Ep 59: Scaling Human Connection with AI with Sprinklr CIO Sanjay Macwan

Evan Reiser: Hi there, and welcome to Enterprise AI Innovators, a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. In each episode, guests uncover the real-world applications of AI, from improving products and optimizing operations to redefining the customer experience. I'm Evan Reiser, the founder and CEO of Abnormal AI.

Saam Motamedi: And I'm Saam Motamedi, a general partner at Greylock Partners.

Evan: Today on the show, we’re bringing you a conversation with Sanjay Macwan, Chief Information Officer at Sprinklr. Sprinklr is a global leader in customer experience management, helping the world’s largest enterprises listen to, understand, and engage their customers across dozens of digital channels.

There are three interesting things that stood out to me in my conversation with Sanjay:

First, Sprinklr’s AI stack combines bespoke internal models, GenAI from partners like OpenAI and Meta, and a plug-in layer for customers’ own LLMs. It’s designed for scale, not stitched together after the fact.

Second, Sanjay is using AI internally to boost efficiency. He’s deploying microlearning loops to help employees level up fast and automating billing workflows to cut friction. Quiet wins, but high impact.

And finally, when Sanjay wants to learn something new, he asks LLMs to explain it from three angles: a developer, a CIO, and a skeptic. It’s a fast way to get deeper insight, and a smart habit more execs should embrace.

‍Evan: Sanjay, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm excited to chat with you, not just because of your background, because we've worked with Sprinklr a lot in the past, kind of my former life, so excited to have you here.

Maybe before we kind of dive in, do you mind sharing with our audience a little bit about, kind of, your journey as kind of a technology leader and the role you played today?

Sanjay Macwan: Yeah, happy to do that and great to be here, Evan, and Saam, and team. Really excited to be talking with you. You're on a great mission. So, I'm happy to be a small part of that mission. 

Yeah, my journey. I've been in the technology world all my career. Thankfully, I love technology. My education is engineering and computer science and, fortunately, through my journey, I've had a seat at the table, what I call 360 degree roles, where I started my career as a software developer, you know, wrote code, built product, built infrastructure, ran large infrastructure, ran technology operations, been a CTO with R&D product responsibility at large scale for large companies, been a CIO running the back office and all the internal collaboration platforms and tools and go to market systems and the CISO, which is cybersecurity role, as well. So, I feel really, I've been lucky with a lot of help from a lot of friends and colleagues and teammates, that I've had a seat at the table, around the table, 360 degree perspective and experiences. So, that's been my journey and I'm excited to be here.

Evan: You know, I know you're kind of recently into kind of your new kind of chapter as Chief Information Officer at Sprinklr. You know, similar to work as a professor, it's also hard work, right? You got cyber criminals trying to mess with your business and, like, there's new technology every day, and there's a lot of complexity of running a modern business in the modern age.

Like, why do it, right? What inspires you? What motivates you? You know, what causes you to kind of wake up Monday morning and be, you know, excited to, you know, head into that increasingly complex and demanding job?

Sanjay: Great question. And it is hard, really, not to, not to, not to belabor that point, but CIO roles in modern tech companies, or any company for that matter, are incredibly complex and demanding and challenging for the right reasons, in my opinion. 

I think if you really think about it, there are four aspects of CIO roles that are incredibly central and sort of a backbone of any company. The first part of that role is delivering world-class employee experience, right? You know, your teammates, and their work in different functions, whether it's sales, marketing, finance, legal, HR. Those teammates, they have to do their job in the best way possible. And CIO and CIO teams have to enable world-class employee experiences for them every day. 

The second part of the role is world-class customer experience because ultimately we are in business to serve our customers. You, yourself, or any company or any organization, there are sort of customers and you have to give them a world-class customer experience. And, again, platforms and tools and technology and processes that support the customer experience are something that CIO and team have to do incredibly well every single day. 

Third part of it is really, in today's world, you kind of touched upon that in the beginning, which is, you know, the threat actors out there are after everything. Your information, your infrastructure, your intellectual property, and the CIO and CIO teams really have to make sure that they also maintain a world-class strong security posture for your company, for your product, for your services. So, that's the third aspect. 

And then the fourth aspect, which really probably doesn't get enough visibility sometimes, but I deeply believe in it, is that every company, especially in today's world, every company has to be an incredibly data-driven, AI-enabled company through which you make important decisions on a daily basis. Small, medium-sized decisions, large decisions, right? 

We are human beings. We have experiences. We have lived experiences. We have emotions. We have biases. We have all of that stuff, right? We have gut feelings, and all of that plays into our decision-making on things that we decide on. However, data, the facts really have to be the cornerstone of making decisions for any modern company. That's the fourth part of the CIO team's job. And so, to me, I cannot ask for any better sort of a template to really affect the change for the company, the scale, the growth, and take a lot of pride in doing so, know, having a world-class employee experience, world-class customer experience, strong security posture, and a data-driven AI-enabled company. A lot of pride comes with that. And the teams feel that, and it's tough, but it's a very enjoyable journey that way.

Saam: I think it's hard to have a conversation in July of 2025 about technology and not talk about AI. So, Sanjay, you've been through a number of these technology waves. Let's just start like high level. Where are we in this AI wave and kind of current hype cycle?

Sanjay: Yeah, clearly there is some hype, for sure, but I also know and believe there is some real good stuff going on. No question about that, right? And I'm not a big sports fanatic or knowledgeable sports person, but I know baseball a little bit. And if I use the baseball analogy, I would say we are probably in the second half of the first inning of a baseball game when it comes to AI journey. Even though the pace of change and output and advancements over these last two years have been phenomenal. Even with that, it feels to me that we are kind of that early in the journey. So, more to come in my view.

Saam: So, maybe let's first talk a little bit about AI in the context of Sprinklr, right? And Sprinklr’s obviously a leader in customer experience management. Like, what's the role of customer experience management? How does the role of it change in this AI era?

Sanjay: Absolutely. I mean, I'll kind of start with the very basic premise that we all know, but it's important to remind ourselves every day: we exist because of our customers. Every brand, every company exists because of their customers, right? No matter whether you're a consumer facing brand or a B2B brand, you exist because of your customers. So, every company has an incredible, incredible obligation to deliver world-class customer experience for, for their customers.

And one of the most important tenets of delivering world-class customer experience is to listen and understand the customers, right? Not just, you know, engage with them, but like understand what they are trying to do, what they are trying to achieve, right? Using your platform, your product, your service, or how they are engaging with your brand. And that listening and understanding the customer is so crucial as aaaaaa company to deliver a world-class experience. And our platform, Sprinklr's Customer Experience Management Platform, is designed to do just that, which is to, for any company that has customers, which every company has customers, right? How do you have a most comprehensive way of listening to your customer, understanding your customers, and reacting to their needs and responding to their needs in a meaningful, contextually relevant way on a regular basis at scale? And that's where our platform comes in. And we have large enterprise customers that rely on us every single day.

And thankfully, Sprinklr, well before GenAI became what GenAI is, well before all the ChatGPT and other advancements that we've been seeing in the last couple of years, actually focused on AI 8, 9 years, 10 years ago almost, and built custom AI models to really understand the listening part of the customer, right? Customers interact with brands in so many different ways. In today's world, your customer might pick up a phone call and make a phone call and have a chat with the agent. They might send an email. They might actually connect with you, you know, Twitter, or now X, or they might put a review, or provide, you know, be part of a thread on Reddit and opine about your brand, your product on Reddit. All of those data points are important for brands to gather, analyze, and understand, so that you can really tailor your product services, innovatively to meet the needs of the customers, meet them where they are, what they need from you as a brand, right? And our platform became AI-native well before GenAI and the teams then, many of the leaders and product leaders, engineering leaders, built custom models. That's where the journey of AI began for Sprinklr. 

Of course, that's not enough in today's world. And so our team has been at the forefront by bringing in the GenAI components in partnership with major companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, and others, to bring in, along with the custom models, bring in the GenAI LLMs. But then, also, we have our play as a platform play, so that along with those two AI components, we can also invite our large customers who have their own custom models because they are big enough and they're investing in their own AI research and capabilities for their businesses so they can bring their own models, as well. And so, now we have a platform with three rich components, custom models that the company has built a platform on, GenAI, and allowing our customers, especially those who can afford and build their own models and have the need for their own models to integrate into the platform, and leveraging the power of those three things to really, again, listen to their customers better, understand where they are, what they need, and really serve them with a world-class customer experience.

Evan: What do you think about like, the future opportunity for organizations to better, you know, understand, better engage their customers using AI technologies? What does it look like a couple of years down the road? I think even in the last six months, for us personally at my company, we've used these technologies. It's been a bit mind blowing and mind opening. But I'd love to hear your views. You kind of put your crystal ball and think about what's possible in the future. What does that look like? What does it feel like? What can maybe we look forward to?

Sanjay: Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. And to me, believe it or not, the answer still lies in one of the simple facts that we all know, is that innovatively, what can we do to continue to reduce friction for our customers? And the technology should really be the completely invisible part of the experience chain, right? And a customer engaging with a particular consumer brand, let's say, might engage with that brand sporadically throughout the year, but that customer's experience with the brand has to be consistent, predictable, right? Pleasant, all of those things. And in order to deliver those things, you really just have to make it so seamless, so easy, so frictionless, so intuitive, so contextually rich that, you know, the technology is doing all the hard work on behalf of the customer and on behalf of the brand. And that's the problem statement. It sounds pretty straightforward and simple. But if you break that problem statement into the smallest building blocks, solving each of those building blocks in a meaningful way and stitching an entire experience together so that it does become intuitive, and totally frictionless, and predictive, and contextually rich for the customer and for the brand. I think that's where we all should go and that's where I am excited about the role that we can play as a company, as a platform in delivering that kind of really just so natural and intuitive experience for every interaction of the customer.

By the way, it's not just one customer, right? If you're a consumer brand, you're dealing with millions and millions of customers globally. If you're a B2B brand, your customers might be not in millions, it might be 10,000 or 5,000. However, their expectations are extremely rich and different, right? And you still have to meet those expectations. So, having a platform and a technology stack and innovation that are totally invisible, and yet delivering that contextually rich outcome for both the customers, as well as the brands, I think is really critical. And that's where the journey continues for all of us in the industry.

Evan: If I'm a consumer five years in the future, how will AI maybe give me voice or give me visibility or let brands better understand me in ways that maybe aren't possible today? How do you think AIs will play a role there?

Sanjay: I think Airline is a great example. Some delay or something or the other. For the most part, what do we want as human beings? If you are the customer in that particular situation, in that particular context, one of the basic things that would really make us feel good is, even in that difficult situation about delay or cancellation or whatever that may be, is that I got heard. I sent something to the airline and I was heard. They heard me. They genuinely reacted to me, they understood what I was going through, they heard me, even if they couldn't solve the things because there's some physical barriers or whatever that may be. I think at the core, as a human, we want that, right? That, you know, I want my experience to be frictionless, but when some things don't work out, at least I want to be heard, right? 

Now extrapolate that for millions and millions of consumers that a particular consumer brand might have. It's humanly impossible to really read every single tweet, or every single email, or every single Reddit thread that's out there, or any number of other platforms that consumers might provide their perspective or their complaints or their good or bad experiences. And that should be done by technology. AI can do that at scale. You can mine all this data, you can, and then react back to that one individual, that one customer, in a contextually rich, in a very personalized way, and make that individual feel heard. And solve their needs or give them incentive to stay engaged with you as a brand.

Saam: If we take like a five to 10 year view, right? And we kind of dream further out, right? As these underlying AI capabilities continue to strengthen, like, how do you think this space could change and look different? And I'll tell you like thoughts going through my mind are like, for instance, you know, can I have AI agents reaching out to my customers and talking to them and like have a hundred X more conversations and therefore data to come back to my business?

I don't know if that makes sense. Or the other thing is, like if you think about your really far out roadmap that could transform the category.

Sanjay: I think you're spot on. I completely agree with that, right? So, you know, so far we talked about customers initiating that engagement and brands reacting to that, right? The next logical phase has to be exactly what you just said. Not only do I do this really well and do the scale consistently with high standards and all of that, but now I also actually proactively engage with the customer, without interfering with their lives without interrupting their day-to-day workflows and the experiences that they are going through. But contextually understanding where they are in their life journey, in their business journey, if they're a business customer, and reaching them out proactively in that particular context so that it's meaningful to them. The outreach is meaningful to them, right? And that's the next logical, I think, evolution from where we are, and I do see that roadmap and the journey that we can all and we should all aspire to intake quite frankly, right?

And then think about, if you look at it from the human being perspective, if I'm a CIO, let's talk about B2B use cases. If I'm a CIO, I am a CIO, not if, I am a CIO, and a particular technology partner or provider is reaching out to me proactively on a regular basis, but in the context for my business, in the context of my need, in the context of my roadmap, my journey, things that I'm trying to accomplish. And they are proactively reaching out to me in that context with the targeted, very meaningful, very specific sort of ideas and capabilities. That is incredibly powerful to me, right? We have so many things to accomplish on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, right? If my partner, technology partner is so in tune with my roadmap, my needs, my business, my customer journey, my employee journey, and is reaching out to me with meaningful ideas and meaningful capabilities? Incredibly powerful.

Evan: There's a lot of, like, sexy use cases for AI, right? And I think a lot of, you know, CIOs that I talked to have grand ambitions, which are quite exciting, right? And like there's lots of value there, for sure. But also like, I've personally, I've seen some really like boring use cases be super effective for me personally, right? 

If you were advising kind of a new CIO about like how they can get kind of some kind of quick wins, or some like, you know, get some quick wins. Like, you know, what are some maybe ideas you've seen, or what are some like applications you've seen that it might not be sexy, but like, you know, are easy to implement and definitely have, you know, high bang for your buck?

Sanjay: I think you're spot on. So, picking up from your own example, I would say that's a very important one that we all should think about as leaders, as employees, as well, which is: , you know, what can I do using AI technologies to continue to learn new things and fine tune my own approach to things, right? And you gave a great example about putting things in ChatGPT, and then, you know, getting some feedback as to what I can do better next time, right? That, to me, it's simple, sounds simple, but so incredibly powerful. You know, things that we might get in two years of MBA class, two years of MBA journey, you know, you could accomplish a lot of those things, if not all of those things, through this constant micro learning and feedback loop that we can create for ourselves, right? 

So, you know, I would say that one category of use case, which is micro learning. Feedback loop through the technology, AI technology, and you give an excellent example of that. That would be one pragmatic use of AI in our daily lives, in professional, and personal lives. So, I would say that one. 

The second thing is that, you know, and this is from a CIO lens that I'm speaking of, I think today's world, CIO and CIO teams, not in today's world, you know, there was two, years ago also, it's even more true today. CIOs and CIO teams have been incredibly close to the company's business, company's customers, company's products and services. You are no longer a back office. You know, somebody says, “Do this,” and you go and implement through, you know, complex technologies and processes. It's no longer that. It never was in my view, even 10 years ago. However, it's incredibly clear it’s not that anymore for any company. 

And so, in order to be that close to the customer, to be close to the product and services of your company, your go-to-market strategy, again, how do you do that at scale for every employee in your company? And again, that's where the AI, I think, can play a huge role where, through the AI models or things like even simple things like copilots in Microsoft or ChatGPT types of things, you can begin to learn about the company, the product, the solutions, the go-to-market strategy, and customer needs much more quickly and efficiently through those capabilities of AI and those models. I think that's the second pragmatic use case. 

I'll give you one other one, which is even more narrow, but I think is fantastic in my view. Every company, again, has customers. That's why they exist. Every company has to do billing. Guess what? There's no that, that workflow from sending a bill to collecting the cash, that workflow can be incredibly complex. There are so many steps that take place along the way, including engaging with a third party bank where the customer, you know, will deposit the money or, you know, so there are all kinds of third party players involved in that also. 

And that workflow for many companies turns out to be, you know, error prone, where let's say, you know, a customer is buying your product or service on their credit card, a monthly subscription. Now, you know, it's a small business and a person who was designated to buy your product for that small business leaves that business. The credit card is no longer valid. Somebody else is in charge now, and you send the bill. Guess what? The bill bounces and doesn't get paid because there is that break, there is that friction, right? And so, lots of companies end up deploying sort of a low cost manual labor to kind of keep things together and stitch things together every month during billing cycles, whatever that may be. And if you're doing this at scale for tens of thousands of customers, and hundreds of millions of dollars of bills every month, it can get extremely complex and tedious and costly and inefficient and friction-full. I think AI can solve it, and I did solve that in my prior work, solving that problem using AI.

Evan: Are there any, kind of, like, ways that either kind of you've kind of personally use AI, right? Just part of like your day-to-day job or maybe kind of, you know, some of your peers you've talked to, like kind of clever little pro tips or hacks they're doing, just to make kind of day-to-day stuff easier, right? Even if it's a little bit, you know, mundane and pragmatic, like any kind of, you know, pro tips, you know, I'm sure there's someone out there listening. It's like, I'm not really sure. Like, you know, it sounds like a big project. I'm not really sure what I can do today. Where would you advise me to kind of get started? What's the little kind of trick they can do to, you know, maybe save 10 minutes a day?

Sanjay: I think one, one, one thing is really researching your industry and topic. I'll give you a great example. The Model Context Protocol that came on board. And this is, I think, nine, 10 months ago example for me. And, you know, as I just kind of got to hear about it and, you know, I heard about it, but I did not really dwell into it too much as to exactly how it works. Remember, I'm a CIO, right? I'm somebody who wants to understand how things work, how protocols work, right? 

So, I said, “Okay, you know, a simple query to two different AI platforms at the time,” I used ChatGPT and Perplexity, and say, you know, I put a simple query and say, you know, “This is what I'm trying to do about—learn about MCP—and do this research. And “give me some education.” And then I say, “Provide this to me as if you are a software developer. You assume that persona as a software developer of what MCP means to you and how you would use it. Provide that research if you are looking at from a senior executive, technology executive like CTO and CIO, right? And if you are a skeptic of where things are around MCP.” So three different perspectives. And I got some rich analysis from those two platforms. And to me, it took me five minutes to craft those queries in two different platforms for those three personas. And the analysis and the education that I received was incredibly powerful and meaningful and something that sped up my understanding of MCP from three different vantage points: a developer vantage point, a CIO/CTO vantage point, as well as somebody who is skeptic about where things are today and how it might work and so forth, right? To me, it was incredibly, incredibly powerful.

Saam: We've discussed a lot about the impact AI is having at companies like Sprinklr. What about areas that you think are overhyped, right? Or you hear discussed in the zeitgeist, but you don't think, you know, are having real impact today? Or you think a CIO should be skeptical of?

Sanjay: I think the hype stems from the fact that AI will replace everything. And to me, that's clear in my vantage point. From my experience and understanding, this is a clearly very hyped notion. I actually attended a Northeastern commencement ceremony a couple of months back. My daughter graduated there, and so I was there in the audience, and the President of Northeastern had a, you know, gave a very short speech, and he happens to be a computer scientist himself. He talked about four Cs that humans are uniquely capable of, you know, working on those four Cs. One of them was curiosity. The second one was creativity. The third one was context. And the fourth one was community. So, anything that has to do with curiosity, creativity, context, and community, collaboration with people and things like that, it's hard to imagine AI supplanting any of those things completely. 

AI can be the force multiplier in those things, right? So, think about creativity. Somebody might say creating a PowerPoint presentation is a creative thing. You could use AI tools to get you started, and you might tweak a few things here and there. So, AI in that context becomes a force multiplier, but does not necessarily, in my view, supplant your ability to envision the narrative that you want to deliver through that PowerPoint presentation. The kinds of facts that you want to highlight, and in the sequence that you want to highlight them—that still comes from your context and your creativity, and the context within which you are delivering that presentation. AI can certainly be the force multiplier but does not replace it completely. 

So I think in my view, the hype around AI can eliminate this, that, other completely, I think, is overdone. The way I think about it is that AI is truly a force multiplier in most cases. In some cases, it can do 100 % of the things, for example, right? But in most cases, it would be a force multiplier. And I think that's the best way to envision that.

Evan: So we've got, I think like five questions and Sanjay, looking for, these are questions that I admittedly are difficult to answer in the one tweet format. We're kind of looking for like you're not going to one tweet, quite a quick takes.

So maybe Saam, want to kick it off for us?

Saam: So, maybe to start, how do you think companies should measure the success of a CIO in today's AI era?

Sanjay: Simple, right? Are you delivering world-class customer experience and world-class employee experience and world-class security posture? And is it a data-driven company?

Evan: Sanjay, what are the best ways for CIOs to kind of stay up to date on the current AI trends? Things are changing so quickly. Like every day is a new technology, old things are obsolete. What do you recommend there?

Sanjay: My philosophy, and not just for CIOs, but for all the all of us, right? Become a learner leader. A leader who continuously learns. And one important way, and I'm not saying because I'm talking with you guys, but this has been my practice: spend a lot of time, as much time as you can, with startups. Because here are the people with ideas. Crazy and good and ambitious and all of that stuff, with a passion, and they are trying to solve something in a unique way. They are looking at a problem from a different angle. They are creating entirely new capabilities that do not exist today, right? One of the best ways to stay ahead in your learning is spend as much time as you can spend with startups.

Saam: So, maybe to switch gears to the personal side, what's a book you've read recently that's had a big impact on you and why?

Sanjay: Actually, as it, as it, as it stands, this is the book I just read: All in on AI by Thomas Devenport and Nitin Mittal. And this was already there, so I did not plan this, just to be frank. The reason I was interested in, because a friend of mine told me, and, um, you know, not everything is fantastic there, but they've used some real company, real examples about AI and the use of AI and what's sort of working and sort of, so to me, again, I go back to my framing, pragmatic use of AI, right? So that's why I was interested in, and I just finished reading it and it is very helpful. Not everything that I would agree and say, but I think there are some real good examples of different companies.

Evan: What is an upcoming technology that's emerging that you're kind of most excited about?

‍Sanjay: I think quantum computing overall in the technology world. I think it is incredibly powerful and will change so many things, right? 

So, think about, like, I'm sure you see this today, right? You put on a very rich query, whether it's to Perplexity, or ChatGPT, or others, and it takes time. It takes time for it to generate answers and all of that stuff, right? Think about what quantum computing impact will be on that, right? Cyber security, you know the world very well, so what's the impact, both good and bad, of quantum computing on cybersecurity. 

So, I think to me, that's a really, I'm really excited about where that discipline goes and what real meaningful things come out of it over the next two, three years, five years. I think that's going to be another game changer in my view.

Evan: Okay, I think that's all we’ve got time for, Sanjay, but I really appreciate you taking the time to join us. Thanks for sharing all your thoughtful views and thank you for joining us. I think our joint mission is helping educate and inspire the world.

Saam: Yeah, thanks a lot, Sanjay. That was an awesome conversation.

Sanjay: Absolutely. Great to hear. Thank you.

Evan: That was Sanjay Macwan, Chief Information Officer at Sprinklr

Saam: Thanks for listening to Enterprise AI Innovators. I’m Saam Motamedi, a general partner at Greylock Partners.

Evan: And I’m Evan Reiser, the CEO and founder of Abnormal AI. Please be sure to subscribe, so you never miss an episode. You can find more great insights on enterprise AI transformation at enterprisesoftware.blog.

Saam: This show is produced by Josh Meer. See you next time!