Three questions to ask before you buy AI for your service team

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From the new HBR Analytic Services briefing paper on AI in complex B2B service.

The coordination gap (https://czgJM04.na1.hubspotlinks.com/Ctc/RG+113/czgJM04/VVYjwv8rZVYQW4b05KC9f0SzKW7Pgndt5Wkp8bN7PgQ2K3gVDYW8wLKSR6lZ3n3W3VQPbL6gLDRhW508pWr4MTFW2MrNHWtWvFBRF4bBphQdYjbW17pryF3NP9J2W4fgLPS988Gz7W7PcDWd3TKzCSW7Z2-qt1pQ5LdW1X184v76p1fQW36mngb3VccT6W7dPK077Y87YzW5h_5B_4XmYKSW1gpBgZ2n9h2zW4jj2Lj2zS-TTV27fqN2W5h0JW1cNqRw17jtH7W5ZFZc87_mhBmW6YSpxR3-V7nDN5-Jqg7Zlg75N7Ds5W41-lSDW5w-gDQ2RggsnW1HjjRP1mjpxdW2JVpBd3HYyscW5QYp5V5_gGs8W1LGhS63jWljSVK4TYz2D2kfpW8J6x5c1CMykTW61WJQR9cK1nVf65ZvGz04 )

Hi Emre,

A tool can demo perfectly and still be wrong for your operation. Usually the demo is the problem: it shows a single interaction resolved cleanly, and your work is rarely a single interaction.

Harvard Business Review Analytic Services interviewed leaders running complex, multi-team customer operations for a briefing paper Front commissioned.

To evaluate your next AI vendor, start with these three questions from The Coordination Gap (https://czgJM04.na1.hubspotlinks.com/Ctc/RG+113/czgJM04/VVYjwv8rZVYQW4b05KC9f0SzKW7Pgndt5Wkp8bN7PgQ0Y5fr76W50kH_H6lZ3lRVr1LQz9c8Zb9W1SYRMG86sJgcN8HFmmxVYJDKW15lkms62ys0hW8xDjzq8gY_gsW9jStz78S-R22W8rgBHZ3JrVJ5W39Tfdf2Z_RvjW4FKWJ71lX5gPW5yC-xF66bKVYW3GYTqV7DtLvNW64RxsS60qM6tW7GH-BC5pKJvxN29hPZ2RTY1DW4hcNZl1FLy6WVR3tFl3km3x0VnKfY_2rRWrfW1TMW8K2BT6GdW2vNjVD8cKKF3W4YvcRR47FrR6W2GYxJ13nqXpHN3xNfJB7RP90W5MCV0M7WQ9RJVj5Nqh41Gnk_N53_B99c7PhVVrQtty96YKZ0W6KDglY7ZL0FQW749XY877z6d9W7YkZBg6kFTdBW7rXRhz6BrwNjW6tTbNs8B4mg-W8jVNZ-46qdN9f8JXKsW04 ) :

Does this preserve visibility across teams, or fragment it?

If the tool creates a new place where work happens and nobody outside that tool can see it, you have not removed coordination overhead. You have added a place for it to hide.

Does it support multi-step, multi-party workflows, or only single interactions?

Tools built for deflection assume the conversation ends at resolution. When resolution requires three people and two systems, that assumption breaks in ways that are expensive to unwind.

Can it augment human judgment, or is it trying to replace it?

The riskiest failure the research surfaced was AI making commitments to a customer before the humans responsible for delivering had aligned. The speed of the reply is not the same as the speed of the outcome.

Get the report
(https://czgJM04.na1.hubspotlinks.com/Ctc/RG+113/czgJM04/VVYjwv8rZVYQW4b05KC9f0SzKW7Pgndt5Wkp8bN7PgQ0Y5fr76W50kH_H6lZ3lRVr1LQz9c8Zb9W1SYRMG86sJgcN8HFmmxVYJDKW15lkms62ys0hW8xDjzq8gY_gsW9jStz78S-R22W8rgBHZ3JrVJ5W39Tfdf2Z_RvjW4FKWJ71lX5gPW5yC-xF66bKVYW3GYTqV7DtLvNW64RxsS60qM6tW7GH-BC5pKJvxN29hPZ2RTY1DW4hcNZl1FLy6WVR3tFl3km3x0VnKfY_2rRWrfW1TMW8K2BT6GdW2vNjVD8cKKF3W4YvcRR47FrR6W2GYxJ13nqXpHN3xNfJB7RP90W5MCV0M7WQ9RJVj5Nqh41Gnk_N53_B99c7PhVVrQtty96YKZ0W6KDglY7ZL0FQW749XY877z6d9W7YkZBg6kFTdBW7rXRhz6BrwNjW6tTbNs8B4mg-W8jVNZ-46qdN9f8JXKsW04 )

Download the report to discover which AI tools fail in practice and what industry leaders are using instead.

Best,

The Front team

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