AI Helps Making Better Business Decisions

Multiple businesses are shifting to artificial intelligence (AI) solutions such as chatbots and digital assistants to enhance the customer experience. Though, the latest research indicates that customers lack a perception of how they can profit from AI systems and tools.

The research also indicates that empathy is the solution to AI-driven communication between a brand and its customer. It also necessitates that CEOs and technology leaders must institutionalize empathy with AI platforms for enhanced consumer experience.

Can AI replace a real person?

The research shows that despite the increasing practice of AI technologies, customers usually prefer trusting a real person to help make better business decisions. Users trust those AI tools that attempt to combine empathy and ethical decision-making process. Analytics and decision making explain how empathy is the essential element of developing trust between humans and technology.

For example, when it comes to applying for a personal loan from a bank, only 25% of customers trusted a decision made by an AI platform. Adding to that, at the same time, if a human expert intervenes on the regulatory processes before making the loan offer to a person and does the follow-up, it becomes much more trustworthy.

Customers usually prefer interacting with people because they have a higher level of trust in them and believe it’s possible to determine the decision when that’s far from the case. What’s required is the capability of AI systems to help businesses make ethical decisions.

Why should firms care?

The research highlights that there are severe trust issues with AI. Almost half (40%) of respondents admitted that AI has the potential to enhance the customer service of companies they interact with. This is where businesses got to care, as a lack of trust, as the research suggests, can negatively impact the customer’s online experience and, eventually, on the brand’s reputation. Also, customers are skeptical about the organizations they do business with. 

Researchers believe when companies that are contemplating executing AI provide customers the opportunity to determine whether if they prefer an AI-powered or human-driven experience to answer their query – it turns out to be a step towards developing transparency and trust. 

Despite this, almost 65% of respondents don’t trust that businesses have their best interests at heart, asking essential questions about how much trust they have in the technology firms use to communicate with them. Numerous people still believe that AI is incapable of making unbiased decisions: Over 53% of respondents admitted AI could show prejudice in the way it makes decisions.

Still, people prefer the human touch; with almost 70% of respondents prefer to speak to a human than an AI platform or a chatbot while dealing with customer service. Many believe that AI does not employ empathy or morality. Over almost 56% of consumers don’t believe it is feasible to build machines that behave morally. For instance, assigning female genders to digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri helps safeguard dangerous gender biases.

AI demands new leadership from CEOs

The era of AI requires new leadership from CEOs – in a way, the design, execute and monitor their AI approaches. Specialists believe, in the upcoming years, CEOs are required to pay even closer attention to the potential for algorithmic biases in machine learning. Businesses are required to be transparent about the data they utilize to train machine-learning algorithms to ensure that these algorithms don’t end up perpetuating, for example, in areas like racial or gender discrimination. CEOs are also required to think twice about presenting too much decision-making authority to computers. They are required to make sure that they understand and demonstrate the techniques machines are utilizing to make decisions. Few businesses, for example, also have established ethics committees to supervise problematic characters of data usage.

The goal for AI is to improve the technology through efficient applications, accurate consumer experience and ease, and enhanced outcomes for all. Only then will consumer insights about AI change.