Ugh, another article about AI?
Like many technology leaders, maybe you find yourself in the canyon of AI fatigue.
AI, agentic, AI Agents…blah, blah, blah. Over sold, under delivered. Make tickets go away, replace your marketing team and use AI agents to walk your dog. All with the missing disclaimer that results may vary (and likely reach the outcome you witnessed in our really flashy demo).
The challenge for leaders now isn’t whether to adopt new technology or AI, but how. The way we lead this change, will determine if we realize an outcome that serves our employees and customers in impactful ways.
Ingredient 1: The Voice of the Impacted
If plan to use AI or a new technology to solve a problem without feedback from those affected, you might miss the root of the problem in the first place.
Ensure the people you are aiming to serve are involved early and often. Understanding their needs and perspectives before implementing changes is the only way you can ensure that you are serving them in ways that matter to them and enable them drive more effective business and customer outcomes.
Ingredient 2: Make the Vendor Deliver
There is an old saying in golf, “drive for show, putt for dough." In golf, long drives off the tees gets cheers, but sinking the putt consistently is what wins the tournament. The same lesson applies to technology vendors: big grand promises are common, but results matter most.
The number of new “AI players” is endless. The data is out there; all it takes is a quick Google (or ChatGPT) search to find it. These vendors will promise you the world.
Many experiences with AI vendors feels like buying an AI solution that promises to take care of your dog while you’re out of town. Yet, when you see the Ring camera alert that first evening, it’s just a guy tying your dog’s leash to a Roomba with an AI sticker slapped on.
Sure, your dog gets outside, poops on the lawn and not the house. The rest of the experience — the cuddles, the treats, fetch…non-existent. You are holding your breath, hoping the pup doesn’t realize with minimal effort they can go wherever their little wagging tail pleases.
When you’re talking to a vendor, don’t get sold on the spectacle. A technology or AI vendor who can’t can’t solve your problems will never help you sustain wins long term.
Ingredient 3: Measure what matters
Technology feels like it’s moving at the speed of light. You go to bed after rolling out a great revamped human-centered self-service portal. The next morning, you wake up to a flood of emails and LinkedIn posts about the new AI keyboard that actually reads the minds of your customers via gamma waves sent through their fingertips as they work!
Whether it’s gamma ray reading AI powered keyboards, a GenAI chat bot, request portal RPA implementation or agent empathy assist via our contact center platform, measuring impact is key.
Technology changes are always intended to solve existing problems or improve the experiences of tomorrow. If we sit and forget it, we will never know if either of those things are happening.