NEW DELHI
Animesh Jain’s responsibilities include providing strategic vision and business insights to clients and helping them achieve business metrics and consumer engagement at [24]7.ai Inc. Started in Bengaluru, [24]7.ai is a 20-year-old organisation headquartered in San Jose, California. “We have our delivery centres in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and we have our presence in North and Central America, with technology centres in Bengaluru, and San Jose and Canada,” Jain said.
Speaking about the idea behind [24]7.ai for India and the Americas, Jain said, “It is an intent-driven customer experience solutions that combines the power of human intelligence and artificial intelligence to provide powerful customer experiences. We are making findings on how artificial intelligence and human intelligence and deep vertical expertise can produce personalised and satisfying customer experiences.” “Also, a significant Customer Contact Centre experience enables us to deliver naturally consistent conversations across all digital as well as voice channels, driving greater operational efficiencies,” Jain continued.
Jain threw some light on the changes during the pandemic in the functionality of the organisation, saying, “I believe that we never panicked. The leadership team came together seamlessly and created a blueprint to ensure two things: one, no disruption to business at all, and no negative impact on our people. These are the two priorities we wanted to make sure that no jobs are lost and to maintain continuity in our business, which is in our services to our customers.”
“The client business continued as smoothly as possible. The entire movement to work from home was planned like a surgical operation from start to finish. Our first employee actually went live on the same day as the lockdown was announced in India, and within months of that, 85% of our workforce was actually working from home remotely. We made a huge amount of changes to our technology and our systems,” Jain elaborated on how the company ensured seamless operations during the lockdown. “I wanted to also make sure that our people are going to have a comfortable environment hence we needed to make sure that we provide them with the infrastructure, such as desktops, dongles, Internet connectivity, etc, so they are seamlessly connected through technology to serve our customers,” Jain added.
As an AI company, data is fundamental. Jain explained to us how the company managed it during these months. “For security, we needed to make sure that we deploy technology and systems to ensure that the data is protected. So, we deployed a home-grown AI-based system to make sure that we are able to provide a very secure environment. Also, it’s just not about technology as ultimately trust and a high level of integrity matters, so we had to undergo training for our people. There’s a rigorous amount of training, communication and education which happened through the months. And people have not let us down,” he shared.
“I’m very proud to say we haven’t let our clients down either. We were also able to protect all the jobs. In fact, we were able to grow our business by 30% to 40% across our geographies. Our clients trusted us with more business during these months, just because of the way we were able to deliver services flawlessly and execute our plans,” Jain said.
Jain spearheads a team of over 9,000 people across India and the Americas. Devising ‘talent’ strategies, instituting operational excellence, and instilling the drive to outperform across teams towards building a world-class delivery organisation, falls under his purview. He shared with us the USP behind taking ahead such a large and versatile team, and making it into a successful endeavour. “It’s all about keeping your employees motivated and engaged to achieve this large organisational objective,” he said.
On a concluding note, Jain spoke about what the organisation has learnt from the pandemic. “Right from the initial days, when the pandemic hit and various countries underwent a lockdown, we figured that we needed to put things together very quickly. And as time passed, we understood that there are a lot of opportunities. So, I think the biggest learning has been that any adversity can be converted into an opportunity,” he said, adding, “Secondly, our people are the most important facets. If it was not for people, we wouldn’t be in this position. So, we are people-oriented. Different cross-functional teams came together to provide and implement the solutions in a searched manner. Thirdly, trust is foundational to all relationships, whether they are with our people or our clients. Similarly, our clients trusted us to do the right things,” shared Jain.