Trust drives Al success

In the Al economy, trust is the ultimate technology.

- ♦ VALA AFSHAR AND HENRY KING, CO-AUTHORS, BOUNDLESS AND AUTONOMOUS; AND IRENE YAM, AUTHOR, BUILD A WORLD-CLASS CUSTOMER ADVISORY BOARD

Recent research forecasts that Artificial Intelligence will contribute as much as $19.9T to the global economy and drive 3.5 per cent of global GDP in 20301. That said, there are still significant concerns regarding the adoption of AI in business. The biggest obstacle is trust: Trust in the technology, trust in the data quality, trust in the large language models, trust in the automated workflows, trust in the AI vendor’s core values and guiding principles, and trust in AI’s impact on gaining a competitive edge.

“We all have a trust issue. We all have a gap,” says David Horsager, CEO of The Trust Edge Leadership Institute. “There is no communication issue. No collaboration issue. No sales issue. No marketing issue. There is only a trust issue.”

A recent report2 found that 23 per cent of customers do not trust AI, and 56 per cent are neutral—this deficit in trust can swing in either direction based on how companies use and deliver AI-powered services. The report also found that the benefits of AI are unclear, with only 46 per cent of respondents agreeing that AI will speed up transactions. Increased awareness of personal data security has made trust between providers and customers more crucial than ever. In fact, 78 per cent of customers say they would switch financial service providers if they felt their data was mishandled.

So how do businesses build trust in their customers at this crucial time? In this article we want to focus on two areas. The first is in the sales process and the second is in the customer advisory board (CAB). But before we dive into them, let’s first take a look at trust itself.

The elements of trust