Can “AI upskilling” address the AI talent shortage?
Companies are implementing upskilling programs to teach their employees how to use AI to do their jobs better and increase productivity — in some cases, whether they like it or not.
🔢 SEMANTICS
How companies are doing this differs. Some are creating AI curriculums and literacy courses, while others are hiring outside consultants and third-party experts.
In conversations with C-suite execs implementing upskilling programs, Business Insider learns that there’s initial resistance due to fears of change, but most workers recognize the benefits, specifically, how AI can make their jobs easier.
The Canadian government also announced it’ll be setting aside $50M to retrain workers potentially displaced by AI — a part of a broader $2.3M initiative to enhance AI adoption.
📈 SENTIMENT ANALYSIS
Are we finally entering the last stage of grief for the pre-AI-first world: Acceptance? While employees may be over bargaining, AI adoption is giving soft launch, with some calling 2024 “the year of learning.”
Customer service is on the cusp of an “AI revolution”
The transformative role of AI in customer service is finally getting its time in the sun. CMSWire reports that we’re entering a “new era of efficiency” — and AI is the linchpin.
🔢 SEMANTICS
73% of respondents say they believe AI will have a significant or transformative impact on CX in the next 2-5 years, according to CMSWire’s State of Digital Customer Experience report.
The revolution is being driven by cutting-edge technologies (like AI, predictive analytics, and sentiment analysis, for example) working in cooperation.
Advancements like automating routine tasks, personalizing customer interactions, optimizing workflows, and providing valuable insights are not only improving efficiency of operations but profoundly enhancing service quality.
📈 SENTIMENT ANALYSIS
Let’s be real, for those of us on the inside of AI-first customer service, this is old news. But we never lose the satisfaction in saying “We told you so.”
VENN ZERO
As AI evolves, so does the battleground for data. While some cling to data volume, a new data moat emerges built around the uniqueness of data, or in other words, quality over quantity.
When businesses are confronted with a major technological shift, often their knee-jerk reaction is to stick with what they know: Putting a new executive in charge and hoping they can solve everything. But for AI to truly take root in a company, people at all levels of the business need to get their hands on it and start innovating, not follow orders from a gatekeeper in the C-suite.
In fact, the fastest way to integrate AI into a company, in some instances, may be to skip the chief AI officer role altogether.
Companies appointing a chief AI officer have good intentions as they seek to avoid getting disrupted by the technology. But they may not need this role, and any business adding it should assume that it's temporary.
A useful comparison is the stampede in the middle of the last decade to appoint chief digital officers to oversee the digital transformation to internet and mobile technologies. In hindsight, that looks quaint.
In place of the top-down response to organizational change, consider a bottom-up approach. For a company that wants to usher in an AI transformation, the first step is to look across the roles you're already hiring for and pick a few where AI agents can do the job today.
Customer service is an obvious place to start — today's AI agents can now address most issues at least as well as humans.
“While we are investing more money in our AI capabilities, many of these projects pay for themselves. Over time, we anticipate that our use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job, as well as impact our workforce composition.”
