AI is changing everything in CRM this year.
It seems that the importance of CRM is a matter settled. We need CRM and the data captured to run our customer-facing business. It may take some time to become familiar with AI.
The CRM data is essential for reducing costs and increasing the success of a business. This data is useful for managers, whether or not they have AI. It helps them to understand how their business operates. You can call this the view in the rearview.
This data can be used to help predict the behavior of customers and how they will respond to assistance or offers. This is the road to the future, because AI is focused on the future.
It is important to have both perspectives. We’ve tried for years to get insights into the business world, but it still feels new and exciting that we can predict and influence what will happen in the near future.
Decoding the User Perspectio
A new report by Salesforce’s Research Department has made me more sceptical about the implementation of generative AI. I’ve also been influenced by some of the readings that I have done recently.
The Salesforce research that I mentioned last time The majority of users are essentially saying “Great!” How can we make use of this? On the one hand, this is a perennial problem. People on the cutting edge always ask this question when a new technology comes out, because those who are signing the checks don’t seem to bother to ask.
How can we use these things is the corollary question to “What type of training do you provide?” The question is one that buyers must ask but seldom do. After decades of high-tech, we still believe that technology manages itself and is so simple to use that you don’t require documentation.
People who are the WEIRDest in the World
Recent research has shown that the question of how to use it is more important than you think. We who use AI and other tech marvels of the last 50 years have been described by some as WEIRD — an acronym for Wealthy, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratized.
This is a good summary of Western society. It includes the majority of English-speaking countries and their allies, such as Japan, Australia and the EU.
According to Joseph Henrich (author of “The Weirdest People in the World”), an earlier technology revolution, which began around 1500 CE, changed our brains. We were more likely to invent modern democracy and capitalism as well as nuclear reactions, internal combustion engine, and space telescopes.
It’s only been 500 years since we started talking about brain changes. This means they aren’t the result of genetics or evolution. These are not changes like the increase in size of the The corpus CallosumThe cerebral internet connects the two hemispheres.
Other changes have also been made, but this course is not on neuroanatomy.
The impact of literacy on society and our minds
What was the technology that made us WEIRD during the last half century? The result was reading, and literacy transformed society. The brain pushups enabled us to perform many of the sophisticated activities that we now take for granted.
Remember that genetics are not involved in learning to read or doing brain pushups. The results are still predictable. It is interesting to see the differences in brain scans of Westerners and traditional societies that do not read.
It took many decades, and in some cases even centuries, before the cumulative benefits of mass reading and literacy began to affect society. It took approximately 250 years from 1500 to The Enlightenment for modern democratic ideas to be codified, capitalism invented, and science and philosophy separated.
What is the future like?
After reading this piece of more than 600 pages, you may be wondering how it is relevant to the CRM industry and what comes next. What if AI or earbuds had the same impact on human anatomy and social organization as literacy?
It will take us a lot less time to perfect AI than we had with reading. But I believe we need to be ready to deal with any changes in the brain that could result.
What could these changes be? Who knows?
Will your brain cease to do pushups if AI eliminates your job? You’re not hunched up over a computer all day, will you be more creative now? Will you have to do sit-ups if you use AI? Are the differences in AI users and non AI users as important as those that exist between literate societies and non-literate societies?
A Generational Task
If AI is truly as significant as many people believe, we need to consider how it might affect the society. That goes far beyond answering questions about what we do with this technology.
Even so, there will still be winners as there are always when dealing with new tech which affects the entire society. We’re currently fixated on sonnets that generative AI is capable of producing and the art-like visuals it can render. But there may be solutions for some of the real problems in modern life, such as supply chains.
I may be wrong, however AI that simplifies and improves supply-chain operations will not put anyone out to work and could make life much better for a variety of reasons.
We shouldn’t be expecting instant changes. The key point is that we’ll need time to digest something as complex and powerful as AI. It’s for this reason that I am willing to bet on the fact that it will take a generation to fully understand AI.