Name: Priya Vijayarajendran
Title: CEO
Company: ASAPP Inc
Website: www.asapp.com
Founded: 2014
Headquarters: New York, NY
Description: AI-native® contact center. Give your customers more than conversation—give them fast, efficient resolutions.
Rewiring Customer Service: Inside Priya Vijayarajendran’s AI-Driven Vision at ASAPP
For decades, customer service has been more of a pain point than a pleasant experience. Endless hold times, rigidly scripted conversations, and the frustration of repeating information across channels have defined how most companies interact with their customers. But Priya Vijayarajendran, CEO of ASAPP, believes that the era of “service as suffering” is coming to an end—and Generative AI is at the heart of this transformation.
Priya, a seasoned technology leader with decades of experience spanning cloud, AI, and enterprise software, has built her career at the intersection of innovation and scale. Before taking the helm at ASAPP, she held senior leadership roles driving global technology strategies for some of the world’s largest enterprises. Her expertise lies in reimagining how cutting-edge technologies—especially AI—can solve complex, real-world business problems while keeping trust, ethics, and adoption front and center.
That perspective is exactly what she brings to ASAPP, a New York–based AI-native company known for pushing the boundaries of customer experience. ASAPP’s flagship GenerativeAgent powering its Customer Experience platform for large-scale, high-stakes environments, and it’s already being used by Fortune 100 brands across industries. Whether it’s reducing call wait times for a global airline, improving first-call resolution in telecom, or helping financial services and healthcare organizations adopt AI responsibly in highly regulated spaces, ASAPP is setting a new benchmark for what modern customer service can be.
Under Priya’s leadership, ASAPP isn’t just solving the “cost versus experience” paradox that customer service has long faced—it’s redefining the role of the agent, the customer, and the enterprise in an AI-driven world. In this exclusive conversation, Priya shares her views on scaling AI responsibly, the delicate balance between automation and human empathy, and why transparency—not just efficiency—will be the ultimate differentiator in the next era of customer engagement.
Excerpts from the interview:
What Inspired ASAPP’s Journey in AI-Powered Customer Experience?
The origins of ASAPP stem from frustration with the status quo. Contact centres were ballooning in cost but sinking in customer satisfaction. Enterprises were pouring resources into outdated systems that couldn’t keep pace with evolving Incremental innovations were merely patching fundamentally experience never changed.
Priya and her team saw an opportunity to break that cycle. Rather than optimizing old models, they reimagined the role of AI. “We realized the breakthrough wouldn’t come from making incremental tweaks,” she says. “AI and data is part of every layer of fabric of customer experience.”
That vision drove the creation of GenerativeAgent—a platform designed not just to automate conversations but to orchestrate end-to-end workflows. By tackling the complexity of real-world service scenarios, ASAPP positioned itself as a serious contender in a crowded CX tech market.
Transforming Customer Interactions Differently than Others
The landscape of CX technology is full of tools that optimize for speed, convenience, and labor costs. But most operate through deterministic flows: simple, rule-based scripts that work well when questions are predictable but collapse when conversations go off script.
ASAPP stands apart by focusing on complexity rather than low-level automation. Its platform thrives in the high-stakes, multi-turn conversations Fortune 100 companies manage daily. These aren’t “what’s my balance?” queries; they’re messy problems involving multiple systems, policies, and outcomes. By designing for those scenarios, ASAPP addresses the heart of customer dissatisfaction.
The difference, Priya explains, is outcome-driven design. “We optimize for results—resolution rates, cost savings, handle time, and customer satisfaction—not just for automating a few steps of the interaction.”
Scaling AI in the Enterprise: Challenges Galore
For enterprises, scaling AI is far more complicated than plugging in new software. Three structural challenges consistently stand in the way:
The first is data fragmentation—the inconsistency in data sources, and Data Privacy. Enterprises often manage customer information across dozens of siloed systems, making it difficult for AI to learn effectively with the right data with privacy controls. Without a single source of truth, even advanced models struggle.
The second is transparency. Too many AI systems function as “black boxes,” leaving executives unsure how decisions are made. Without explainability, users/providers (enterprise leaders) hesitate to trust or scale solutions.
The third is change management. AI fundamentally shifts how organizations operate—altering staffing needs, metrics, and workflows. Adoption requires cultural and operational transformation, not just technological upgrades.
These hurdles explain why many enterprises experiment with AI but struggle to scale it meaningfully.
Blending Humans and Machines: Balancing Automation with the Human Touch
The debate over AI versus humans often misses the point. For ASAPP, the two are not adversaries but collaborators working together to transform customer experiences. The platform automates repetitive orchestration across systems, while human agents step in to elevate interactions with judgment calls and empathetic conversations.
“AI done right is transformative, it transforms experience, processes and includes every role which interacts with systems powered by AI and with this the human’s role is elevated to complex problem solving. ”
Trust as the Core Principle
Trust is not a feature—it is the foundation of adoption. Enterprises demand visibility into how AI systems make decisions, when they should escalate to humans, and what their limits are.
ASAPP has built explainability and auditability into its platform from day one. “If leaders can’t understand how a system works, they can’t manage it,” this tech leader emphasizes. “Trust is absolutely non-negotiable.”
That philosophy has made ASAPP particularly attractive to industries where accountability is paramount.
Airline Case Study: Making an Impact
One of ASAPP’s marquee success stories comes from aviation. Flight re-bookings, once a notorious pain point, often involved hours of waiting on hold or long phone delays. By deploying GenerativeAgent, a global airline transformed this experience.
The platform orchestrates rebookings across multiple systems instantly, with humans stepping in only when oversign is required. The result: wait times cut dramatically, efficiency boosted by a factor of 3.5x, and operating costs lowered significantly. Passengers noticed too—their journeys became smoother and less stressful.
This success illustrates how AI, when properly integrated, can deliver measurable improvements for both customers and enterprises.
Redefining Success Metrics
While much of the industry focuses on creating “human-like” AI, ASAPP defines success through a different lens—prioritizing resolution over mimicry. For ASAPP, effective customer service is not about small talk, but about delivering meaningful outcomes.
ASAPP’s yardsticks include resolution rates, reduced handle time, increased satisfaction scores, and cost efficiency. These outcomes demonstrate whether AI is truly delivering value, both to enterprises and to the people they serve.
“Customers choose automation not when it sounds like a person—they care if their problem gets solved like it would with your best human agent,” Priya reminds.
Trends That Matter: Most Exciting CX Trend of 2025
For Priya, the most exciting trend in customer service is a shift in enterprise mindset. Organizations are moving beyond fragmented bot deployments toward orchestrated systems designed for reliability and scale. The emphasis is no longer on creating chatty assistants, but on driving measurable outcomes—customer satisfaction, loyalty, and operational efficiency. This evolution, she notes, reflects a new level of maturity across the industry.
Regulated Industries: Catering to Highly Regulated Industries
Financial services, healthcare, and insurance are among the most heavily regulated sectors, and their standards often require more complexity ASAPP, however, designed its platform with compliance, privacy, and auditability from day one.
By embedding those safeguards into its architecture, the company enables highly regulated enterprises to adopt AI confidently, knowing it won’t compromise security or compliance.
Leadership and Culture
For Priya, leadership is about building trust internally as much as externally. “Technology doesn’t build itself—people do,” she says.
She prioritizes culture, alignment, and resilience. A strong culture, she believes, creates the confidence to move fast and innovate responsibly. That emphasis has shaped ASAPP into not only a technology leader but also a trusted partner to its customers.
Efficiency at Scale: Helping Companies Cut Costs while Boosting CX
The key lies in scale without headcount. By automating multi-turn, complex interactions, ASAPP enables enterprises to expand their contact center capacity without hiring additional staff.
The impact is twofold: reduced operating costs for enterprises and faster, more satisfying experiences for customers. This balance of efficiency and experience is why enterprises see real ROI with ASAPP.
Debunking Myths: Biggest Misconception about AI in CX
The biggest myth is that human-like equals effective. A bot that makes small talk or mimics tone doesn’t necessarily solve problems.
“Effectiveness comes from solving issues quickly, safely, and consistently,” Priya explains. That’s what drives loyalty—not superficial mimicry.”
Personalization at Scale
Today’s customers don’t engage with brands through a single channel. They move seamlessly between apps, websites, phone calls, and in-person interactions. Too often, that creates disjointed experiences.
ASAPP ensures continuity across channels, anticipating customer needs and resolving issues without requiring repetition. That personalization, delivered at scale, is central to modern service.
AI’s Next Evolution: Role of AI Agents in the Next Three Years
Currently, most AI agents are reactive—responding to prompts. In the near future, Priya sees them becoming proactive orchestrators. “They’ll listen, learn, and act across multiple systems in real time,” she says. “That evolution will turn the contact center into the enterprise’s system of record for customer interactions.”
This transformation redefines not just how service is delivered, but how enterprises capture and leverage intelligence across the business.
The Future of CX: The Future of Customer Experience
Her answer is clear and emphatic: frictionless service. “No more hold times. No more switching channels. No more repeating yourself,” she says.
ASAPP’s vision is a world where AI enables a single seamless exchange—asking, acting, and resolving without interruption. This shift will let enterprises deliver experiences that feel effortless while capturing the intelligence that drives loyalty and growth.
Looking Ahead
For Priya the future of customer experience is clear: seamless, intelligent, and deeply human. She envisions AI and people working side by side—machines handling scale and speed, while humans bring empathy and judgment.
“AI isn’t here to replace people,” she says. “It’s here to elevate them.” That philosophy drives ASAPP’s mission to design systems where every interaction feels effortless and every conversation adds value.
As AI evolves from reactive to proactive, enterprises will move from simply solving problems to anticipating customer needs before they surface. The payoff is powerful: stronger loyalty, lower costs, and experiences that feel almost invisible in their ease.
“Every interaction will be the moment of resolution,” she predicts. “That’s the future worth building.”
