Tell me about your role at Novo Nordisk and what it entails

I am part of Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence (CoE) at Novo Nordisk Global Business Services. I started here about a year ago to set up the Conversational AI excellence team and drive the global strategy for the same, but quickly broadened my scope to cover other cognitive automation areas as well. My role entails working closely with business stakeholders to understand their processes and pain points, identify the right automation solutions and work closely with our in-house team of developers and ecosystem of vendors to develop these solutions and thereby deliver value to business. We are not only using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Conversational AI but also Document Understanding solutions, Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision for a range of processes and use cases across the pharma value chain.

As a Conversational AI expert, what are the biggest challenges & opportunities in this domain?

For me the biggest opportunity that lies within Conversational AI is the naturalness of the interface and ease of use. Even a novice user can focus on completing the task rather than learning how to use the interface. One can engage with systems and processes in the language that one is most comfortable is i.e. language that is mine and yours. There is no learning curve, and anyone can interact with complex systems right away. Imagine having to transact in SAP and remembering the T-codes vs doing the same just by saying it in simple English (or any other language for that matter). That for me is the power of Conversational AI.

However, I do see a lot of challenges as well. Business teams still expect AI to be a silver bullet that can start giving results from day one. There is little awareness around the amount of effort that goes in building good solutions and importance of training data and learning over time. User experience is an afterthought, if considered at all. This expectation mismatch in terms of what technology can do versus what business expects it do versus what the users want out of it, is in my opinion the biggest challenge.

How can Conversational AI tech impact contact centres? What sectors do you think will benefit the most from this form of tech?

Remember the last time you called in a contact centre with any query? I am sure you had to traverse through a menu of IVR options to end up waiting in queue to be answered by an agent who then either provided you a generic response or transferred to you another department. Imagine a scenario now where a bot receives your call and has access to your information, understands your question in natural language and resolves your query quickly or transfers you to agent who knows exactly how to resolve your query. Will you not love the experience? Will it really matter to you if this was resolved by a machine or a human? All that matters in a customer contact after all is the overall experience and task resolution. And that’s what Conversational AI can achieve in contact centres. And of course, that leads to improvement in typical contact centre metrics like lower cost of handling a contact, FCR (First Call Resolution), AHT (average hold time) and NPS and freeing up an agent time for handling complex tasks

In terms of application, I see the application of tech in contact centres across sectors. Consumer facing industries with high call volumes will be the biggest benefactors- example financial services, telecom, travel, and hospitality industries to name a few.

Not to forget other applications this offers beyond customer service for instance in sales, marketing, education, healthcare, and even public services.

You’re also the cofounder of Women in Voice India. What is this about and what change are you hoping to impact?

Women in Voice is a global community for women and diverse people to help them gain a voice in voice technology space, amplify their work, and provide professional development resources. We started the India chapter with the same mission- to provide women in India a community to network, learn and to pivot/grow career in voice tech. Only when we bring a fair representation from underrepresented groups, can we bring diverse views and ideas on the table and a build a technology that is inclusive and works for all - and that is exactly what we want to do.

What challenges do women face in building a career in emerging technologies like AI? How can the business community and society address this issue collectively and efficiently?

AI is a fast-moving field where changes happen almost every single day and one needs to be on top of their game always- continuously upskilling, and learning. But with work and family pressure and burden of household, this becomes a non-priority for most women. I know women who have immense potential but have decided to take a back seat in their career and go about a job they do not enjoy just because they do not have time and mental bandwidth to spend on upskilling.

We will need a societal change to figure why there is a leaky pipeline of women leaving workforce especially in middle and higher career levels. Providing them with flexi-work options, back to work and upskilling programs for those on a break will be instrumental in retaining this key talent. Encouraging community participation for networking and learning, and opportunities and incubator programs for women founders will also accelerate support to help more women get their due representation.

Do you some positive changes / increase in female participation & representation in the tech workforce because of COVID?

To be honest I have seen both sides. While pandemic and resulting work from home have given women flexibility to manage their schedules better it also brought its own challenges. Working women in India depends heavily on paid helps and child-care centres and with no help around the home and managing kids, household and full-time jobs has been a big challenge. You have only 24 hours in a day after all and so much can you do. But I do see women taking the challenge head-on and with right support from workplace, spouse, and family I do hope to see positive changes in the future too.

What would you like to see change/improve/get introduced in the field of AI for women? 

We need to start encouraging women and young girls to take up STEM subjects right at the college level and provide them with opportunities and role models to transition to AI at different stage of their career depending on their interests, of course.

There is a belief that one needs to be a data scientist or an engineer/developer/coder to grow a career in AI. That’s a misconception- we need people from diverse backgrounds, Project Managers, Business Consultants, Operations, and of course Designers, everyone has a role to play.

Like I alluded to earlier, encouraging women from diverse backgrounds to transition to a career in AI, provide upskilling opportunities when applicable, provide flexi work options when they need to prioritise family and generally have a good support system that doesn’t force them choose either/or will go a long way in bringing about the change.

What is your biggest AI nightmare?

Well, my biggest AI nightmare is not some time in the future but is here right now. And it is not tech going rogue or AI taking over the world- It is in fact bias in algorithms and use of AI for spreading disinformation and opinion manipulation. We have already seen and heard about some of the real-life examples of biased algorithms in healthcare, hiring, facial recognition and even voice recognition systems. We also know of deep fakes, fake news, and use of algorithms for manipulating public opinion and psychological warfare by political parties.

And therefore, it’s even more important to have diverse representation in AI and make sure that bias in algorithm is removed at the data level itself. Thankfully I see a lot of experts working on ethics and bias in AI and I am hopeful we will have fairer algorithms and more applications for the betterment of our society and environment in future