2023 was a year of Gen AI hype. 2024 will be the year of Gen AI value. In 2023, it was all about imagining the possibilities with AI, getting AI into the hands of customers and iterating. But now the dust is settling and 2024 is going to be the year of clearly driving value with Gen AI.
The question companies should be asking is: where are we seeing real value from AI? Not just quick wins, but where is AI having a meaningful business impact? Being quick to market does not mean much if your customers or business aren’t seeing tangible results.
The best way to understand what is driving value is through usage. More importantly, repeat usage. If customers tried a new AI feature but never came back to it, it’s probably not a real value driver. Instead, look for the functionality that’s becoming part of their everyday workflow. That’s a great leading indicator for value.
This is exactly what we’re focused on at HubSpot. We launched HubSpot AI last year with dozens of new features and functionality baked into our platform. That has helped us learn what has the potential to drive meaningful value and where we should focus. We also have been experimenting with our own internal AI tools for HubSpot teams and are beginning to see what drives real results.
Some early trends:
In marketing, our customers are using AI Assistant for content creation. They can highlight the content they want to modify right in the editor, and use AI commands to quickly summarize it, expand on it, or put it in a different tone of voice. We’re seeing customers use this feature a lot across blogging, social media, and web pages. It not only saves time, but also helps them get unstuck with drafting.
On the sales side, we’ve been piloting ‘guided selling’ AI plays with our own sales team. One experiment I’m excited about is AI-powered call insights, which flags in-flight deals as ‘At Risk’ based on call recordings. That enables reps and managers to quickly identify pipeline risk, without any manual work. We’ve seen a boost in our win rate on risky deals as a result, showing early signs of the impact AI can have in ‘guiding’ sales teams to better outcomes with context.
Last but not least, Customer Success is ripe for innovation with AI. We’ve recently seen an uptick in customers using AI Assistants to scale their support and services efforts while keeping their teams small. Specifically, they’re using the Summarize Conversation functionality to document key insights from customer calls for smoother handoffs and next steps. They’re also using AI text commands in the Inbox editor to save time and answer support queries faster.
We have much more to learn and I’m excited to keep seeing what is (and isn’t!) driving real value with AI.
What’s driving value for you or your customers?
#GenerativeAI #HubSpotAI #growbetter
