"Work by Prompt": A Better Way to Work

In “Meet the Parents,” there’s a scene where Greg Focker (Ben Stiller’s character) waits at the airport service counter while the agent clacks away endlessly at the keyboard, just to complete the common task of rebooking his ticket.

It’s a hilarious scene because the awkwardness is so relatable — we’ve all been there before. Maybe it was at a rental car checkout or over the phone with a customer service agent.

I had one of those experiences while traveling last week at my hotel.

It took two people over ten minutes of clacking away to figure out how to accomplish a relatively common task that, for some reason, was buried multiple menus deep in their system.

It’s not a great experience for the customer or the employee.

I often think about this scenario from the perspective of the software developer who built that system.

• Do they really understand the regular tasks that the employees need to accomplish?
• Do they recognize how easy or difficult they’ve made their system to use?

It made me realize that this is where AI and automation will truly start to change the way we work.

Imagine that same scene at the airport service counter, but the agent is working from a modern system that understands natural language and prompts, rather than burying tasks in unintuitive menus or behind myriad keyboard shortcuts.

That agent could simply type (or say) a prompt like “Find available tickets from Chicago to LaGuardia for this Friday” to be presented with the best options.

This doesn’t just apply to customer service. Prompts will streamline work across the enterprise:

???“Log an in-person conversation in our CRM with the following notes…”

?? “Run a report showing our Q2 P&L broken out by Regional Manager.”

?? “Comp this customer X amount of Bilt loyalty points to make up for an issue with their service.”

?? “Show me a list of pending renewals for September, prioritizing residents who have had recent maintenance requests.”

“Work by prompt” will make every part of the organization more efficient.

You can take these examples even further when you start to layer in automation that can complete a series of tasks for you. It’s not just “log a meeting” … it’s also automatically scheduling the follow-up tasks or sending a timely appointment reminder to the customer. Maybe you connect directly to Handwrytten to send a handwritten thank note to the deal you just closed.

This may sound like the future, but it’s already happening today.

Some examples:

?? You can ask Google Analytics questions in natural language, and it will respond back about your website data and send you to the exact report to provide more details.

?? With generative AI systems, you can now string together entire workflows … it’s not just “ask a question and watch ChatGPT write the reply” anymore.

?? And just this week: Apple announced AI at the operating system level (“Apple Intelligence”) that will be able to look across apps to answer your questions faster and help you get more done.

One of the most useful fields you can study as a software engineer, as a marketer, as a leader is anthropology — study people. Spend time with your customer and understand what it is they’re trying to accomplish.

Is there a way to improve the system so that it takes only two clicks to accomplish a task rather than eight? (Hint: Look at your online application process as a place to start.)

As an apartment operator, be liberal with your feedback. Tell software partners like me where we’ve created bottlenecks. Collaborate with us to benefit our team members and customers.

Sure, customers can be real Fockers sometimes. Making it easier for our teams to serve them helps everyone.

#ai #multifamily #proptech #customerexperience #productivity #bettersoftware