AI’s impact on morale ‘far greater than I anticipated’
ONE OF MY FAVORITE newsletters is Alan Murray’s CEO Daily from Fortune. Earlier this month, he noted that the publication held its CEO Initiative in Washington, D.C. While it took place amid major political disruption on the Hill, he said the topic that most captivated the CEOs was not politics, but generative AI. The mood among CEOs seemed “caught between FOMO (fear of missing out) and FOGI (fear of getting in).” It made me think of a recent panel discussion I listened to about how two teams are harnessing AI to sell tickets. I found the experiences from sales leaders beneficial.
▶ Kyle Pottinger, Phoenix Suns senior vice president of ticket sales and service, looked back at the team’s early learnings in using automated technology:
“It was roughly 2017, and at the time, we were a 19-win team, bottom of the standings in the NBA. We had one of the larger inside sales departments. We were celebrating hustle every day, and we had team members making 150 to 200 calls, trying to find a needle in the haystack. And our head of business intelligence came to me and said, ‘You’re celebrating hustle, but it’s wildly inefficient.’ And so, we looked at it as, ‘There’s got to be a better way. There’s got to be a smarter way to go about this.’ So, we started on the path to seeing how we can pull in AI as a complement to our sales process.
“It started as a partnership between me and our business intelligence team, and looking at this as an opportunity to improve the entire sales process. Obviously, our CFO was involved because this not being in the budget was a concern. So, we opted to give up four inside sales positions to bring in artificial intelligence and still stay within budget. It ended up being one of the best decisions we’ve made over the course of the past five years. We started off with one [intelligent virtual assistant], and now we’ve expanded to four. We use it for B2C, B2B, collections, and for the Phoenix Mercury.”
▶ Ryan Miller, vice president ticket sales and business development at AEG Sports, said they also started looking at the tech around 2017 and admitted the “investment was certainly a hurdle.” Now, six years later, he said:
“We use it in all aspects of our sales process. Every lead that comes through our system is getting put down a pipe of automation. … We are trying to be as creative as we possibly can, almost trying to break the system we currently have, to optimize it in the way that we want to use it.
“We’re using AI to cut out a lot of the busy work in the first part of the sales process. Our whole goal is just to get this to a rep and a human conversation as quickly as possible. I don’t want the AI trying to close deals. I don’t want it asking specific questions about their seat preference. I want to use the AI to get a meeting booked, set up a conversation, or get them down to the arena for a tour. So, it’s that first layer of diving through the data and just driving those conversations. I don’t want the AI to do too much. I want it to handle the more tedious process and get it to the salesperson.”
Pottinger offered an example of how the organization is using AI on collecting lapsed payments.
“In the past, the first week of the month was spent by our service team members, making outreach. … It was just an inefficient process. So, we brought in a new IVA that we deploy at the beginning of each month, and it makes outreach to these members, letting them know that they’ve missed a payment and then providing them a direct link to their account manager page, to where they can update their payment information and get back on track. To this point, 70% of the missed payments are satisfied through the artificial intelligence. We run into about 30% that need some type of additional attention from our sales team members, but it’s improved the entire collections process.”
Finally, Pottinger talked about how it’s changed the organization’s sales force — both in structure and attitude.
“The impact it has had on the team member experience has completely blown me away. The morale, the efficiency, the enjoyment of the job is just so much greater. Team members aren’t pounding out 150 calls a day anymore. They’re reaching out to leads that have raised their hand saying that they want to engage. Our team members were nervous. When we first brought in AI, they looked at this technology as something that could potentially replace their position, but it’s only improved their experience as a team member and their day-to-day job. So that’s been one of the biggest benefits for us. It definitely improves the customer experience, but the impact on team member morale has been far greater than I anticipated.”