There’s no getting away from it (and frankly, why would you want to get away from it?), AI is at the heart of the discussion – it has an impact in every aspect of our lives and businesses.
Yet, I sense a pushback beginning and gaining momentum. The term ‘AI slop’ is being thrown around with some abandon. And with just cause in many cases.
The word of the year for me is “Enshittification”. Coined by the technology activist and author, Cory Doctorow, to describe the universal experience of how technology platforms operate and create a continually worsening customer experience, almost by design, or at least by default.
But, as well as AI (Artificial Intelligence, as if you didn’t know), in my own thoughts, there’s another AI, an even greater force, that needs to enter the fray; Authentic Interaction.
You see, a phrase I have encouraged clients to adopt for many years is at the heart of the current revolution:
Systemise to Humanise.
The argument is that you systemise 90% of your activity (the routine stuff) in order to humanise the 10% that makes the real difference. Inevitably, in most cases, that 10% is the interaction with customers/clients.
And never before has that been made even more in demand when you listen to the way customers talk about their experiences dealing with companies, large and small. They bemoan the fact that they can’t get through to a “real person” or that they are constantly dealing with button pushing and “press 1 for… whatever”, notwithstanding the fact that a large technophobic chunk of the population (particularly, but not exclusively, the older generation) are being almost barred from products and services which are exclusively delivered online or digitally. The reliance of large companies and organisations on people engaging with their App creates a barrier to doing business, to the ‘customer experience’ that the companies in many cases fail to recognize. The unwitting result of all this is that an average day, for many, consists of a catalogue of soulless business transactions, on both sides of the fence. A soulless existence as an employee, and a soulless experience as a consumer of others’ products and services. There’s a cross-generational “Un-Appiness” with it all.
Which is where AI squared comes in.
Most companies and organisations (and the larger they are the more this seems to be the case), are using AI (Artificial Intelligence) as a means of reducing costs, of making tasks easier to perform, allowing them to cut back on staff, to involve less human energy. Costs cut equals more profit… at least for now.
But the more reliance on digital systems to deal with customers, the less Authentic Interaction, the less loyalty, the less trust, the less long-term customer value, the less raving reviews, and the fewer genuinely delighted advocates of your product and service. In short, long-term commercial suicide.
The AI squared approach takes a more enlightened path. Using AI to systemize, you can then invest more time, more energy, more financial resources into the second AI, Authentic Interaction.
It becomes a multiplier… the two AIs create leverage when utilitsed in this way.
AI x AI = AI squared.
Advances in technology make it easier to systemize the 90% that in turn allows more resources to be poured into the 10% that makes the real difference. It’s what your customers, clients, service users are crying out for. Those companies that can crack this approach will corner the market.
It’s the way of growth. It’s the future. But it does require a very specific outlook, a multiplier perspective.
Working in combination, AI facilitates AI. It’s not about replacing one with the other. It’s about using both in a harmoniously brilliant, continually, exponentially improving, client relationship.
Artificial Intelligence used to multiply Authentic Interaction.
AI x AI.
AI squared.
It is, potentially, the winning formula.
