A Beginner's Guide to AI Revealed: How Mohan Rao Built an AI That Reads Your Client's Mind Before They Even Know They're Unhappy
In this electrifying episode of A Beginner’s Guide to AI, we’re joined by Mohan Rao, co-founder of Knownwell and AI veteran since the ‘80s, who walks us through a rarely discussed frontier in AI: Predictive Communication Intelligence.
Forget dashboards full of red-green traffic lights—Mohan's platform reads real-time conversations, detects shifts in client sentiment, and flags problems before they explode.
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A Message from John Munsell of Bizzuka, who pays the bills for this season:
"The problem that I saw out there was that most of the books out there just talk about why it's important or what is important, but none of them really tell you how to make it happen."
That's where John Munsell's book comes in: get Ingrain AI on Amazon
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Together we unpack how AI can decode tone, track hidden client dissatisfaction, and highlight retention risks using natural language and large language models (LLMs). With examples from consulting, marketing, and tech services, Mohan reveals how AI is changing the way agencies stay human—at scale.
If you’ve ever juggled 25 clients, struggled to keep your team aligned, or simply want AI that acts like a chief of staff (not a spreadsheet), this episode is a goldmine.
🔑 Highlights in this episode:
Why traditional CRM data is “too little, too late”
How AI analyzes unstructured data like Slack, Zoom, and email
The barbell problem in consulting—and how AI fills the middle
Why one angry email doesn’t matter—but three in a row does
Mohan’s take on the Terminator question (Spoiler: he’s not worried)
The real impact of LLMs on internal operations at Knownwell
💬 Quotes from the Episode:
“The purpose of AI is to elevate the human—not to replace them. We want to do creative, high-value work. AI just gives us a leg up.” — Mohan Rao
“When you're managing 25 clients, things fall apart. Our goal is to show the fire before it burns the house down.” — Mohan Rao
⏱️ Podcast Chapters:
00:00 Welcome & Introduction: Meet Mohan Rao
03:47 Why AI Is Finally Working for Professional Services
07:21 Predicting Client Risk Before It Happens
10:50 One Angry Call Doesn’t Mean a Fire—But a Pattern Might
14:18 AI, Empathy & Client Health Scores
18:02 80% Right Beats 100% Too Late: Embracing Imperfection in AI
21:34 From Spreadsheets to Signal Intelligence: Goodbye to “Yellow Clients”
25:10 Losing a Team Member? AI Could’ve Warned You
28:31 How the Knownwell Platform Actually Works
32:01 AI for Personal Growth: Mohan’s Favourite Use Cases
35:32 From Engineer to Idea Machine: LLMs as Coding Co-Pilots
39:00 Sign-off & Gratitude
🌐 Where to find Mohan Rao:
You can connect to him on LinkedIn!
Knownwell, if you want to see his AI in action!
What more? Ah yes, please tune in to get my thoughts and never miss and episode, subscribe to our Newsletter!
Music credit: "Modern Situations" by Unicorn Heads