The AI Rollercoaster: A Tale of Triumph and Tribulation
AI is a force to be reckoned with, a double-edged sword if you will. It can be your best friend or your worst enemy, depending on how you play your cards.
Take it from Dan Rosensweig, the CEO of Chegg, an online tutoring company. He had a first-hand experience of AI’s disruptive power when a weaker-than-expected revenue forecast, attributed to ChatGPT, caused the company’s share price to nosedive by 48% overnight. Rosensweig, in his candid style, admitted to becoming the “poster child for how AI can mess you up.” He confessed to losing 100,000 paying Chegg subscribers with the launch of free service ChatGPT 4 in April. His take on AI readiness? “I don’t think anybody’s A.I. ready; I don’t think anybody knows what ‘A.I. ready’ means.”
The AI Silver Lining
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Other executives are cautiously optimistic about AI’s potential to strengthen customer relationships. Amit Patel, CEO and president of Rakuten, a discount shopping platform with a market cap of $8.5 billion, sees promise in using AI at checkout. Patel believes that AI can help convert a portion of the $20 billion abandoned in Rakuten shopping carts annually into sales. The goal? To make the checkout process fast, easy, and joyful.
The AI Conundrum
However, for many companies, big and small, there are still a lot of questions about how to best utilize AI in customer-oriented parts of their businesses. Brad Hiranaga, the chief brand officer at Cotopaxi, and Jim Steele, Salesforce’s president of global strategic customers and partners, both expressed uncertainty about the impact of AI on their businesses.
Steele’s team has been working on an AI rollout plan, focusing on data separation, governance, and employee readiness. But he admits, “It’s a challenge. We manage more customer data than any company on the planet.”
AI is a force that can bring customers closer, or take them away. It’s a wild ride, but one that’s worth taking.
