SiteSpect Synopsis: Are you Ready for AI?

If you’re ready to implement AI, then it can be a great tool for your business. So, this week I’m tackling the question, how do you know if you’re ready for Artificial Intelligence?

A while back my colleague wrote a great synopsis digging into the benefits of AI and how it can best be utilized. The takeaway was that if you’re ready to implement AI, then it can be a great tool for your business. So, this week I’m tackling the question, how do you know if you’re ready for Artificial Intelligence?

“Are You Ready for AI-powered Marketing?” Venture Beat

This Venture Beat article is a written prelude to a live discussion, but it very nicely illustrates some key points about how to determine whether your business can benefit from AI. The first big distinction this piece makes is between being “customer-obsessed” and becoming “customer-led.” Brands must have a good, data-based understanding of customer behavior and then ensure that data is complete and accurate before implementing any machine learning tools. The second major advice in this piece is to identify the problem you want AI to solve before investing in the technology, rather than “making a technology investment — and then going to look for a problem to solve.”

The Takeaway: If you understand your customer behavior and have reliable data to back it up, plus you have a clear, accomplishable, goal for AI, your organization may be ready to take the leap.

“The Future of Customer Experience is AI: Are You Ready?” CMS Wire

Writer Lisa Loftis focuses here on how AI should best be implemented to support Customer Experience. Overall, the benefits for implementing some kind of AI tool in your CX funnel resound. Loftis writes, “AI can improve response time, provide contextually relevant personalized product recommendations, incorporate sentiment into responses, eliminate bottlenecks and automate routine inquiries.” However, organizations that don’t have clear contexts and placement for AI should rethink implementing it too quickly. AI utilized poorly — where humans are too uninvolved, and customers get frustrated — will just hurt your brand, regardless of the costs it can save.

The Takeaway: Take a look at your customer experience funnel. If you have clear places where simple, frequent questions or requests arise, AI might be for you. If not, it may end up frustrating customers.

“Is Your Company Ready for AI? Ask Yourself These Nine Questions,” Forbes

All of the questions posed in this article make great points about where AI can really add to your organization. But, tying them all together we again see the key themes: Do you have a reason for implementing AI? Do you have the data to ensure that AI runs properly? Will your customer experience benefit from AI? Before your organization implements AI, you must be clear about why you need, how it will work, and what benefit it will bring your customers.

The Takeaway: This list is a good starting point to determine whether AI is right for your organization, and it really comes down to establishing clear goals for the tool.

A Little Point of View

If you invest in AI and implement it but the data you feed it is incomplete, inaccurate, or otherwise flawed, your AI will make poor decisions. This would be a huge detriment to your business, rather than the boon it has the potential to be. So, before you implement, think about how you’ll go about getting started. Do you have reliable data? Do you have the capacity to segment users and A/B test the AI on a small portion of your customers rather than on the whole group? Do you really understand your customer behavior, and have you optimized your digital channels around that data? If you can answer “yes” these questions, then starting with AI could be great for your organization, as long as you test along the way.

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