What does Conversational AI in B2B look like?

AI AI AI everywhere

Yes, we all involuntarily do an eye roll before even finishing reading a sentence that mentions AI

Yet..

It does hold weight in our day to day, and is going to stay relevant for a long time. So I’ve been wondering about how Conversational AI fits into the B2B space and how it will be received going forward.

We already have chatbots and virtual assistants that use AI.

Some of the successful ones being

• Cisco’s Virtual Support Agent
• Hubspot Chatbot
• PwC’s Digital Assistant

These B2B examples illustrate how conversational AI can be leveraged to enhance customer support, improve lead generation, streamline internal processes, and provide valuable insights into customer and employee behaviors.

And a quick google will give us even more examples of successful AI stories.

But…………

Just like we’ve built an aversion to the mention of AI, do you think we might in future grow AI-averse in general?

Let’s face it, AI is new, and we still haven’t really realized the underlying costs.

AI is mostly open source at this point.

The security concerns and legal ramifications that come from using AI aren’t really questions we’ve asked enough.

For eg: Look at ChatGPT phrasing its open-sourcedness in a convoluted way

These versions have not been “fully open-sourced”

Yet it claims to be “not open sourced” in the first sentence when asked.

OpenAI team at work for sure ;)

So how do I think this will affect the use of conversational AI in B2B?

Businesses might use “We don’t use AI” as a token of premium customer service.

With all companies rushing to talk about how they use AI to better the CX (Customer Experience), that definitely will stand out right?

I mean, there’s already a marketing campaign in this whole topic that is usable now.

Imagine a Microsoft competitor saying,

“At Macrohard, we care enough to actually talk to you.”        

Contrarian stances are a great way to stand out in marketing anyway.

What do you think? Will conversational AI and its position to reduce human workload for customer support, be the very thing companies try to villainize, to position themselves superior?

Let me know in comments.