The question of whether PulsePoint should deploy the AI chatbot or wait is not a straightforward one; there are several uncertainties and conflicting priorities to weigh before Jeannie can make a decision.
The Tradeoffs
On one hand, deploying the AI salesbot can improve profitability and growth for the company dramatically; the status quo has analysts “questioning how long the company… could justify being less profitable than its peers.” The opportunity to bolster profitability through Generative AI could mean the difference between sustaining and surpassing their current growth trajectory and a steep fall from grace.
Yet this approach is not without its risks – the risk of failure, losing clients, and undermining the high-quality product and customized sales process that enabled PulsePoint’s growth in the first place. John’s “first-mover, fast-follower” approach serves to mitigate these risks – to wait until competitors deploy Generative AI and learn from their mistakes, enabling PulsePoint to then repeat their efforts in a way that avoids others’ failures. While this reduces the risk of failure, it still positions PulsePoint to potentially fall behind its competitors and purge customers in the process.
Though an AI chatbot has its drawbacks, “hallucinations, data privacy, outages” among other issues, Generative AI’s ability to adapt and learn provides hope that it will improve over time, and any risks may disappear on their own.
But hope is where it ends – Generative AI poses more uncertainties than it does solutions, and its nondeterministic nature poses a substantial challenge to the potential upsides it entails.
To AI or Not To AI
The answer to this business dilemma lies between the two extremes – the solution is to balance technical innovation and competitive leadership with the safety of existing human sales teams.
Rather than overhauling sales with this AI chatbot, PulsePoint should instead introduce the AI in phases; new clients can be onboarded through agentic salesbot teams rather than human representatives, as they won’t perceive a “drop” in customer service if there are issues with the AI when compared to human salespeople. Existing long-term clients like Orion can still receive human salesperson support, allowing for PulsePoint to increase their customer lifetime value by providing a higher, “exclusive” tier of support for important clients. Furthermore, PulsePoint can appoint a human sales rep to oversee the sales AI bots, ensuring that when issues do occur or sales opportunities are missed, these human salespeople can fill in the gaps where the AI lacks until it is able to adapt and improve.
As Jim Lecinksi advises, PulsePoint’s solution should “shift from a technology-centric approach to a strategy-centric one,” a strategy that prioritizes the retention of the existing client base while improving profitability and keeping PulsePoint at the forefront of its industry through technology.
