3 Realistic AI Strategies Your Business Can Implement Now
▼ Summary
– Pandora’s technology leader David Walmsley advises against getting carried away by AI hype and FOMO, emphasizing that not every company is implementing radical AI solutions.
– The company focuses its AI strategy on three key areas: improving customer service and sales, enhancing product development, and automating back-end processes.
– In customer service, Pandora uses an advanced, agentic AI-powered chatbot with the long-term goal of engaging customers in personalized sales conversations.
– For product design, AI is used in probabilistic models for cost and time estimation and in analyzing customer reviews to improve quality and design.
– The automation efforts aim to create a smarter organization by improving workflows and employee experience, with tools like Microsoft Copilot being explored for internal processes.
For companies aiming to move beyond AI hype and into practical implementation, focusing on strategic advantage is the key to success. Rather than chasing every new development, smart businesses identify specific areas where artificial intelligence can deliver measurable improvements in customer engagement, product innovation, and operational efficiency. By concentrating on projects that align with core business objectives, leaders can ensure their AI investments drive real value instead of becoming expensive experiments.
David Walmsley, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Pandora, emphasizes the importance of resisting the fear of missing out that often surrounds new technology. He advises digital leaders to apply AI to your points of strategic advantage, ensuring efforts remain targeted on what makes the business unique. At Pandora, this philosophy translates into three primary areas of focus: enhancing customer service, accelerating product design, and automating back-end processes.
One of the most promising applications involves using agentic AI to transform customer service. For a brand like Pandora, the in-store experience is invaluable. The company has developed a next-generation chatbot, powered by the Salesforce Agentforce platform, which now handles about half of its online conversational traffic. The ultimate goal, however, is far more ambitious. The “holy grail” is to evolve this agent from handling service queries to engaging customers in personalized sales conversations. Imagine an AI that can suggest a gift by recalling that a customer’s daughter loves butterflies. Achieving this requires a significant learning curve to capture the human emotion inherent in sales, but the potential to scale personalized service is immense.
Another strategic area is leveraging AI models to boost product design and development. Pandora already uses probabilistic models to forecast manufacturing costs and production times based on historical design data. A powerful example is their use of a review synthesis model, which analyzes two million customer reviews to extract themes related to quality, design, and manufacturing. This allows the company to refine its products based on direct customer feedback. Additionally, design teams experiment with visual AI tools to streamline the creative process. The overarching aim is to use AI across the entire product development journey to get more successful products to market faster.
Finally, automating back-end functions is essential for creating a smarter, more efficient organization. Walmsley’s team is leading by example, using AI for internal tooling and automation within the digital and technology department. The benefits extend beyond simple cost savings. By automating routine tasks, such as synthesizing information from long meetings, AI can significantly improve employees’ quality of work life. Walmsley points to tools like Microsoft’s Copilot Studio as a compelling example of how AI can be woven into daily workflows. He envisions a future where platforms like Microsoft Teams act as a front end for AI agents that help employees with tasks ranging from checking vacation days to processing invoices, thereby raising the overall quality bar for the entire organization.
(Source: ZDNET)
