With articles coming out so often these days about the impact of AI, we asked our Head of Product, Sergio Messias, his opinion about AI. We discussed how Worthix has been using AI to understand customer value for the past years.
Interview with Sergio Messias, Head of Product at Worthix.
How has the way you use AI at Worthix changed over the past 7 years?
The principles haven’t changed: Helping our users solve problems. We work closely with top US universities and have a talented pool of engineers that are consistently researching how to help our clients make better decisions and understand better what their customers value.
We learned a lot during this time and were able to implement changes quickly, to continue to add value for our clients. For example, by working with big clients across various countries and industries, we came to understand how important intangible drivers are.
We expanded our Natural Language Processing (NLP) to also process Brand Identification and Social Proof. This allowed Worthix to provide a deeper understanding into the customers’ perspective. Our clients would have a hard time getting these insights otherwise.
When rushing to implement the usage of AI, what do you think some businesses have not considered?
AI is going mainstream, being discussed by non-experts, and no longer in a technical way. On one hand, this is great, as it means the technology is becoming available in a commercially feasible and scalable way. On the other hand, there is a lot of hype and misinformation around it. This may cause misleading expectations about what it is and what it can and cannot do. While it’s an incredible technology enabling companies to work faster and more efficiently, it is far from being easy to deploy and optimize.
Take Large Language Models, for example: Using prompts (which may look like questions) in comparison to coding languages can look deceptively simple. However, a good prompt (especially for enterprise needs) is as complex as any algorithm and requires experience and know-how.
My advise to any company trying to use AI to make their processes more efficient would be to seek for support from experts and deploy things by stages, testing before full roll-out, like with any other innovation they would try to launch.
Did you all at Worthix seven years ago think that AI would blow up to this degree?
We are not surprised by the potential of AI and NLP. At Worthix we always believed that it would disrupt the market and how companies work. But in the past 7 years the pace of innovation picked up rather quickly with the most recent Large Language Model (LLM) disruption.
The LLM disruption made the technology widely available to players of all sizes and industries in a cost-efficient and accessible way. This allowed players to explore various applications across their companies, pushing all their departments to find a way to take advantage of this technology.
This drive for innovation at such a speed would not have been possible in the past. During a time when many companies are cutting costs and investors are tightening their belts, the investment being made by big tech players are not slowing down. This could mean that usage and innovation should continue to accelerate further.
A quick look into the future
Do you think tech companies who are not finding a way to incorporate AI into their tech stack will inch towards irrelevance?
AI does not solve problems by itself, rather it removes friction from one’s workflow, enabling employees to be more productive and have more impactful work. AI by itself may not drive companies toward irrelevance, but it certainly contributes to their competitiveness. As of today, there is no reason not to take advantage of it, as it can dramatically reduce busy work and streamline processes in one’s business.
Where do you see the future of AI at Worthix?
We are no strangers to AI and have been using it successfully for over seven years. Our core strategy remains the same: use our expertise to leverage the most impactful innovations to bring our clients the best the industry has to offer, allowing them to deliver value efficiently and effectively to their customers.
We are here for the long haul. Our expertise in AI will allow us to continue to provide the best insights for our clients into their customer base and allow businesses to stay at the forefront of the ever-changing reality of their customers and respective industries.
About Worthix
We help companies bridge the gap between what they offer and what their customers value. We use AI technology to hold in-depth conversations at scale with our client’s customers that later translate into a C-suit-level dashboard designed as a 3-step cycle.
Worthix tracks what “value” means to customers, then combines it with customers’ metadata to find actionable opportunities and invites customers to co-create solutions.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Worthix is a SaaS company founded by Guilherme Cerqueira in 2015 and is now present in USA, Mexico, and Brazil, with dozens of leading companies as clients in 6 countries.
