I believe that they should move forward with deployment, but only if Jeannie has done thorough research on which areas of the business need the most significant improvement, which of those can be best solved with AI given its current capabilities and limitations, and how AI can be safely deployed in this context. I am curious as to why Jeannie has narrowed down on Sales as the vertical for the chatbot’s launching point:
- What revenue declines, cost increases, or growing inefficiencies has the Sales team seen?
- What specific aspects of sales can be done better with a sales chatbot agent? Is it providing more attentive customer service? Or the sourcing of new leads? Or even the ability to personalize promotions for certain customers?
It is also important for Jeannie to think about customers’ levels of comfortability with the AI agent, in addition to the interests of PulsePoint. In this case, it seems like AI deployment would actually have a negative impact on customer satisfaction and revenue. Is PulsePoint a large enough company which can shoulder declining sales in the short-term? If so, then it may be a worthy investment. But it seems that PulsePoint is a relatively new firm which may not be able to explain a decrease in short-term sales to stakeholders and potential new investors.
I would also have Jeannie think about the tradeoffs between bringing in an external partner for chatbot development versus focusing on developing the in-house chatbot. If PulsePoint is handling large volumes of proprietary data, then an in-house chatbot would better serve the needs of PulsePoint’s customers in the long run. Overall, Jeannie needs to do further research on her own of the chatbot’s current capabilities, how it can serve the business immediately vs in the long-run, and the tradeoffs between integrating an external chatbot and developing a proprietary chatbot.
