Enterprise hits and misses - sustainability goes open source, and bring on the generative AI customer service debate

Lead story - Can generative AI revolutionize customer support? The debate rages

I don't believe generative AI renders customer support staff irrelevant - not even close. But I won't lie: I relish the debate. As I said on Twitter:

Enter BT. As Stuart vented in his Monday Morning Moan - BT fuels the AI job stealing paranoia, but the empty calories of its word salad won't help customer service levels:

Thanks, then, to BT for throwing petroleum on the fire last week by cheerily announcing that 10,000 jobs are to go, to be replaced by AI - whatever AI means in this particular case.

Well yes, if you are going to go about workforce management in a cynical way, maybe there is a sweeping role for "AI" here. After all, if customer service is a nuisance or a commodity in your particular (probably monopolistic) industry, you can get away with drastic changes. But I'd caution companies in more competitive industries not to plunge in headlong and tech-first. Suggestion to generative AI fanfolk: don't notch BT in the "win" column just yet. Stuart:

I once made the point to Tom Siebel a long time ago that all the CRM software in the world wouldn't help a company if its underlying philosophy was to regard the customer as a ruddy nuisance. All you're doing in that case is making your indifference more efficient! Flash forward to today and the same is true, with bells on, for AI.

In the reader comments, diginomica colleague Phil Wainewright adds:

Reading carefully through his comments, I arrive at the conclusion that AI appears to be responsible for replacing precisely 0 jobs. The 40,000 job losses are made up of 15,000 no longer needed to build the fibre network once it's finished, 10,000 no longer needed to maintain it because it's simpler, 10,000 no longer needed to do planning and customer service for it for the same reason, and a final 5,000 due to streamlining business processes. These job cuts have always been in the plan, and touting AI as responsible is just a distraction for headline writers to swallow hook, line and sinker.

Regardless of the exact head count, this remains a shoddy way to envision the future of customer service. On the flip side, Stuart documented a much more empathetic - and I believe much more accurate - view of customer service via Freshworks: Can generative AI revolutionize Customer Support? Up to a point, says Freshworks President Dennis Woodside. As I said on Twitter:

Once more with feeling, as per Freshworks's AI plans:

But what they may do, and what we are working on, is they may empower their agents with the benefit of that Large Language Model so that the agents can do their job better and bring the right attitude, the right empathy to the customer.

Let the debate rage. But to me, the three questions are: what kind of company do you want to be? How will your customers become your advocates, rather than your detractors? And: do you have a precise understanding of the pros and cons of the tech that will enable this?

Diginomica picks - my top stories on diginomica this week

• What have we learned about AI ethics? It's time for risk-based regulations - Neil penned a concise sledgehammer of field-tested AI ethics advisory. He also framed the enterprise AI possibilities in Enterprise AI ambitions are at odds with distrust towards AI.
• A pivotal moment as open source starts to square up to sustainability - Martin's back with a notable think piece, drawn from recent events: "Being able to find the most appropriate or cost-effective location for every workload will become an increasingly important capability."
• The many types of AI hallucinations (Clue - it's not that simple!) - George digs into a key generative AI vulnerability, with one of the most satirically effective "My take" sections I've seen on our site in a while (check it!). George concludes: "It is up to us to build better backchannels and processes for actually speaking with humans when things go awry." Indeed!

Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my three top choices from our vendor coverage:

• Microsoft Build - the past, present and future of ChatGPT on show as Microsoft's 'Mosaic moment' takes center stage - Microsoft has played a central role in all of this, I'd argue not always on the positive side. But they earned their AI spotlight at Build, that is for sure. Stuart sums it well: "The highest profile was possibly the rollout of live search results from Bing to ChatGPT, meaning that whereas answers have been limited to information up to 2021, now users will be able to get more up to date answers from across the web. But there was an AI thread running through just about everything, for better or worse. The future lies this way."
• Workday's Aneel Bhusri - AI can deliver on its possibilities, but needs to be regulated - At Workday's analyst event this spring, I heard how serious Bhusri was on continuing to invest heavily in AI; Stuart covers some of those plans here. But there are no plans to cut corners. Stuart quotes Bhusri: "For years, we have taken a leading role in AI-focused policy discussions...  Simply put, we believe AI technology should be regulated."
• Gainsight Pulse - towards a digital, enterprise-wide strategy for customer success - Gainsight has advanced the customer success conversation as much as any vendor. Phil revisits their story, as they unveil solutions designed to engage customer success across the enterprise, not just in programmatic silos.

Earnings reports of note:

• 'Land and expand' thinking pays off for Zuora in Q1 as losses shrink and revenue grows - Stuart reports on how Zuora is turning things around, even while buyers remain cautious. (Sidenote: careful using that "land and expand" term around customers...)
• NVIDIA shares soar as AI demand boosts revenues and forecast - Want to dodge tech earnings woes? Get in on the AI infrastructure game. Stuart's on the case.

Standout customer use case stories:

Jon's grab bag - Madeline shares important lessons from the Salesforce Trailblazing Women's Summit: the patriarchy is real, mentorship matters.  I also liked Madeline's What I’d say to me back then – CircleCI’s Jane Kim on being bold enough to make a scary mid-career change. Phil isn't easily swayed by upstart enterprise vendors - what did he think of his talk with Canva's co-founders? Canva - taking digital visual design 'wall-to-wall inside the enterprise'.

Finally, Stuart managed to restrain himself from unloading another heaping helping of vinegar onto a well-deserved target (Meta), but he's right - there are bigger implications to consider: Europe’s mega Meta fine has implications for the entire enterprise tech sector - and that’s not good news.

Best of the enterprise web

My top six

• AI is coming to a business near you. But let's sort these problems first - Joe McKendrick picks up the enterprise AI dilemmas. He quotes expert.ai: "Even if a language model has been trained on different domains, it is not likely representative of what is used in most complex enterprise use cases, whether vertical domains like financial services, insurance, life sciences and healthcare, or highly specific use cases like contract review, medical claims, risk assessment, fraud detection and cyber policy review. Training effort will be required to have quality and consistent performance within highly specific domain use cases."
• The S&OP Technology Quandry – Lora Cecere is on roll again - against underperforming supply chains.
• Why Are Spreadsheets Still A Common FP&A Tool? – Amalgam Insights' Hyoun Park takes the baton to convince finance leads that spreadsheets are legacy. One fruitful direction in my view: planning tools that integrate spreadsheets properly. Not a cure-all, but maybe a more winnable battle.
• Google’s AI Search Feels Like a Content Farm on Steroids - "This is medical advice, and it’s not attributed to anyone." Sounds awesome.
• Why AI’s diversity crisis matters, and how to tackle it - One of the best articles on this topic, with expert voices I haven't encountered before.
• Tech Workers Sick of the Grind Search for Low-Stress Jobs - The interesting theme here is how digital performance management tools, supposedly in place for employee well being and skills development, can easily become counterproductive.

Whiffs

Speaking of the downside of digital tech in action:

Use ChatGPT on Twitter, impress your friends. Use it in a courtroom, unimpress a judge:

Sometime bad designs become good ones:

And, sometimes, bad characters make for great television:

If you find an #ensw piece that qualifies for hits and misses - in a good or bad way - let me know in the comments as Clive (almost) always does. Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed.