The Right Decision
In my opinion, I would wait to deploy the chatbot. I believe Jeannie is rushing into this decision quickly, despite clear signs from her team and customers that this is not the right way to go.
Important Considerations
Customer Feedback
One of the most glaring pieces of evidence that Jeannie should wait is her largest client calling her and telling her he did not want to use AI-enabled customer service. In a B2B setting, large clients matter a lot, and she didn’t even consider to ask her biggest clients if they would be on board with this. Implementing this without getting customer feedback leads to at least dissatisfaction and most lost clients/revenue.
Team Pushback/Layoffs
The Head of Sales did not seem happy with the idea of replacing his entire team with AI chatbots, for good reason. I think the Head of Sales may know less about GenAI, but is very familiar with how his team operates and how they’ve been successful so far. The loss of that institutional knowledge and relationships built with clients could really damage the business.
Issues with AI
Finally, one of the main problems with Generative AI is that it can hallucinate and give false answers, and there are still a ton of bugs to be worked out. A lot of what John was pitching in the meeting was that Generative AI could eventually evolve to meet all their needs, but there’s no telling that implementing it right now would actually solve their problems.
Suggested Solution
I think that doubling down on improving their existing chatbots while introducing a beta of the AI customer service could be a good compromise to stay innovative while not hurting existing customer relationships. I think it is okay to wait and not be the first mover, especially since issues are bound to pop up with GenAI.
