I was walking to the office the other day when I bumped into Tam, our local ‘lollipop’ man (aka a crossing guard for those readers based in N. America), and he reminded me of the classic Aesop’s fable about the race between the tortoise and the hare.
Now, Tam has recently gone through some health challenges, and he was telling me that his doctor had informed him he was probably facing a recovery process that might take about two years.
Tam expressed some frustration at this, and the doctor reminded him that these things take time and he needed to focus on being more tortoise than hare.
Wise words.
I’ve been thinking about Aesop’s tortoise and the hare fable for a while now, particularly in reference to how organizations adopt and utilize new AI technology and how research from the likes of IBM, Accenture and MIT shows that they struggle to scale their pilots and deliver significant ROI.
As a reminder, in the classic Aesop’s fable, the hare is the undisputed favorite. He possesses the raw speed, the agility, and the flair to win. But his undoing is his overconfidence and his tendency to sprint without a long-term strategy.
Over the last couple of years, I believe we have witnessed a digital reenactment of this race, where boards have demanded immediate deployments of AI to prove innovation, and large enterprises have responded by scrambling to integrate AI into their customer service ecosystems.
However, in the complex world of enterprise customer service, speed can be a liability.
As a result, I believe, that the organizations that will actually win the AI race are the “tortoises”, those who prioritize disciplined, phased implementation over the frantic sprint of the hare.
AI Implementation Requires More Tortoise, Less Hare
Now, while this might feel like a useful analogy that could go some way to explaining some of the things happening in the enterprise space with respect to AI and customer service and experience, does it actually stack up in practice?
According to Katie Costanzo, President of CX at CSG, the answer seems to be a fairly resounding ‘yes’.
Constanzo told me that they are seeing this type of behavior play out “very clearly” and the cost of trying to be the hare is showing up in three very real ways:
Firstly, they are seeing many organizations rush into AI pilots to prove speed or innovation without a clear use case or outcome in mind, and that is resulting in wasted investment.
Secondly, when AI is deployed to deflect rather than help, then customers feel it, and this is eroding trust, both internally and externally, in the technology, and
Thirdly, many organizations that are taking more of a “hare” approach are optimizing for speed and novelty, without fixing what is genuinely broken in the experience. As a result, they are missing the real problem. If the journey is fragmented, automating it will just scale the fragmentation.
Moreover, while Costanzo concedes that the hare approach, for many enterprises, may be tempting and feel like the right competitive response, she adds that it often involves launching a high-profile, customer-facing AI application as quickly as possible to capture headlines or appease stakeholders.
In expounding on this, she said: