Kuljesh Puri is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Communications, Media & Technology at Persistent Systems. He brings over 26 years of experience across the software, telecom, and semiconductor industries, along with extensive international exposure and a passion for transformation.
Before joining Persistent, Kuljesh headed the Telecom Product Engineering portfolio at Tech Mahindra. Before that he worked at Harman International, a Samsung company, as Vice President and Global General Manager for the Telecom and Industrial verticals, mandated with defining a growth trajectory for the business. Earlier, Kuljesh spent 15 years in senior business and engineering roles at Aricent in both the B2B and B2C businesses.
Persistent Systems is a global digital engineering and enterprise modernization company that partners with businesses to drive innovation and accelerate digital transformation. With deep expertise in software, cloud, and data, Persistent delivers end-to-end solutions across industries, including healthcare, financial services, communications, and technology.
What are the most transformative ways you see AI impacting call center operations in telecom and media today?
Traditionally, contact centers have been cost centers designed to handle customer queries. Over the years, from phone-based call centers, client service has evolved into multi-channel service centers through chat, emails, and mobile apps. Key innovations like seamless omnichannel experiences, AI-driven multilingual self-service, sentiment analysis, and predictive churn management are no longer optional—they are essential. At the same time, Agentic AI is transforming contact centers into client experience centers by fully handling end-to-end tasks like billing corrections, plan upgrades, or technical troubleshooting without human intervention, going beyond scripted chatbots. Overall, AI is enabling businesses to anticipate client needs rather than merely reacting to them by switching from reactive support to predictive, personalized and self-improving. The result is enhanced operational efficiency and the ability to drive deeper client satisfaction and loyalty. By reducing costs and improving service, AI is transforming call centers from traditional cost centers into high-value, client-centric hubs that directly impact revenue.
How are predictive analytics, automation, and NLP improving real-time customer interactions?
The integration of predictive analytics, automation, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) is revolutionizing how we engage with clients in real time. Predictive analytics allows organizations to anticipate client behavior and offer proactive solutions. Automation speeds up processes, ensuring rapid responses to client queries while minimizing human error. On the other hand, NLP empowers chatbots and virtual assistants to engage in more natural, human-like conversations, improving both the quality and speed of service. When combined, these technologies create an environment where client interactions are faster and more personalized—ultimately enhancing the client experience and fostering loyalty.
How does AI contribute to creating a more seamless, omnichannel customer experience?
AI is the key component of a seamless, omnichannel client experience. It enables companies to integrate interactions across various channels—whether it’s a chatbot on a website, a conversation on social media, or a phone call to a contact center. By consolidating data from these touchpoints, AI ensures the messaging is consistent and tailored to each client. The real power of AI lies in its ability to personalize these interactions, ensuring that clients receive relevant, context-aware support across channels. This creates a frictionless experience, where clients can move from one touchpoint to another without losing continuity.
With extensive experience working with telecom and media companies, we have helped organizations leverage AI to streamline customer journeys, improve workflows, and provide a unified experience. This enables clients to create a more seamless, personalized service that enhances satisfaction and drives lasting loyalty.
What are the most common pain points organizations face when deploying AI into their call centers?
One of the biggest challenges organizations face when deploying AI in their call centers is integrating it with legacy systems. Many traditional contact centers, particularly those relying on on-premises solutions, lack the infrastructure to support AI’s advanced capabilities. Migrating to the cloud is essential to unlocking AI’s full potential, but this transition can be complex and costly. Additionally, AI models require high-quality, well-organized data, which legacy systems often struggle to provide. Ensuring a smooth transition without disrupting the customer experience is another significant hurdle. Privacy and security concerns regarding data usage also need to be addressed comprehensively.
Organizations need an experienced partner to navigate these challenges—one with a deep understanding of both AI and industry-specific needs. We’ve helped many telecom and media companies modernize their contact centers, overcoming these pain points and ensuring seamless transitions that improve operational efficiency and enhance the overall customer experience.
For example, Persistent collaborated with a leading U.S. telecommunications technology provider to enhance their contact center operations. The client wanted to analyze customer interactions through their conversational AI platform to gain insights into customer satisfaction and agent performance. We developed a GCP-backed data analytics layer that processed data from over 30 real-time streaming pipelines, handling over one billion messages daily. This solution provided near real-time insights, helping the client monitor key metrics like caller sentiment and service satisfaction, ultimately improving customer experience and operational efficiency.
By partnering with experts who understand both AI and the telecom industry, organizations can overcome common deployment challenges, modernize their contact centers, and unlock valuable data-driven insights to enhance customer interactions and drive operational improvements.
What are some of the biggest differences in how telecom vs. media companies are adopting AI for client service?
The telecommunications sector has long been a pioneer in establishing large-scale contact centers, driven by the need to manage essential services such as billing inquiries, new connections, and troubleshooting connectivity issues. These functions remain central to the industry, and AI is increasingly leveraged to optimize operations in these areas, as they represent a significant portion of client support ticket volumes. Given the competitive landscape, many telecom operators also use predictive analytics to anticipate client churn, enabling targeted marketing campaigns and retention strategies.
In contrast, media companies focus on AI for different purposes, such as detecting account sharing, managing subscriptions, analyzing viewing patterns, curating content, and enhancing client engagement through automated self-service options.
At Persistent, we have worked with both telecom and media companies to tailor AI solutions that meet their distinct challenges. For telecom, we focus on improving operational efficiencies and leveraging predictive analytics to drive proactive customer service. For media companies, we aim to enhance customer engagement through AI-driven recommendations, content personalization, and self-service automation.
In your experience, what cultural or organizational shifts are necessary to fully embrace AI in these sectors?
To fully embrace AI, telecom and media companies must undergo a cultural shift toward becoming data-driven organizations. This requires fostering a mindset of continuous learning and innovation across all departments. AI adoption is not just an IT initiative, it requires cross-department collaboration, particularly between IT, client service, and operations. Companies must invest in AI talent and focus on reskilling their existing workforce to ensure they have the skills to manage and work alongside AI systems. Furthermore, adopting agile methodologies will be crucial to allowing organizations to quickly iterate and optimize their AI solutions. Strong leadership is necessary to drive these changes and ensure that AI initiatives align with overall business objectives, particularly improving client experience while driving business results.
How does the acquisition of Starfish Associates strengthen Persistent’s AI-powered contact center and unified communications capabilities?
The acquisition of Starfish Associates significantly enhances Persistent’s position in the AI-powered contact center and unified communications space. This strategic acquisition builds on our existing engineering capabilities in the Contact Center and Unified Communications domain, expanding our AI-driven business transformation expertise and reinforcing our focus on operational excellence. Starfish Associates is known for its cutting-edge Enterprise Communications automation platform, which serves some of the world’s largest enterprises, including many Fortune 500 companies. When combined with Persistent’s strengths in AI-driven automation, this acquisition allows us to offer even more powerful, integrated solutions that streamline workflows, enhance client engagement, and improve operational efficiency.
Data security and privacy are top concerns for organizations in telecom—how is Persistent addressing these in AI-enabled customer service solutions?
Data security and privacy are critical concerns, especially in the telecom industry, where client data is sensitive and highly regulated. At Persistent, we help telecom companies navigate these challenges by implementing AI solutions that ensure data protection at every step. We support our clients in achieving compliance with global regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and other data protection laws, embedding privacy safeguards within their AI-powered customer service operations.
We assist clients in integrating robust security features, including encryption, anonymization, and access controls, to secure data throughout its lifecycle. Additionally, we ensure transparency by helping clients maintain full control over their data, offering clear visibility into how it’s used and managed. By providing ongoing AI model audits and risk assessments, we ensure that our solutions remain secure, compliant, and adaptable as regulations evolve, giving our clients the confidence to leverage AI technologies responsibly while maintaining customer trust.
Finally, what does success look like to you when it comes to AI-powered client experience for telecom players over the next five years?
Over the next five years, AI will redefine the role of contact centers in the telecom industry. Success will be measured by the ability of telecom companies to transform traditional call centers into proactive client engagement hubs. Agentic AI will transform telecom customer experience by proactively resolving issues, offering personalized support, and enabling autonomous service actions across channels. Learning from interactions to adapt in real time ensures faster, smarter, and more human-like engagement, which is key for customer experience transformation.
By offloading 50%-60% of routine client service tasks to Agentic AI, telecom operators can improve efficiency while allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues. Predictive analytics will play a pivotal role in anticipating client needs, while omnichannel integration will ensure a seamless experience across all touchpoints.
At Persistent, we help telecom and media companies implement Agentic AI solutions that drive innovation and improve customer interactions. Our expertise in AI and telecom enables the creation of smarter, more agile contact centers, leveraging data to align with business goals. Looking ahead, our goal is to help these organizations securely infuse AI across their operations, deepening their connection with customers and positioning them for success in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Persistent Systems.
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