Jeannie’s making a mistake I’ve seen in every case study this quarter: getting seduced by tech demos instead of solving actual business problems.
PulsePoint’s real issue isn’t “will competitors beat us to AI?” – it’s that analysts are openly questioning why their margins trail peers despite solid revenue growth. Jeannie wants AI because she’s “ready to go on the offense” after years of COVID/inflation defense mode; that’s emotion driving strategy, not the other way around.
But here’s the twist: I think she should still deploy the chatbot.
Not because of FOMO, but because Mark, her head of sales, is wrong about what makes sales valuable. He insists bots will miss “hidden opportunities” that human intuition catches. But the case reveals something uncomfortable: PulsePoint already has a basic chatbot handling “most of our initial service and sales contact.” If human intuition were so irreplaceable, why is a dumb bot already doing first touch? Most B2B sales is pattern-matching, not mystical relationship alchemy. McKinsey’s research confirms this, with inside sales covering 4x more prospects at half the cost of field reps.
What Jeannie should actually consider:
The Tyrell problem is a gift, not a crisis. Her biggest client learned about AI deployment from his sales rep, not from her. She’s about to fundamentally reshape how strategic accounts experience her service, and they’re hearing it through the grapevine. The solution is a hybrid model: provide white-glove human service to key clients and bot-first interactions for smaller accounts. This improves margins better than across-the-board cuts because you’re matching service intensity to account value.
Linda’s escalation concern is the real time bomb. She’s right that easier complaint channels mean minor issues people used to ignore will flood in. John waves this off, saying bots will “learn to handle complexity.” That’s tech-bro wishful thinking; instead, they need clear escalation rules: bots handle FAQs and routing, humans handle judgment calls. Measure success by resolution time and satisfaction, segmented by issue complexity.
Deploy internally first, customer-facing second. Let AI handle the stuff salespeople hate: drafting RFPs, ranking prospects, running training modules. Once Mark’s team sees it’s doing their busywork instead of taking their jobs, the pushback disappears. Then roll out customer-facing bots with internal champions backing the move.
The strategic bet: First movers in AI won’t win by moving fastest. They’ll win by figuring out where AI creates real value versus where it destroys trust. Jeannie should deploy – but frame it as R&D for margin improvement through smarter resource allocation, not “we’re cutting 30% of you.”
The winners will be companies that remember technology serves strategy, not the reverse.
