Tika Sylvia: The Art of Conversational AI, Humanizing Technology to Transforming Customer Experience for Business Growth

Tika Sylvia is the Vice President of marketing and communication at Kata.ai. She is mission-oriented and a technically sophisticated professional with over 10 years of background in various industries which include prop-tech, logistics, hospitality, and food delivery in start-up companies. She has excellent communication skills, a strong background in data-driven marketing, analytical and detail-oriented mindset, with a proven track record in productivity & efficiency.

Enhanced Collaboration Between Humans and Machines

Kata.ai is an Indonesian conversational artificial intelligence company with a focus on enhancing the understanding of human conversations, improving the way humans collaborate with machines. It is believed that AI technology and language are humanity's most incredible creations. Combining their powers will unlock new possibilities, enabling better interaction between humans and machines to create a limitless future.

Established in 2015, Kata.ai has become a trusted partner for major corporations in Indonesia across various industries such as FMCG, telco, fintech, e-commerce, news, banking industry, and many more. The company helps hundreds of brands and partners to optimize customer engagement by leveraging the power of conversational AI technology, bringing the brands to achieve their business goals by improving customer experience with smart chatbots, automated support on any channels to improve customer satisfaction, until improving marketing engagement through website or chat apps. The company unlocks the value of data with its technology through billions of processed conversations.

 A Technically Sophisticated and Professional Marketeer

Tika Sylvia is a mission-oriented, technically sophisticated professional marketeer and an ecosystem-builder with over 10 years of background in various industries. Before Kata.ai, she was the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at RoomMe (Indonesia's First Virtual Kost Operator) and Associate Vice President Marketing at Ninja Xpress (Indonesia's Logistic Company).

She is voted as one of the top Indonesian Women Leaders 2021 recognized by CMO Asia & World Women Leadership Congress by 2021, in recognition of her experience, expertise, and ongoing commitment to keeping at the cutting-edge of the marketing profession in various industries.

Besides that, last May 2021, she was honored to receive an award as The Most Innovative Women in Prop-Tech Company by National Award Foundation, Mediatama Management by 2021.

Winning Mentality for an Individual

Tika Sylvia said that adopting the winning mentality in working spirit is something that she has learned from her former leader, a mentality for an individual who achieves greatness consistently. She believes that "No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it. She has tons of weaknesses, and she always welcomes someone who can complete me, playing the other musical instruments to create harmony together."

Making the team involved and valued is beyond the definition of the cliche company culture. It is a must to make the team be a part of something innovative.

Everyone can help learn something, no matter who they are, no matter what their level positions are. Tika believes that the more people learn from the experiences of others (good or bad), the more they can learn when they are positioned to make decisions.

It is important to make the team understand that every single task they do, always has a purpose, value, and meaning for themselves and the company.

Inclusivity into the Working Environment

For Tika, bringing inclusivity into the working environment became the most challenging part. Though it looks like a game, being in a tech-start-up company requires being ready with the changes.

She says, "there is no shortcut to being what you want to be right now, or to be one of the leaders in the start-up company". Tika started her career as a specialist marketer before, now she chose to become 'A Jack of Trade,' with an understanding of a wide range of things, across a variety of integrated marketing techniques with 360 marketing growth to drive future success of organizations. At the end of the day, whether specialist or generalist, the fundamental thing is a curiosity to fully understand an integrated marketing strategy which makes everyone need to have both a broad and depth of skills to be able to give an edge in one particular area, but also keep other options open for the future.

Team Involvement and Engagement

The challenge Tika experienced as the marketing leader in a start-up company is to get her team members involved and engaged. Translating the company's goals into the team's focus and taking the pressure from group strategy and making it fit locally was also a challenge. "It is important to make the team members feel they're in control and they're empowered to run their job. The critical attribute every leader should possess is how we can get people to do things because they are part of it, also because they think that it's a good idea and beneficial for them", said Tika.

Humanizing Technology Through Emotional Aspects

Tika believes, "Marketing is not something we do for people, it's something we do for people, from people to people."  For her, the secret sauce of innovating products to market in this digital era is by humanizing technology, through emotional aspects in brand strategy. She mentions, doesn't just digitize, yet humanize. People do not buy products and services. They buy relations, emotions and stories. It is really about people. People buy technology from people, says Tika.

At the end of the day, people can see how AI technology can be the most effective way to bring 'Humanity Back to Our Marketing.' According to Tika, these secret sauces reflecting into 4 things:

Emphasize the Human Side in Conversational Marketing

"Whatever the brand she manages, she always starts to talk about her customer's yard, not about her grass seed." In other words, she starts an honest conversation about what became the value for a customer's business, instead of touching customers with statistics about the stellar company.

Provide Personalized Approach

Tika believes that marketing is about starting a conversation, it makes her always encourage the team approach to speak to the customer as an individual through technology and make their own 'voice' appealing to the customers.

Talk with Customer Languages

By understanding who the customers are, one should be able to talk, connect and engage using their languages.

Engage with The Right Communities

Tika says, as we connect individuals to our brand, they will seek out others with which our brand aligns. She always remembers that all are social. What all are thinking, what all are doing, sometimes it can be influenced by what all we see on social platforms. She says, "It makes me always put 'Community Engagement' to cater to the right potential audiences from around our company's brand."

Views on Disruptive Technology

Tika says, "let's think back to the last time when we tried to order a taxi with just a tap from a simple application. Do we still search the taxi's phone numbers via google or yellow pages, and order it via phone call? I do not think that people are still doing that anymore, since we are already familiar with the brands like uber, grab, and gojek (from Indonesia)." According to her, digital disruptions are very real, dynamic, and rapidly changing at this moment. All businesses need to capture it and also need to stay proactive to keep up-to-date on any upcoming technology trends in this industry.

In various businesses from e-commerce, fintech, logistics, or retail that are currently enjoying rapid growth, people might not realize that they have been staying in a price war ecosystem where brands compete with each other to deliver the best products and lowest price. But things have changed. The latest trends show that it's not only product quality that has the biggest impact on sales conversion especially, instead it's also about the seamless and positive customer experiences a brand delivers, says Tika.

A Walker study found that at the end of 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand. Over 80% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. Bringing the technology to achieve better customer engagement that contributes to the company's revenue goals is very possible with AI technology.

Route to the Future

For every industry, staying ahead of the most recent trends is the only way to survive, excel and thrive in our ever-changing world. Expectations for business have changed already. From using social interaction and messaging apps for chat activities only, until now it can be used to sell products and services with a personable touch that is growing exponentially.

Here is the rise of conversational commerce, where the heart of this is in human interaction. With an increasing number of brands and retailers adopting this tech, consumers are beginning to use it greater than ever before.

"69% of US consumers, 76% of Brazil consumers say that being able to message a business helps them feel more confident about the brand. And this confidence is translating to sales with businesses enjoying huge upsurges in their profits as a result of using conversational technology.

Tike believes conversational commerce offers a broad range of benefits for businesses, providing a superior experience to customers they had been providing without having to massively increase staffing levels or budgets. Enabling personalized recommendations via text, picture, or video on chat feature, Whatsapp, or other messengers' apps.

Select an Inspiring Leader 

Tika says, "Choose appropriate leaders, find the leaders who inspire a lot & learn from their perspective". The main reason for Tika to stay at one company is because of the leader. On top of the ability, knowledge, and experience that she had, other external factors also contribute to driving her to achieve great performance and success in her career. That is an inspiring leader. She met a few inspiring leaders on her path, who spread his leader's passion in a way that enabled her to feel passionate about what she is doing. This shared passion is a critical condition that makes her feel as if her work has a purpose and meaning beyond the daily task. It makes her get a big picture in a very helicopter view on how we grow together in an organization.

Further, she says, "when I face challenging circumstances, I take a few minutes to remember some inspirational leaders. Two of my favorites are a former Managing Director of foodpanda Indonesia (Rocket Internet) and another one is someone behind a successful prop-tech company in Indonesia". She is inspired by individuals who make the decisions with their high standards of ethics and integrity, even though it may not be popular and hard to be received at that time, a type of person that inspired her to achieve things beyond that which they thought she could accomplish.

"I am always concerned about the team's bandwidth and capacity". Hence, encouraging the team to know about focus & priorities will encourage them to work smart, instead of only work hard."

She advised bringing the team to macro thinking by highlighting the top agreed with metrics, instead of monitoring their micro activities and defining clear OKRs to maximize the team's effort and achieve it together. This macro thinking will bring them into a result-oriented mindset. She also appreciates the process indirectly with the daily team's assistance.