3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Business Operations
By
Falon Fatemi
Today's
business landscape is demanding that companies spearhead large-scale
changes in order to survive and remain competitive. In an ever-changing
political, social, and economic climate, constant organizational change
is the new normal. Few advancements promise to help organizations cross
critical business chasms more profoundly than artificial intelligence.
When it comes to business operations, artificial intelligence has
enormous potential to catapult companies beyond the status quo and adapt
to new dynamics.
1. Enhancing the customer experience
According to research
by Walker, customer experience will overtake price and product as the
key brand differentiator by 2020. The centrality of customer experience
in today's business landscape has motivated many companies to adopt a
more holistic approach to customer experience improvement. Companies
such as Intuit, EMC, and Adobe all have core customer experience
leadership embedded in their sales, operations, and marketing
organizations.
Artificial intelligence can help
businesses craft highly-personalized customer experiences. Artificial
intelligence can ingest and aggregate all of the various touch-points a
customer has with a brand and determine what’s driving customers
behavior. Are they eager to buy more? Why? Are they on the verge of
churning to a key competitor? Why? Armed with this information, business
operations teams are afforded unprecedented insight into the end-to-end
customer experience, far beyond that which can be gleaned from customer
feedback surveys. According to Salesforce, 50%
of consumers are likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t
anticipate their needs. By providing the right messages and marketing
prescriptions to customers at the right time, artificial intelligence
promises to help organizations better understand customers and
anticipate their needs.
Artificial Intelligence can also help
businesses better understand brand strength and high-level customer
trends. AI-powered tools can monitor brand perception on social and
social channels and predict customer sentiment. This all-encompassing
view minimizes guesswork and allows business leaders to confidently
predict where customers will plant their wallets next and why. By
accounting for everything from external temperature to the day of the
week to political events, companies can drastically enhance their
forecasting abilities.
2. Enhancing the hiring process
Strategic talent acquisition is
central to business operations. Yet the hiring process is fundamentally
flawed. The recruitment and interview process is rife with bias and is
largely driven by first impressions. According to one recent study,
despite increased awareness of discriminatory hiring practice, hiring
discriminating against black workers in the U.S. has not declined in the
past quarter century. The fact that employee referrals are the number
one source of new hires, representing more than 50%
of hires, underscores the limitations, biases, and potentially nepotism
ingrained in current processes. It's no wonder why approximately 40% of businesses say that the interview and assessment skills of their staff should be improved.
Artificial intelligence is already
helping businesses transform their hiring operations and processes. It
can help businesses cast a wider net by scanning large volumes of
resumes and other talent sources to pinpoint highly qualified candidates
for specific jobs. It can review job descriptions, interview
transcripts, and call logs to uncover and correct hidden biases in the
hiring process and accurately assess candidates. Several tools already
exist on the market. IBM Watson Candidate Assistant, for example, is a
talent management solution that helps match potential candidates with
the specific jobs that they will thrive in. When implementing AI
recruiting tools, it's critical that we ensure that tools are not prone
to the same biases that humans fall victim to.
3. Enhancing employee engagement and retention
Talent is the lifeblood of every
thriving business. Amidst today’s competitive hiring landscape,
retaining top talent is top-of-mind for all businesses. Employee
engagement must be an integral component of everyday business
operations. Yet most businesses are severely faltering in their efforts.
According to a recent report
by Gallup, the vast majority (85%) of employees are either not engaged
or are actively disengaged at work. Even the seemingly insignificant
changes can prove transformative. 17%
of workers who quit a new job within the first six months of hiring say
that a smile from a co-worker might have made all the difference, while
23% might have stayed if managers had communicated with them more
effectively.
Artificial intelligence offers
enormous potential in terms of boosting employee engagement and
retention. Using sentiment analysis technologies, biometrics, and other
emerging technologies, AI-powered tools can help businesses confidently
understand employee engagement. It can surface insight into what is
driving employee behaviors and generate powerful recommendations in
terms of how to most effectively motivate employees and reward behavior.
KangoGift, for example, is a technology powered by IBM Cloud and IBM
Watson that is being used by thousands of managers across 20 countries
to help determine who, when, and why employees should be recognized.
AI also helps inform individual
performance. Using sentiment analysis, AI can read between the lines of
traditional performance assessments and more accurately gauge individual
performance. It can uncover “toxic workers” who may score high on
traditional performance assessments. Most important, it can generate
targeted recommendations in terms of career paths and specific skill
sets necessary for advancement. According to an analysis
of Facebook employees, those who were most likely to remain at the
company felt, comparatively speaking, they used their strengths more.
Charting an empowering career path with skill development is critical to
helping employees feel empowered.
Team performance also stands to
benefit from AI. By monitoring interactions on social enterprise tools
and workplace social channels, AI can reveal key insights into the
degree and effectiveness of employee collaboration. Vibe, for example,
analyzes keywords and emojis sent among employees on Slack to assess the
morale of a given team. These insights can be game-changing in terms of
empowering managers with insight as to how most effectively to
structure teams.
83%
of executives believe AI is a strategic priority for their businesses
today, while 75% of executives say that AI will allow them to move into
new businesses and ventures. Data is the hallmark of today’s businesses
and AI is key to extracting the greatest benefit from the data. By
leveraging AI to gain a deeper understanding of customers, recruits, and
employees, AI promises to transform business operations.
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