Using AI in your business, without compromising client relationships
- Amanda Dunklin
- Oct 12
- 3 min read
There is one defining factor I see in the adoption of AI that will determine if the investment will garner ROI or just a whole lot of upset clients.
The opportunities tech has given us today are apparent. We are connected at the click of a button despite miles or time zones. I am grateful for the opportunities while being absolutely baffled by the direction some are taking in their businesses to leverage them.
Big businesses have made quick work of automating call centers, help desks and it is becoming the norm to go to battle with a chatbot to troubleshoot for at least four rounds before a human intervenes. The market is not super jazzed about the risk or loss of their roles to AI already; salt in the wound to do battle with the same AI tools.
Telecomm providers are under scrutiny with an active petition titled, 'Require phone companies to offer an option to speak with a human', with the petition starter citing:
'Canadian citizens, who pay for these services, should not face the roadblock of automated messages that fail to address individual needs.'
They're not wrong.
City News shared recently in their article here, their discussion with the owner of MyBillsAreHigh.com, Mohammed Halabi, who negotiates telecom and internet contracts for businesses and individuals. Notably, the article cites results from research ServiceNow conducted in partnership with Opinium that read:
'Around 44 per cent of Canadians reported they were open to using tools such as chatbots in 2024 and one-in-10 this year said they trust voice assistants to handle basic support tasks.'
If you want your business to win in the age of AI, be the business that has a direct line to a human.
Seeing businesses like real estate agencies have AI as their first point of contact to clients and prospective clients while their agents are doing .... paperwork.... is a bit wild.
There are several ways AI can help businesses do more with less, increase time available for professionals to do what they signed up to do while maintaining the highest degree of client care.
Here are five:
Notetakers that not only summarize meetings but also automatically create tasks from the action items with the appropriate workflows and share automatically with the appropriate people.
Automated filing and knowledge sharing tools will turn messy google drives into a central base of legacy knowledge that anyone can ask a question of for an immediate answer aligning with company documentation.
Predicative tools to forecast service surge demands that connect to inventory management and alert what resources will be required for the coming days and weeks.
Research. I could scream this from the rooftops. If you're in any role that benefits from truly understanding your clients, having AI prepare a briefing package ahead of meetings will save you hours, deepen relationships and some are highly customizable to provide information you would normally seek manually.
Automated feedback loops. If there is one time I would advise using AI to engage with clients, it is to get their feedback on services so they can be honest without fear of hurting feelings.
