Kya Karein, Ya Na Karein, Yeh Kaisi Mushkil AI
Is AI shaping the way we communicate?
The last month has been, quite a bit of travel. Lots of conversations, from customers to potential customers, industry leaders at events to people starting out in their careers. There is one thing, that sticks out in every conversation, and that’s AI.
Thanks to ChatGPT, AI is a household word. Every guy on the street is either building or using AI in their daily work. But while people rejoice in the benefits of AI, many are in fear, due to the implications it may have on their work and their livelihood. And its this fear that we as responsible people in business, need to respond to and moreover empower people, with what AI can do for them, and how their role will morph in this transformative time.
As the leader of a young organisation working on disruption in the workplace, we are always on the lookout for ways to disrupt ourselves, and finding smarter & lazier ways to do our work! (yes, you read it right, lazier!)
Steve Jobs, decided to build the iPhone since it was THE device that began to cannibalise the iPod. Same goes for the latest Vision Pro, which not today, but someday is touted to cannibalise the iPhone. Meaning, one day our smartphone will become smartglasses. It's time to reinvent ourselves, unless we get cannibalised.So here we are, to empower everyone with what AI can do for you—so you can do bigger better grander more incredible things! Let’s start with some basics for a level playing field eh?
Here is a quick dip into the sea of AI uses in Communication, and taking notes from the team who is building URVA, and their usage of AI.
Introductory Emails
It’s no surprise, the most conversations that we do while running B2B sales, involves a truckload of email. And while, the mind works faster than the hand, you’re always running short on time to send that last email. With AI, getting started becomes easy.
While, we don’t believe in asking AI (such as ChatGPT) to write the exact email we’re looking to send, we do find — that with the right prompt (tailored question with context) we are able to get a near to success result that we are looking for.
The key lies in not giving up and rather, tweaking your ideas for context, that helps the AI be your Executive Assistant, and bring you a draft that only needs to be modified by 25-35%.
For example, one of the kind of prompts that I like using is,
“write an email for introducing URVA to a potential customer, but instead of talking about all the features of the product, try to list out how they can benefit from URVA, bringing the success stories in a short, consumable form. while you do that, keep the language friendly, and not too formal, I want the customer to know that I'm a partner in their problem.”
While you might think that the AI got the email right, let me assure that its far from it. However, this does give you a boilerplate to get started, and that’s exactly the point of using AI like ChatGPT or the newly renamed Google Gemini.Follow Up Messages
While Emails are extremely important, there is much information, that you need to stay updated on when working with customers or potential customers. We all find, that WhatsApp or SMS plays a huge role in having unstructured conversations.
There are many a times, when you need to just send a gentle reminder, or a reference point for a customer that helps them fill a gap, or share a pitch to a new potential lead that recently showed interest.
Many of you reading this, may feel that how would AI help me write this any better, however, it may come as a surprise that language is a HUGE deterrent in anyone’s ability to convince or influence any decision making. So it’s a blessing for those who are just getting started in their career journey, to use AI to morph their feelings into words!
Same as above, AI comes in as a mediator, so much so that it helps you get a template in place, which you can then sprinkle with your take.
One of the templates, that our Pre-sales team uses is like:
“write a short message, which highlights the benefits of our software to seek a meeting for a demo of the product. use language that conveys the user that you value their time, and are available for discussion at their convenience.”Transcription & Summarisation
While a lot of work happens on the screen, over text, email or WhatsApp but there is nothing like having a vocal conversation with someone.
Most of our introductions, meetings, product demos, (even) negotiations, happen over virtual calls, like Teams, Zoom etc.
But keeping the conversation minuted is hard, since there can be many people speaking at the same. It’s no surprise, that AI is already doing voice-to-text translation and THAT is a huge leap in taking actions after meetings.
The most popular Virtual Call platforms today have their own transcript engines running but guess where they fail the most? It’s called language switching. Yes, that’s what messes up your transcript — two lines in english, then gibberish and then back to english and the story goes on.
While AI companies are hard at work in solving this problem, transcripts nevertheless, are a great use-case of AI and work well in relaying information, and also minuting and summarising.
The summarisation is my personal favourite, because that’s what all of us want really. Who wants to read the whole transcript when I can read two lines and go grab a coffee at the same time!
In this edition, we just warmed up about AI with a focus on communication and contact management. We hope to have more such ‘conversations’ than one-way emails :)
At URVA, we are investing big in ‘Private AI’, and discovering new use-cases in coding, content creation, marketing and analytics — the AI promises are phenomenal to start with, but in the long term, how security, privacy & compliance will play—is something, we as business leaders will shape in the years to come, if not months!
So the question that I’d like to leave you with is,
“What’s the use of AI you’re most excited about for communication?”
Drop a comment, and share your thoughts. Week-out!