I remember the time I met “Countrywide Financial” in Chennai for a software solution for their loan processing team. The interaction, the experience, and the subsequent proposal that the Projects Team & I put together was a learning experience in itself and the lessons learned in the process are not something they teach anywhere.
During this process, I learned – what is delinquency, what is credit scoring, how they do it, why they do it, what does it have to do with age, qualification, income levels, past history of repayments & other typical factors they collect information on while profiling a customer.
Cut to 2021.
All that and more is done by an AI.
AI decides on a loan application from a customer.
AI has come into our lives but we still have choices. Our grandchildren will not have any choice but to live with AI.
With AI comes huge responsibility. One hopes that it doesn’t turn rogue. The idea is to make lives easy. Not the other way around.
If you are running a business, you should start using AI. It’s not a choice. Not anymore.
The simplest forms of AI that you see every day are chatbots used in Customer Service. Machines that act & think like humans. But the idea is to think and act rationally. That’s a long way to go.
I am sure you have seen the film “The Imitation Game” released in the year 2014. Alan Turing (1912–1954) will be cracking the Enigma Code in that film. He was a British mathematician, codebreaker, and early computer scientist. He was seen cracking & decrypting German intelligence messages for the British government during World War II. That was the first AI at work.
Getting back to Sales, we have to crack what’s going in the minds of our customers. Then think and act accordingly so that it pleases them and makes them do business with us. I am not sure such a thinking machine will ever be developed that beats the Salespeople. I bet not.
That’s the crux of this post. The companies that are human will win in the future as more and more AI is going to be deployed everywhere. AI can be and should be used responsibly but we should be human and treat our customers as humans.
I remember a time when a customer frantically called my tech support people over the phone regarding a problem. The customer had not taken any back-up but started installing new software and he kept tapping the enter key without reading what is shown on the screen and committed a grave mistake. His job was on the line. My colleague rushed to his help immediately and helped him get out of that mess, as far as possible.
This is something only a human could do. AI can’t. It does not have feelings.
Takeaways:
- How we make our customers feel is more important than what we say or do.
- Challenges are not something that only we experience. Everybody does. Our Customers also do. Acknowledge that.
- Be rational.
- Act responsibly.
- Love your customers.
Happy Selling!
#b2bsales #customerexperience #kkrocks
