Dear AI, your attempts to flatter me are, well, just too artificial

I received a rather intriguing email the other day. It was from someone I didn’t know and from a company I had no knowledge of.

 

 

Normally, I would scan this sort of email and dismiss it fairly quickly. However, the opening line of this one made me raise a quizzical eyebrow.

 

The author reported that he had been to lunch with his managing director earlier in the day and his boss had mentioned me personally no less than three times (the three was spelt out in capital letters).

 

He felt that, for that reason, he had better get in touch with me. The email went on to flatter the growth of my company before segueing seamlessly into a business pitch for some new marketing software that could help my company manage its “impressive growth”.

 

However, it wasn’t this line that intrigued me. What got me thinking was that over the past eight weeks I had received exactly the same email opening from five apparently disconnected (but genuine) companies in different sectors.

 

Now, while I would love to think that I am regularly the subject of flattering conversations between managing directors and their senior staff in companies up and down the country, I am also a realist who knows that that is a highly unlikely scenario.

 

Instead, it became apparent that each of the email authors had resorted to artificial intelligence, which had come up with what on first sight looked like a great opening cold call email that could unlock even the tightest sales door.

 

I can imagine the sales and marketing departments behind those emails congratulating themselves on a quick and trouble-free way of initiating a sales approach.

 

Spot the signs

 

I began to read, rather than deleting, more cold call emails coming in to me. The signs of artificial intelligence being used was more widespread than I had first realised.

 

Several emails had been flattering in their opening sentences about my career, using actual quotes from people endorsing me on my LinkedIn profile and saying how what was said about me had appealed to them.

 

It gave the impression that these companies were doing their homework – some extensive research on me before making contact – except, they all quoted the same people, used the same remarks and constructed their sentences in an identical way.

 

A couple of other emails had clearly not even been checked by their authors as they informed me that “dozens of organisations in the (insert sector) are using this research to sharpen their product development”.

 

The fact the “insert sector” line had been left in gave the impression that rather than being a tailored email to me, it was simply a blanket approach masquerading as bespoke. Clearly, the scourge of artificial intelligence has struck deep into the sales and marketing fields.

 

Embrace AI wisely

 

Artificial intelligence is very much the vogue term in the travel industry at the moment and, believe me, I am as a big a fan as the next person.

 

In my own business, I have seen how artificial intelligence has taken away the heavy lifting of laborious and tedious tasks – particularly in our finance department where it can chase outstanding invoices, reconcile bills and track costs effortlessly, reducing mistakes and improving efficiencies.

 

But my concern on the marketing and sales side, particularly with an industry like travel which has customer service and client relationships at its very heart, is that it can quickly make you lazy, sloppy and unprofessional, often without you realising it.

 

Artificial intelligence is indeed artificial, but it’s not always used intelligently – and that can damage sales, customer relationships and profitability. Embrace it by all means. Harness its ability to take out the heavy lifting of tedious tasks.

 

But don’t let it make you sloppy and unprofessional. That could prove a costly mistake for your business and its reputation.