Uber “2.0”: Can Dara Khosrowshahi turn things around for Uber?

Being a CEO is not easy and glamorous as the title sounds.  Not at least when the company is besieged by innumerable scandals and mounting losses.  When Dara Khosrowshahi took the wheels as the CEO of Uber, the embattled ride-hailing company, I couldn’t help but wonder how will handle the not-so-magical title bestowed upon him. Dara literally inherited a real mess from the Kalanick era. From regulatory hurdles to sexual harassment complaints, data breach, a bombshell lawsuit on trade secrets, alleged usage of duplicitous software, and burgeoning losses, the challenges to deal with were insurmountable. But the CEO of the scandal-ridden company made a commendable move and won our hearts by settling the self-driving car dispute with Waymo. Despite paying a whopping $245 million, Dara added a huge feather to his cap. He cleaned up a potentially devastating lawsuit and eliminated the biggest roadblock on Uber’s ambitious move towards the promised 2019 IPO. The decision burnished the new CEO’s ability to salvage the battered reputation of the ride-hailing giant. By closing a crucial funding round with Softbank, he gained another significant achievement to his credit. It’s the second biggest feather in a short span of five months.

The troubles are far from over. The company’s full-year loss widened to a mammoth $4.5 billion in 2017, however, its revenue jumped 85% when compared with 2016.Uber still faces uphill battles in many countries. But his initial steps have proven beyond doubt that Dara is willing to learn from past experiences and is ready to instill the lessons for a better future. He is capable of cutting down the losses and helping the company sail through the turbulent times with ease. He knows how to play safe and rebuild bridges of trust, loyalty, and compliance. The Waymo settlement is a clear example of his low-risk approach, which I believe is the need of the hour. The introduction of eight “cultural norms”, six hours mandate breaks for drivers, willingness to make concessions, and so on, indicate a welcoming change from the once antagonistic approach of the company. Dara is gradually putting out the fires and clearing the path with diligence and perfection.

Every company has varying faces and diverse leaders with unique approaches. Kalanick brought the company to where it is now. But his relentless drive to succeed gradually transformed into an aggressive and abrasive leadership that drove the company to a damaging path. Many of their problems were self inflicted. Dara has come in with a mature decision-making ability as well as transparent and balanced communication skills. The company now has a mature leader who believes in learning from mistakes, paying attention, and initiating fruitful conversations with riders, drivers, and regulators. Their open apology and warmer stance indicate the possibility of newer discussions with Transportation for London. Uber had lost its London taxi license at the fag-end of 2017.

Can Dara help the company regain its lost glory? Given the quick and effective steps that he’s taken over the short span of five months to repair the company’s image, I feel Dara, an executive with a clean reputation and impeccable business track record, might soon clean up the mess and restore the image and financial stability of the ride-hailing company. 

Can AI-powered chatbots redefine customer experience?

Conversational AI is no more regarded as a fad or overhyped technology. Instead, it is an integral part of every corporate strategy. Conversation AI helps build robust virtual agents that carry out human-like conversations, communicate knowledge, answer questions, or walk you through critical processes, and thus get smarter overtime. Conversational AI is expected witness a meteoric growth in the coming days. It will eventually supersede both cloud and mobile within a decade. The big fours, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, have already started making conversational AI the main gateway to communicate with customers.

From answering queries to entertaining users and selling products, conversational AI chatbots have become a highly viable and engaging customer interaction channel. They are not just looked upon as basic bots or mere personal assistants. By harnessing AI, NLP, and machine learning, chatbots can enable highly responsive and personalized level of interactions like humans. That said; a complete replacement of humans is far from possible. But AI-based chatbots can help handle simple, repetitive, and non-mission critical tasks with ease and precision.

What are chatbots?

Simply put, a chatbot are smartly designed AI-enabled software programs to provide simple, natural, human-like responses that facilitate meaningful communication. They can be integrated to major chat apps such as Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Telegram.

When it comes to customer service, chatbots offers a real-time conversational experience, bypassing conventional ways of emailing or dialing up the customer service team. Through constant interactions, chatbots can amass exhaustive knowledge on customer sentiments, preferences, opinions, purchase behavior, and so on.

Chatbots: The future of customer experience

Customers look for swift, comprehensive, and satisfying responses to their queries.  From welcoming messages to replying to customers’ queries, an AI-powered chatbot can undoubtedly elevate customer engagement to the next level by responding to both text and verbal queries like a human staff member. They help free-up the time spent dealing with customers directly, and ensures better consistency due to reduced human intervention.

It’s always exciting to engage with a chatbot that exhibits a personality or sense of humor that’s similar to human beings. Moreover, a single chatbot can perform the tasks of multiple customer service personnel. They never keep you waiting or never sleep. Use of chatbots can help customer-facing brands cut down costs and improve operational efficiencies. Deploying AI-based chatbots will help cut labour costs by 29%, says a recent survey report. They also help reach broader set of audience, and save critical customer intelligence data that businesses can make use of to tailor services and marketing strategies. However, chatbots should not be deployed without having a reliable escalation channel through which a query/an issue can be routed to humans.

Customer experience is a competitive differentiator in today’s fast-paced and increasingly competitive business environment. Businesses are constantly reinventing themselves to keep up with market changes and stay ahead of competition. AI-powered chatbots can be a major game changer for businesses across the world. They are here to stay and will revolutionize customer engagement in more meaningful ways in the coming days.