Thriving Amid Scaled Expectations: How AI and Leadership Are Redefining Customer Value
# CSS Executive Forums
# Silicon Valley
CSS Executive Forum – Silicon Valley
November 5, 2025Santa Clara, CA – October 29, 2024 | CSS Executive Forum – Silicon Valley
We gathered at ServiceNow’s Silicon Valley campus for an energizing evening focused on one of today’s defining challenges: Doing More with Less—Shaping Services Value in the Age of AI and Cost Pressure.
The mainstage panel, moderated by Dharam Rai (Sonos), brought together four dynamic leaders who are each driving transformation in their fields:
- Elisabeth Zornes (Autodesk), Chief Customer Officer
- Anisha Sivakumar (Zscaler), SVP & COO, R&D
- Awinash Sinha (Zoom), Chief Digital Information Officer & GM
- Simon Bamberger (BCG), Managing Director & Partner
Together, they explored how AI and evolving expectations are reshaping how we define and deliver customer value, and how leaders can align people, technology, and processes for sustainable growth.
From Cost Pressure to Customer Value
Dharam opened with a reality every leader in the room recognized: the tension between cost efficiency and rising customer expectations in an AI-driven world. The question, he noted, is not simply how to do more with less, but how to do better with what we have, through focus, clarity, and the innovative use of technology.
What followed was a candid and insightful discussion that balanced big-picture thinking with grounded examples leaders could take home and apply.
Elisabeth Zornes (Autodesk): AI as a Value Amplifier
Elisabeth reframed the discussion around purpose. Productivity, she said, is an outcome, not the goal. “Our purpose is to unlock value and drive growth for our customers,” she shared. When teams focus outward, helping customers succeed, productivity naturally follows.
Rather than viewing AI as a cost-saver, she sees it as a value amplifier, a way to deepen engagement, personalize interactions, and build trust. Autodesk is moving from transactional support to value-based engagement, already seeing significant NPS gains where this model is in place.
“Every customer hand-raise is an opportunity,” she said. “I don’t want fewer cases; I want richer conversations that create more value.”
Takeaway: Use AI to amplify customer value, not just automate work.
Anisha Sivakumar (Zscaler): The Foundation Before the Acceleration
Anisha offered a unique perspective as a former Customer Success leader now leading R&D Operations. Having lived on both sides of the customer signal loop, she’s focused on bridging product and post-sales to embed the customer voice into engineering.
“AI is an accelerant, but it accelerates dysfunction just as fast as progress if your foundations aren’t right,” she cautioned.
Her team’s first focus was operational maturity: consistent definitions of severity, SLAs for bugs, and a customer-centric view of quality. Today, Zscaler uses AI to standardize and summarize feedback from advisory boards, telemetry, and sales notes—making product decisions data-driven instead of anecdotal.
“We’re using AI to help complete the work that never gets fully staffed or the work no one wants to do,” she explained. “Then we’re equipping people with AI to accelerate the impact they can make.”
Takeaway: Build AI on solid foundations. Standardize data and processes before scaling.
Awinash Sinha (Zoom): Building an AI-Ready Workforce
Awinash shared a comprehensive view of how AI is reshaping Zoom across product innovation, internal operations, and customer experience. He outlined Zoom’s internal AI strategy, composed of four components, starting with the Zoom products' internal leverage for business agility. Other components include enabling experimentation across business functions, prioritizing initiatives through business leaders, leveraging trusted vendor AI solutions that leverage data already residing in the platform, and orchestrating “agentic” workflows that connect systems end to end.
“Technology evolves faster than organizations can absorb it,” he noted. “The real differentiator is how fast you can make your workforce AI-ready.”
Zoom employees now complete AI training, and each department designates AI champions who meet monthly to share wins and learnings. The company’s approach focuses on empowerment rather than elimination.
“AI isn’t replacing people, it’s replacing processes,” he said. “We’re giving our teams the tools and confidence to reimagine their work.”
Takeaway: Your edge isn’t an AI-heavy toolset; it’s an AI-ready workforce.
Simon Bamberger (BCG): Vision First, Then Reinvention
Simon distilled insights from BCG’s work with hundreds of organizations and was direct about why many AI projects fail: weak data foundations, lack of executive vision, and poor change management.
“Many companies play with pilots without purpose,” he said. “You need a clear vision of where you’re going, and the courage to completely redesign your old processes instead of tweaking them.”
He urged leaders to design for prevention, not just faster resolution, and to build T-shaped teams—broadly skilled yet deeply expert. He also highlighted the power of co-creation: involving frontline staff and even skeptics early, so they become advocates for change.
Takeaway: Lead with vision and redesign from the ground up. Don’t just automate what’s broken.
The Human Core: Trust and Talent
As the discussion turned to people and culture, all four leaders agreed on one truth: AI’s success depends on trust — between leaders, employees, and customers.
Elisabeth spoke about moving her organization from process-driven work to value creation, noting that this transition energizes teams and elevates careers.
Anisha emphasised trust and readiness start with strong foundations, because AI accelerates whatever culture and systems it’s built on.
Awinash stressed bottom-up reinvention, where employees closest to workflows reimagine them with AI.
Simon reinforced the importance of co-designing transformation—bringing employees into the process early to build ownership and belief.
My Reflections
From Elisabeth to Simon, one message came through clearly: AI isn’t just a technology story; it’s a leadership story.
Each leader spoke about transformation through intent, trust, and clarity. They reminded us that the real power of AI is in amplifying human judgment and empathy. Done right, AI cuts through the noise while preserving nuance — giving leaders space to think, guide, and inspire.
Elisabeth highlighted that value creation, not efficiency, is the true measure of success.
Anisha showed how discipline and data integrity turn ambition into progress.
Awinash emphasized that readiness and enablement determine how fast organizations evolve.
And Simon challenged us to rethink, not retrofit, our processes and operating models.
Moderator Dharam Rai tied it all together with insight and authenticity. Dharam’s ability to draw connections across perspectives made the discussion deeply human and immensely practical — a reflection of what great moderation and outstanding leadership have in common: curiosity and conviction.
As I reflected on the evening, one truth stood out: when we align people, processes, and technology around customer value, we don’t just meet rising expectations, we reshape them. The real promise of this new era is in people leading smarter and with greater purpose.
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