The first was an ecommerce event. Almost every delegate wrote some version of “use more AI in the business” in their conference goals. But when you asked what that actually meant, most had no idea. They’d simply been told AI was important and feared being left behind.
The second was a health optimisation summit for entrepreneurs and innovators. There was huge anticipation around the AI session, until the speaker failed to show up. The replacement speaker talked about neural networks, but attendees weren’t looking for a technical lecture. They wanted the answer to the same question everyone is asking:
“How do we actually use AI in our business?”
The reality is that one of the biggest blockers to AI success isn’t the right technology, it’s whether your staff are AI-enabling.
In many businesses, there are already multiple operational touch points that could dramatically improve performance with AI. But the AI only works if your people support the data process behind it.
We see this every day with clients using our exact same technology in the same sector, yet getting wildly different outcomes.
One client ensures staff capture reference codes from walk-in customers so we can track the journey from click to sale. That data enables our AI to optimise for more high-value customers.
Another simply marks “no ref code” for every walk-in. That breaks the chain entirely. The AI loses visibility, optimisation weakens, and worse still, profitable keywords can be incorrectly switched off because the sales were never attributed properly.
The Result? Businesses with poor AI-enabling behaviours can end up spending up to 300% more on advertising to achieve the same sales performance as someone else in their field, not to mention all the extra time and human resource required to deliver the sales process.
Before chasing the next “revolutionary AI tool”, businesses should first ask whether their people, processes, and behaviours are actually enabling AI to succeed. Otherwise, the outcomes may be deeply disappointing.