The human value of generative AI in the enterprise

Gen AI is generating a lot of noise right now. And for good reason. It’s an organisational force multiplier, giving companies new opportunities to innovate and grow. Yet, in the clamour, one part of the story can often get drowned out. That is, the human element.

You may wonder why I’m thinking about this right now. I’ve been reading the recent Google Cloud 2024 Data and AI Trends Report, which dives deep into the impact of gen AI on organisations today. The very first trend in the report is that it will speed the delivery of insights across organisations.

At first glance, this trend may seem to be all about getting insights from A to B faster. And it is, in a way. But when you dig a little deeper (which I’m going to do below), some really interesting new angles appear.?

Giving more people a voice

The human element of gen AI really excites me. Its ability to democratise access to data and insights cannot be underestimated. Until recently, just a handful of gate-keepers—typically, technical and data specialists—controlled and enabled the flow of data. Everyone else had to wait in line for the data specialists to respond to their requests.?

Now, people with limited technical skills can gain access to that same data and work wonders with it. This all gives voice to a much larger constituency of employees within organisations. People whose ideas and insights previously went unseen can now easily surface their views and share them higher up the chain.

It’s a feel-good situation for the employee. By empowering them to make positive contributions, they are more likely to feel valued, heard, and respected. And, given that organisations with the highest employee satisfaction scores generally have higher Net Promoter Scores, it’s a win for the business, too.

Insights in action

With more employees able to access and work with more types of data, the opportunities for business innovation and growth abound. And the impact is being felt across organisations.

For starters, the ability to give more people access to the right data at the right time can help circumvent costly problems. Imagine a financial services company that releases a new bank card. They send it out to tens of thousands of customers with accompanying instructions to activate it. Yet there’s an error in those instructions, and the call centre is inundated with frustrated and confused customers. Using real-time access to call centre data and the natural language abilities of gen AI to interpret the calls, the company could have quickly identified and rectified the problem—instead of continuing to field thousands of calls from customers asking why they can’t activate their card.?

But it’s not just about issue remediation. The ability for more people to create and access insights is going to have a profound impact on product development, too. Already, organisations are amazing at developing products based on what they know about their customers. Gen AI takes this knowledge to a whole new level, giving product development teams a much richer and more varied understanding of individual customers’ needs.??

Then there’s the impact on customer service and sales. A great example was shown at the Next ‘24 opening keynote. In the demo, a customer agent with gen AI capabilities helps someone find and buy a shirt they spot on a music video. The fictitious shopper shares the video link with the customer agent, along with the prompt: “Find me a chequered shirt like the keyboard player is wearing. I’d like to see prices, where to buy it, and how soon I can be wearing it.” Almost immediately, shirts in that exact style appear. The demo doesn’t stop there. When the customer calls to get a shirt at a nearby store put aside, a phone-based customer agent continues the conversation and manages to upsell a t-shirt and boots too.?

The demo (which you can watch here, at 00:39 mins) is a great example of how companies are squeezing every last drop of value out of customer data using gen AI. It’s all about enabling data enrichment—and using it to better understand what people want, when they want it, or how they might want it.??

Bringing people on the journey

As the above examples show, there is huge potential for organisations to start using gen AI to transform. If you’re just starting out, then heed this advice: take the time to teach your people how to use the tools responsibly, effectively, and securely. Learning how to use gen AI is going to become as important an organisational skill as how to use email.

Get it right, and your teams will soon be putting the automotive intelligence of gen AI to work in their daily roles. They will be reclaiming precious minutes in their days—and when you add all these minutes up across the organisation, you’ll be looking at significant time savings. Indeed, gen AI is on the cusp of becoming a force multiplier, and if you’re not equipped to leverage it, you could get left behind.?

To see what you need to be doing right now, read the Google Cloud 2024 Data and AI Trends Report today.