Richard Kilgannon

Four ways to incorporate customer service as a strategy in the AI era. Economies are changing. Technology is impacting the way we do business, and social channels are influencing purchasing decisions, even for business-to-business industries. But what doesn’t change is the importance of exceptional customer service, driven by relationships, good communication, and reliable results. Customer service has always been an important element of business growth.

These are the critical steps business leaders must take before adopting AI. AI adoption is on every CEO’s agenda—pushed by boards, expected by investors, and assumed by customers. The result is a lot of expensive activity and not much impact.

How service businesses can build a competitive moat in the next technology revolution. I have lived through several technology shifts as a business leader. Dot-com was supposed to kill brick-and-mortar, the cloud was supposed to make location irrelevant, and platforms were supposed to replace pipelines. Now AI is supposed to replace jobs. Some of those predictions came true. Most arrived more slowly and selectively than the headlines promised.