Pulsepoint should wait on deploying a Gen AI sales bot. While the upside of generative AI is huge and the potential of it is immense, the technology is still too early to fully invest in. First, I believe its too early to be utilized in the specific use case that Jeannie is seeking. Sales is a customer-first field, as such the belief and cultural context of interacting with humans is still very much set in stone. This behavioral expectation is most likely hard to change regardless of what customers may value. Dharmesh Shah highlights that customers seek competence, consistency, and convenience. I don’t completely disagree, however, he severely underestimates the importance of the human interaction.
With this, I’m more aligned with Jim Lecinski’s line of reasoning where Jeannie appears to be more motivated out of “missing out” rather than pinpointing Gen AI as the best next step for Pulsepoint. This motivation out of fear is rather unconvincing. His ideas about other considerations to increase profit margins are a strong suggestion, tailoring a new project to the company’s needs rather than rushing into a space that is yet to be fully explored. Another strong consideration I believe the company should make is the importance of a human to human contact during sales. This importance appears to be highly undervalued, and while the jump to AI seems to be inevitable eventually, in its current state Gen AI is unable to fully replicate that interaction. The main argument against this is that Gen AI will continuously learn and grow and will eventually outpace a human sales rep. However, its yet to be proven and is currently more conjecture than evidence. It also sounds like taking a detriment before seeing growth, but that growth isn’t entirely guaranteed. Furthermore, the cost of mistakes is much higher when it comes to AI. While humans also make mistakes, the cost of human error is less significant because of human capability to recognize and rectify those errors. However, if a Gen AI agent goes off the rails, it can be difficult to reconcile with customers.
