Join us for a compelling episode of the Earley AI Podcast as host Seth Earley sits down with George Swetlitz, CEO and Co-Founder of RightResponse AI. George brings decades of expertise in natural language technologies, enterprise AI adoption, and building advanced models to solve real business challenges—especially in the realm of customer engagement, feedback, and competitive analysis.

Tune in as George shares how AI-powered systems are changing the way organizations capture, understand, and act on customer feedback to deliver more relevant, personalized, and valuable experiences. He discusses why sounding “human” isn’t enough, the importance of contextual relevance, and how to transform the review response process at scale for both efficiency and revenue growth.

Key Takeaways:

• Relevance Over Sounding Human: The real power of AI in customer experience lies in delivering contextually relevant responses, not just in mimicking human conversation.
• Granular Sentiment Analysis: Advanced AI systems can break down reviews into meaningful phrases, better identify true intent and sentiment (even with sarcasm), and map feedback to business KPIs.
• Building Fact Repositories: Onboarding AI involves creating a dynamic library of facts drawn from reviews, responses, and website content, enabling responses that are tailored to specific, high-value customer concerns.
• Operational Impact at Scale: Large organizations can redeploy significant resources by automating repetitive review responses, freeing up staff to focus on complex, high-touch customer problems.
• Personalized Review Requests: AI can personalize review requests by incorporating context from customer interactions, dramatically improving conversion rates and generating more insightful customer feedback.
• Competitive Insights: AI-driven analysis of both your reviews and your competitors’ can highlight where you’re outperforming or falling short—especially at the hyperlocal level.
• Future of AI in CX: As AI models become more advanced, onboarding and implementation will become smoother, and the quality of customer engagement will only improve.

Insightful Quote:

“What you’re trying to do with AI is get the best of both worlds. You’re trying to be relevant to somebody in the space or in the place that they’re in… The best customer service rep would do that. And now, at scale, AI can help organizations truly meet customers where they are.” George Swetlitz

Listen now and discover how leveraging AI in customer feedback can transform both experience and outcomes!

Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-swetlitz-7b43812/

Website: https://www.rightresponseai.com

Thanks to our sponsors:

• VKTR
• Earley Information Science
• AI Powered Enterprise Book

This episode of the Earley AI Podcast features Betsy Mello, a seasoned retail executive whose career includes leadership roles at Dorel Home, Levi’s, Old Navy, Sears, and several retail startups. With deep expertise in merchandising, inventory management, and eCommerce strategy, Betsy brings a pragmatic perspective shaped by years of leading digital transformation and managing major marketplace relationships with Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, and others.

Host Seth Earley talks with Betsy about how retail leaders can navigate the ongoing shift from traditional operations to AI-driven business models. Their discussion explores how structured data, process discipline, and organizational alignment form the foundation of successful digital and AI initiatives—and why the fundamentals still matter, even in the age of automation.

Key Takeaways:

• How the move from brick-and-mortar to digital commerce has transformed consumer expectations and the pace of retail innovation.
• Why marketplaces are data supply chains—and how brands must adapt content, taxonomy, and product positioning across diverse channels.
• The importance of clean data, standardized terminology, and clear use cases before adopting AI solutions.
• Strategies for breaking down silos, aligning KPIs, and ensuring cross-functional collaboration around data and insights.
• Leading through change: the value of transparency, experimentation, and learning from failure during AI-driven transformation.
• What leaders often overlook when preparing for AI—and how to make foundational data work visible and measurable.
• The building blocks for sustainable AI success: information architecture, governance, and accountable data ownership.

Show Quotes:

"You need to have everything standard. You need to have clean data and very clear workflows and accountabilities... The key is having the team set in place and very clear defined processes and roles and responsibilities. It’s incredibly critical to make sure your foundation is correct. You need to be always starting at the basics." – Betsy Mello

"Supply chain is an information supply chain. And every time you have a new way of distributing your product, you have to think about, how do I distribute the data with that product?" - Seth Earley

Tune in to hear how retail and eCommerce leaders can turn complexity into clarity—and build the cultural and data foundations that make AI work.

Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsymello/

Website: https://www.dorelhome.com

Thanks to our sponsors:

• VKTR
• Earley Information Science
• AI Powered Enterprise Book

Bharat Guruprakash, Chief Product Officer at Algolia, joins host Seth Earley on this episode of the Earley AI Podcast. With years of experience helping organizations leverage AI to connect people with information, Bharat brings deep insight into the evolving world of AI-powered search, retrieval, and agentic technologies. At Algolia, a global leader in AI-driven search and retrieval, he helps shape what’s next in unifying data, building intelligent systems, and designing platforms that understand real-time context.

Key Takeaways:

• Misconceptions about Search and AI: Many organizations think large language models (LLMs) can handle all search needs, but true effective AI solutions require robust retrieval systems beneath the surface.
• The Role of RAG and Memory: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) remains important, but the future is moving toward agentic architectures that require "memory" and stateful interactions, not just stateless search.
• Clean, Structured Data is Crucial: The importance of having clean, accessible, and normalized data stores as the backbone for any successful AI and search initiative.
• Experimentation and Innovation: Enterprises struggle with a culture of experimentation and face challenges in safely running and scaling AI experiments. Autonomous experimentation, where AI can test and optimize different approaches, is emerging as a solution.
• The Rise of Agentic Technologies: The distinction between generative AI (focused on content creation) and agentic AI (focused on task automation and execution), and how agents will soon drive more dynamic, event-driven workflows.
• Guardrails and Risk: Implementing proper protocols (like MCP and Google’s A2A SDKs) and guardrails is essential to ensure agents act safely and within business parameters.
• Privacy and the Future: As agents learn more about users than users know about themselves, privacy, transparency, and identity become critical concerns. The speed of change is challenging, but small, iterative steps help organizations evolve responsibly.

Insightful Quote from the Show:

"It's very risky to say, let's just boldly go forth into the unknown, right? I think you have to have experiments, right? You have to control them, experiments, but you have to Be careful about that and have a mechanism for managing that and for controlling it and for monitoring the results." Seth Earley

"It's okay to start small. Find the small places where you can improve...and keep multiplying them. Over time, when you look back after a year or two, you'll have a very different company from when you started." – Bharat Guruprakash

Tune in for a thoughtful deep dive into the challenges, opportunities, and responsible strategies for embracing AI, search, and agentic technologies in your organization.

Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bharatguruprakash/

Website: https://www.algolia.com

Thanks to our sponsors:

• VKTR
• Earley Information Science
• AI Powered Enterprise Book