Particle Board Products
When you see a company advertising that their product is now AI-powered or AI-enabled, how does it make you feel about the product/company?
- Better
- Worse
- Not sure
For months now, I’ve been asking this question in random professional and social gatherings.
Results so far:
- Not a single “Better” answer to that question.
- Most (and trending up) answer “Worse”, increasingly accompanied by words of distrust and resentment. (Think these results are non-representative of the majority? I encourage you to do your own survey.)
So, why so much marketing bragging about “AI-powered” as a feature?
Did we stop caring about our customers’ viewpoints?
Should you use AI tech? If it helps build true customer value that is rock solid, of course! It’s a tool.
But if your primary brag is “AI powered”, then perhaps a follow-up question should be asked. Specifically,
“Did we actually build something of true value or not?”
If so, then Why aren’t you bragging about that instead?
An analogy:
- If you built a deck for a house using the first nuclear-powered drill, your customer doesn’t care. That flex is for your deck-building buddies.
- If you built it with the best, weather-resistant wood, customers care and will probably pay you more for the added value.
- If you built it with particle board, they also care, but mostly because they are going to sue you and/or write terrible reviews and never do business with you again.
From what I’m seeing, most of these “Built with/Powered by AI” brags are a mix of nuclear drill and particle board to customer ears.
Maybe it’s time to get back to basics on customer value?
