Silicon Valley, AI, and Solving Customer Service with Puneet Mehta, Founder and CEO of Netomi

Stairway to CEO

Description:

In this episode of Stairway to CEO, you’ll learn all about Puneet Mehta's captivating entrepreneurial journey, from his upbringing in India and fulfilling his childhood dream of living in Silicon Valley to spearheading AI advancements at Netomi. He tells us how his parents inspired him to embrace daunting challenges, what he learned from his years developing trading engines on Wall Street, the transformative encounter he had with Mike Bloomberg, and how these experiences have fueled his entrepreneurial drive. Join us as we uncover Puneet's perspective on the AI landscape, his pivotal role in founding Netomi, and the profound benefits of integrating AI to elevate customer experiences.

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In This Episode You’ll Hear About:

• [01:51] What it was like for Puneet growing up in Chandigarh, India, and how his mother and father inspired him to pursue difficult goals.
• [06:17] Why he feels so lucky to have studied engineering and computer science at one of the top schools in India, and how he realized his childhood dream of moving to Silicon Valley.
• [07:15] The value of his experiences on Wall Street developing trading engines and how his fortuitous meeting with Mike Bloomberg empowered him to build his own company.
• [11:38] How he built his first company leveraging prediction algorithms, their strategic partnership with BMW, and key takeaways that helped him build Netomi.
• [15:47] What inspired him to found Netomi, how he got the company off the ground, and what it was like building a chatbot for Sony Pictures.
• [23:37] Recognizing the high demand for improved customer experience, how they are solving key pain points for customers using AI, and the many uses of Netomi’s co-pilot.
• [33:43] Partnerships in the AI space and what it means for a company to be powered by another company or tool.
• [35:52] How Netomi addresses fears around outsourcing customer service needs, and why AI won’t replace humans working in customer service.
• [41:25] Netomi’s partnership with Awesome CX, where Puneet sees it going in the coming years, and how he expects other aspects of his business to be impacted by AI.
• [47:49] His advice for aspiring entrepreneurs on how empathy is misunderstood and why you shouldn’t do it for the money; what is next for Netomi, and what Puneet is most excited about!

To Find Out More:

Netomi

Puneet Mehta on Linkedin

Gong

Lee Greene on LinkedIn

Stairway to CEO

Stairway to CEO on Instagram

Quotes:

“Being aligned on the core mindset is so incredibly important. It's more important than your business strategy. It's more important than any other part of the business.” [0:13:09]

“As you start bringing new technology to life, and as you introduce it to the world, you have to make the adoption completely frictionless. You have to do it in a way that engages or [accompanies] a habit that somebody's already used to.” [0:13:42]

“[When you] think about business outcomes, to stay excited about what you're doing, you have to focus on the journey. You cannot just focus on the end goal.” [0:14:39]

“That's what the AI co-pilot from Netomi does. It gives them a superpower where AI can now gather information from these different systems, it can prepare a response for you, it can also help an agent get trained quicker.” [0:30:28]

“[The Netomi co-pilot] also gives you insights based on what your customers are telling you. Because it's humanly impossible to go back and listen to every single phone call.” [0:31:43]

“The founders that are growing these companies are looking for insight [from Netomi’s co-pilot] because conversations with their customers are the biggest asset.” [0:37:17]

“The demand is there to feel like we are treated well as customers [and] to have that customer love. We want those questions answered. There just isn't enough resources available with these brands to answer all of these questions promptly.” [0:40:47]

“The top use case for AI for large companies is customer experience.” [0:44:22]

“That's how fast this change is coming. We should see every company in the world in the next 12 to 18 months adopt AI in some shape or form for customer experience.” [0:46:01]

“There are much easier ways of making money [than starting a company]. This is a really hard way to do it – but if you're connected to what you do, [then] the journey itself would be quite enriching.” [0:49:23]

“[Starting a company] will give you experiences and it'll help you come across people that you want to have shared experiences with.” [0:49:35]