Redefining the role of brand
80% of company to customer interactions will be handled on one or both sides by an AI agent, by 2029.
When consumers send out an agent to comparison shop, that bot will return info on specifications, pricing, and other data. But already, most AI makes recommendations for purchase, not just factual comparisons. Your company's brand strength becomes the tie-breaker for AI, and thus for customers.
Advice: Enhance your internal focus on brand-building and create as many publicly accessible "trust assets" as possible, such as media coverage, awards, and customer
testimonials.
Use of passive and predictive feedback
The era of customer surveys and satisfaction scores will end. Already, AI can predict customer satisfaction by monitoring customer behaviors and commentary.
The new frontier - already in use in larger companies - is creating digital twin of customer (DTOC) programs, whereby AI builds a replica of a key account (or all your key accounts, in aggregate), and when considering a feature rollout or price change, you just ask the DTOC how it feels
about it, and use that info to guide rollout to the "real" customers.
Advice: Create an internal group to study and implement new, real-time
feedback tools and how to build their findings into your offerings FAST.
Valuation of
excess capacity
Nearly every business is going to implement AI eventually. It simply will not be a choice, because to NOT use AI will put your business at a massive efficiency disadvantage.
Accepting that fact, the REAL question becomes this: "if you and all your competitors eventually have 25% more efficiency, what do you DO with that 25%? Do you keep the money? Do you enter new markets? Do you provide new,
concierge-class service?"
The new winners in business will be those that most wisely utilize the 25% excess capacity that AI will
deliver.
Advice: Begin thinking now about what you would do with 25% more time, and how you might use that capacity to outperform
competitors.
Revised organization chart
88% of hiring managers say AI will result in layoffs for recent college graduates. And it's already happening.
But, if companies dramatically scale back entry-level hires because that's the work that's easiest for AI to do, who are the managers in five years? Who are the directors in 10 years? Who are the execs in 20 years?
AI threatens to hollow out our organizations eventually.
Advice: Redesign entry-level roles and their function and create new career progression paths based more on mastered skills and less on years spent in the industry.
There are, of course, more AI consequences than these, including the very notion of higher education and its necessity.
But for now, these are the five I'm talking about onstage, complete with funny stories (AI dating apps!) and a hopeful message that the REAL difference maker remains our humanity and our empathy.
