agent tech assistants all being part of a workforce where most businesses where you know ultimately users want a human to kind of talk to or kind of look at the phase, which happens mostly in kind of buying decisions, where if you're buying a house and you could have kind of interacted with an agent who provided information, but it's unlikely that you move shake hands with AI and say, Okay, here is my check, and like you know, like deal is done. I think you want to shake hands with that person in the end. And so that kind of remains with you know the humans largely. Again, uh in short term, we are going to see displacement or kind of a replacement, that movement of one kind of work to another kind of work. So we might see some disruptions, some kind of time of unease or some type, but we will quickly evolve to kind of you know be there where we have to be. So net net, I feel that it's uh it's it's a positive move and positive evolution, but we have to be ready for some minor kind of uh hiccups, you know, of the way.

SPEAKER_01: 45:17

I feel that it depends a lot on the leaders and on how we are running this evolution, because I see also businesses which are risen in a way that humans are going to be considered as a support to those AI solutions, just to review everything and make sure that the governance is in place, but still not everybody is seeing the value of keeping humans front and center and AI solutions as a support for humans. So sometimes I just see that this priority must turn upside down, and then it will be difficult for humans to find their proper place in the process and in businesses because they will be seen more like something in addition to those technologies which are running business instead of technologies being something supporting humans in running business. Do you see this trend or uh is it only one way you see this situation?

SPEAKER_00: 46:38

No, I think this is uh I I uh you know, I guess we are at the infancy of a lot of this development and and evolution. Everybody's grappling, like right from the leaders to employees, juniors, everybody's trying to figure out like how to make sense of this. People are more comfortable with human processes and humans in the loop. And and our personal example of you know, where we have gone to the customer and like, okay, this is what we can do. And uh large hindrance has been that, oh, but I've been working with this team and it may not be possible for me to kind of just disrupt this way of working, so immediately. And thereby it goes into like, okay, let's take a look at it again in three months, you know. And uh while this may feel like for us, like, okay, like oh the sales kind of, you know, we lost the sale, or we kind of, you know, this got delayed on the selling part, but we also feel that okay, people are thinking about it. People are thinking, you know, what's right for themselves and also for their friends and colleagues and kind of their teams, which is heartening to see, and which is the point of point you all you get. Is there a one direction or the other? I think there is more of the protective part that exists today. And uh I think net net that's a better way to kind of all go and then kind of you know like this, even if that evolution takes cycle longer time, it is better and kind of gives everybody else rambub and then be ready. So so yeah, we we are seeing that better, better part of that evolutionary thread, at least uh that we are working with.

SPEAKER_01: 48:16

Sounds reassuring and very positive. That's great. What is one thing we all need to unlearn about technology, humanity, all the way we do business today to adapt and thrive tomorrow?

SPEAKER_00: 48:32

There's one thing I would say uh so far we've been like the way we have utilized or looked at technology is uh getting answers, right? Whether it was Google, whether it was some systems, it was basically getting answers for the questions that we had or we could possibly kind of think of. I would not say unlearning, but I think that slightly like a larger learning curve is happening around have now a tool that can actually help you with questions. And we're seeing like across a lot of boards that okay, like I have this meeting coming up, what should be the three questions that I should ask? I saw my daughter the other day, she was, you know, she had this one-on-one with her teacher, and I saw her like she was asking the chat GPT that okay, what are those questions that I should ask my teacher? Like, this is my you know, history and stuff. And uh so that learning uh for younger kids might happen naturally because they will be I native, but for a lot of us on the other side would be where start thinking of how to use this technology to kind of even surface questions that otherwise we were not even asking, or like you know, not just relying for answers, but even for questions. Uh and I feel that that's it's not as straightforward. It doesn't come to us naturally. And even to me, when I kind of look at it like, I've been dealing with this question, why didn't I ask this? You know, like why didn't I take health? Because it just didn't come naturally. Because I'm still thinking that I need to have a very clear question to be able to kind of get an answer. So I think that's one part of like no this evolutionary thing that we are going to see some ramping up and learning uh as we go forward.

SPEAKER_01: 50:12

Aren't you afraid that it's going to impact our ability to think and uh overall the critical thinking skill? Because I see that many reports are highlighting that negative impact on uh our ability to use our best soft skills when we are in touch with artificial intelligence and uh let it basically think for us.

SPEAKER_00: 50:46

Valid question. Even I had this stand, like you know, where I did not let my daughter interact or use you know chat GPT for a long time. Uh, but I think what what I'm seeing is that we the thinking of like, okay, this question coming that okay, what should I be asking my teacher? That that part that's coming to you is still yours, still still kind of you know uniquely yours, and be able to think. So I think it's not like we are gonna stop thinking completely, but it will allow us to kind of go at a higher level of abstraction, higher, more meta, more larger questions that you can kind of now start thinking about, uh, versus being kind of you know uh thinking on those specific questions. Again, I'm not advocating that yeah, we replace even at a childhood level how to kind of you know uh displace you know the kids' learning abilities. We still want them to be very curious, asking the simpler questions, you know, and then finding those answers. But I think we are going to see a ramp where we will, as a humans, we will evolve into you know much larger uh levels of abstraction in terms of thinking. One analogy that I can give from my personal experience again as a student, when I studied back then, it was uh you know almost like assembly level coding. Like software, I did software engineering, and there were like this machine level kind of where we had to program at zero and one level of coding. And uh, as this new language came about, like which was Java, and we said, okay, like this is gonna kill all the thinking that went into like you know, where we used to think about like okay, it's zero and one. But in in a couple of years, a few years, we kind of realized that, oh, it's allowing us to now think way larger, you know, way much more broader and pick up larger problems that would have been very difficult to kind of you know uh take up at that level of questioning or or reasoning. So, and I think that from there, Java to kind of newer development tools that have come in, they've just brought out larger questions uh from us.

SPEAKER_01: 52:46

I actually see it in a very positive way as well, because I see how AI and our interaction with those chatbots among other solutions can help us dig in deeper and get in a broader perspective and connecting the dots we didn't know how to connect before, or even potentially discover the dots we didn't know exist before. So I see it as a very powerful tool which can help us tapping into our inner power and understanding the world around us much faster and uh in a more powerful way. But it all depends on our mindset and on our goals behind using those solutions as well, on our ambitions and uh a lot on our human values. That's why we're having these important conversations to understand how we can support each other and create a better world all together. I love our today's discussion and uh to wrap up, if you could give one piece of advice to leaders who want to move from automation to meaningful transformation, which you are standing for, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00: 54:06

We don't need to think of in terms of automation. I think automation will happen. Uh I feel that as a leader or or kind of business leader or whatever unit you are driving, key part is that keep uh keep that ultimate goal or the larger goal in central perspective and and then design systems or the thought processes around it. Uh, we no longer have to think in terms of these smaller efficiency gains, etc. Those were the constructs of the previous era of software technology that we had. We had to think in those terms because we just did not have a better way. But now, when we have a better way, uh we can actually shed our you know those uh ways of operating and think larger, uh, keep keep your customers, keep your users at the top priority, and then build systems around it. So I think uh key part that you mentioned meaning, just have that meaning in bold and center that okay, this is what you're gonna kind of drive, and everything else will fall in place. Technology is great and will allow you to do that.

SPEAKER_01: 55:11

Thank you so much. I love this conclusion, and uh I'm so grateful that you shared with us your wisdom, your experience, and your insights. Thank you so much for being with us here today, Dikshant.

SPEAKER_00: 55:26

I love our conversation too, Evi. Thank you so much for having me here.

SPEAKER_01: 55:30

Thank you for joining us on digital transformation and AI for humans. I'm Amy, and it was enriching to share this time with you. Remember, the core of any transformation lies in our human nature, how we think, feel, and connect with others. It is about enhancing our emotional intelligence, embracing a winning mindset, and leading with empathy and insight. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes where we uncover the latest trends in digital business and explore the human side of technology and leadership. If this conversation resonated with you and you are a visionary leader, business owner, or investor ready to shape what's next, consider joining the Yang Game Changers Club. You will find more information in the description. Until next time, keep nurturing your mind, fostering your connections, and leading with heart.