Customer, Prospect, or Prey?

How do you make the people and companies you contact feel about you?

I don’t know about you, but lately, when it comes to social media, emails, and phone calls, I feel like prey more than a customer or a prospect. Whether it is Meta/Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social media, or emails, phone calls, and yes, even text messages, there doesn’t seem to be a line people don’t cross when attempting to get my business. Then add the complicating factor of AI (artificial intelligence) marketing, and life as we knew it is gone. So, whether it is a human pretending to know me, robocalls, or AI-generated messages, what etiquette that once existed (at least pretend you want to get to know me first) has disappeared.

Welcome to the Jungle! You are Prey!

Just this past week, I received over 20 communications (texts, emails, social media messages, phone calls (to my mobile and business line) and my website contact form (completed three times, no less) from one person. Guess what the person is selling? Marketing and AI-based content generation.

Apparently, this person thinks overwhelming me with communication will make a positive impression. Well, it didn’t. I can list probably one hundred or more things wrong with their “campaign” to get my attention (they got it – all negative) and my business (never!), but I’ll limit myself to the most egregious ones.

First, it was impersonal. For whatever reason, this person and the AI “product” addressed me as “Buckeye” when writing and “Bucky” with the AI-generated voice. While I did get my MBA from Ohio State University, addressing me by anything other than my name demonstrates how little you know me. I guess I should be grateful they didn’t call me “Moody” from my time at Moody Bible Institute. (Although, in this instance, it would have applied!)

Second, and magnifying the prior point, no respect for my time. Screening (emails, voicemails, text messages, social media messages, etc.) takes time. Even with prescreening and sorting rules in place for emails, the volume of things received in less than 24 hours meant they filled up inboxes before our SOP to categorize the sender (blacklist, block, report spam/junk, or create a rule) to automatically handle irrelevant communications could be followed. ??

Third, it doesn’t recognize my humanity, profession, and what I do in my business. For instance, don’t tell an author who writes her own content that she will no longer need to do that because she is replaceable by an AI application. A good accompanying example is a writing tool that I have been using for at least five years.?I won’t name the tool, but it has recently been “improved” with AI. I’ll just say I no longer use the tool because it created more issues like telling me my writing is “too masculine” and underlining the following words as examples of my masculine writing: power, confidence, leadership, merit, and many others.

Fourth, don’t tell me what you will be doing for me. “I will be submitting articles to your website.” No, you won’t, nor will your “solution.”

Fifth, one message told me I’d be able to get rid of several of my team members as AI will replace them. Who says I want to eliminate any member of my team? While cost savings are attractive to most, if not all, companies, it is presumptuous to think I want to get rid of anyone on my existing team. Even if an AI application eliminates low-value tasks, it would not translate to getting rid of a team member; instead, it would enable them to focus on higher-value tasks and activities.

Sixth, and final, the marketing and sales efforts used by this company/person demonstrated how if companies aren’t careful, AI won’t stand for Artificial Intelligence and won’t result in growth. Instead, it will stand for Automatic Irritation and make your company an Annoying Irritant.

Lessons from the Jungle: Treat Me as a Valued Customer or Prospect

AI is a computer program that has machine learning capabilities. However, it ultimately does what you (and/or the programmer) tell it to do. You decide what name is going in the salutation, how frequent, the type of communication will be sent, and other elements of the message. Remember GIGO! Garbage In, Garbage Out. Systems are automatic processes. Automating bad processes (and content) just magnifies your issues.

Software that you’ve used for years will undoubtedly be incorporating some level of AI in the future (just like my old faithful grammar and editing tool that I no longer use). ?With the inevitability of AI, it becomes crucial that we examine our marketing, sales, and other processes that use or will use it. Every customer, prospect, vendor, and stakeholder is valuable to your business. They are expensive to acquire and costly to lose to poor communication and bad process automation.

Next Steps: Be Proactive Strategy and Planning

AI applications are here to stay. AI applications, like your human team members, reflect your company’s culture, values, and views. Now is the time to sit down, strategize and plan for AI in your business.

Now is the time to decide which of your business processes are suited to AI. Depending on your business size, products/services/technology, and other factors, your use of AI may be limited.?Bigger organizations will find more uses, cost savings (when done well), and opportunities to deploy AI applications for various routine accounting activities, website responses, marketing and sales (yes, done well, it could be invaluable), customer service (again, you must do it right), and many other areas.

Don’t bury your head and hope things will work out.?Learn as much as you can about AI, how its being used and the emerging options. You don’t have to be the first to use it, but you do need to make sure that the first time you invest in AI it is the right solution and it works for your business, not against it.

?2023 Lea A. Strickland All Rights Reserved