Huma Siraj
IDC reports that 67% of CIOs said their efforts to enhance the customer experience are being hampered by a severe skills shortage brought on by the “Accelerating arrival of new technologies,” such as artificial intelligence (AI). Delays in product development, challenges with the quality of products and services, issues with customer happiness, trouble hitting revenue goals, and revenue loss are just a few of the problems that are resulting from this. Additionally, according to IDC, by the end of 2026, this percentage is anticipated to increase to over 90% of enterprises.
In an interview with Vivek Jetley of EXL at the time, he calculated that there was a 300,000–400,000 person shortage in the US and the UK alone for data scientists and analysts, or those capable of performing complex analytical and statistical work.
He continued, though, by arguing that the largest personnel problem facing businesses was not the hiring of data scientists and analysts. He thought that leadership’s capacity to direct, analyze, and act upon the insights generated by data teams was the greater problem. According to Jetley’s estimation at the time, this disparity was three to four times as large as that of data scientists and analysts.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been curious about this leadership skills gap, especially in light of the potential of new AI-driven technologies and the stagnant results in customer experience. This has led me to wonder if a similar leadership skills gap pertaining to AI expertise is developing and how it might be impacting businesses’ capacity to innovate and enhance customer results.
I say this because I’ve heard several tales lately that raise doubts about how well-informed some executives are about this new technology, how it can affect their companies, and what it takes to successfully apply it.
Here are two real world instances that show how this leadership divide is manifesting itself.
In the first story, a board member pushed the marketing director to use an AI-powered chatbot during a quarterly board meeting. Although a little surprised by this suggestion, the marketing director responded that he would give the board member’s suggestion some thought. The marketing director gave a summary of the previous quarter’s events and their intentions for the next one during the subsequent quarterly board meeting.
Regretfully, though, he also had to disclose that they had narrowly missed their goals due to some unforeseen difficulties they had encountered during the previous quarter. This prompted the previously stated board director to inquire as to whether a chatbot would have prevented it from occurring.
Such remarks, in my opinion, are indicative of a larger trend in which a large number of senior executives are viewing this new technology as a cure-all. Furthermore, remarks like these imply that a large number of leaders are not quite aware of the new technology’s potential and the best places to use it.
In the second story, a director of customer service operations was under pressure from the board of directors and leadership to use AI self-service and agent-assist technology to boost productivity and service results.
However, in order to create, train, test, maintain, and monitor these new technologies, agent personnel from frontline customer care operations would need to be redeployed.
Their capacity to reach their current KPIs and service-level agreements (SLAs) would have been compromised as a result, endangering not just their own performance but also the incentives that agents would have gotten had they achieved their goals. The director of customer service operations made the decision to take no action until they were given the funding and extra materials needed to start this new project.
The issue here is that the brand’s board and leadership failed to recognize that the proliferation of AI powered software solutions is radically altering the landscape of corporate software.
But with the popularity of AI powered software, accountability is now shared by the vendor and their business clients rather than being on the vendor alone. The consumer now does a lot more work than they would have in the past as a result.
Indeed, you can collaborate with vendors and suppliers and rely significantly on them to assist with the development, implementation, and maintenance of new systems. To maximize its advantages, this technology will need new talents and more resources unless its continuous management and development are entirely outsourced.
I now see that executives are anxious to capitalize on the potential and power of this new technology as soon as possible because they frequently worry that they will fall behind if they don’t. But advocating for the adoption of a certain technology without fully comprehending how it functions, where it is most effective, or what is required to make it work can, at best, be annoying and, at worst, possibly harm a business.
Therefore, having a cursory awareness of new technologies is no longer enough for board members and leaders. These days, and more and more so, boards and executives need to become proficient in the terminology and applications of artificial intelligence.
In order to accomplish this, executives and their boards must constantly arm themselves with the knowledge necessary to stay up to date with technological advancements as well as to transform their current organization by utilizing existing technology. By doing this, they will be in a better position to reflect on the future of their company and the kind of client experience they hope to provide.
