The question of whether Jennie should deploy an AI salesbot is a very relevant one. Had I been asked this question a year or two ago, my answer would have been a confident no. That’s because at that time, the public was much less accustomed to AI chatbots and AI technology in general compared to now. I even remember my own sentiments when using ChatGPT – it felt foreign, lifeless, and I only wanted to use it for simple tasks that I knew it would be helpful for (ex. improving the wording of an email or shortening the word count for an essay). With time, however, I have seen myself and the general public grow much more accustomed to using GenAI chatbots on a daily basis. This is partially because they have become so interwoven into many classroom and business contexts, and because they have improved significantly over the past year, becoming more accurate, personal, and human-like. Because of this, I think that Jennie’s integration of an AI salesbot into her business could improve sales, reduce clients’ need to contact customer service, and put her ahead of the curve compared to her competitors.
With that being said, such a decision should also come with many other considerations. For example, what public pushback could PulsePoint Solutions receive if they laid off a large portion of their employees and replaced them with AI chatbots? This is not a “popular” thing for companies to do right now, and I don’t see it becoming popular any time in the near future. Furthermore, how would an AI salesbot integration impact PulsePoint’s relationships with their clients? We saw in the article that the CEO of Orion was opposed to this integration, and I believe other clients would also have a similar opinion, at least at first. Jeannie and PulsePoint would need to have a plan for how they will maintain these valuable client relationships if they deploy an AI salesbot. A final consideration is what to do if the salesbot actually performs worse than the sales employees that were laid off (ex. the salesbot gives inaccurate information, loses clients money, is not helpful). This would undeniably have a negative impact on both PulsePoint’s relationship with their clients and likely cause them to lose some ground in the industry.
