When we saw this report that 99% of CIOs and CTOs plan to spend more on generative AI, we almost handed it over to our Department of the Obvious, but it was their nap time. Fortunately, the JetRockets survey also had some non-obvious results: 50% think generative AI should be regulated and 92% are training their existing staff in generative AI rather than replacing them.
You may think that marketing is a heavy user of automation, but Jitterbit reports it is actually the second-least automated department, with IT and CX at the top. On the other hand, marketing heads the list of CX systems that companies plan to integrate in the next twelve months. You won’t be surprised that the ever-growing app landscape is the biggest obstacle to a seamless customer experience.
In the same way that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels, B2B marketers do everything that B2C marketers do with more complex data and fewer information sources. Tech can help. Demandbase just announced Buying Group AI, which uses you-know-what to identify buying team members and their roles. It’s in beta for now.
Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents. You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better. It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange. Price was not announced.