I received an email from a company with an intriguing proposal. “We work with customer success management solutions because we know what a ready Customer Success executive looks like. Actively seeking to optimize customer relationships and responding quickly to discussions on customer retention strategies. We source 8–10 of them each month and need the right team to send them. If this sounds relevant, let’s set up 15 minutes sometime this week and see if there’s a fit.” The small errors in grammar sounded human, and it seemed to be a worthwhile opportunity — so I responded, telling them that if they could deliver connections to decision-making Customer Success executives, I knew of over 600 firms that would be very interested.” Literally one minute later, my phone rang. The cheery voice announced that they were calling in response to my email and started into a spiel. I interrupted, already knowing what the answer would be. “Are you an AI?” The voice said “Yes,” and went back to the spiel. I hung up. It was definitely artificial, but not intelligent.
The Insult
I next got a fast follow-up email, this one obviously ai-generated. It didn’t address the possibility that I had raised in any way, it just pressed for me to use their calendar to schedule a call. As the email CC’d two other names, I decided to take a chance that one of them might be a human. “You frankly blew it with your ai callback, and now have added insult to the mix.” I wrote. “When/if a human finally reads my initial response to you, and finds it of interest, it may make sense to talk. Until then, thanks for giving me a perfect idea and content for my next article.”
I looked up the company’s website, and found: “Every [Name] client gets a dedicated expert who works as an extension of your team. Not a help doc. Not a chatbot. A real GTM engineer who architects your outbound strategy, configures campaigns, optimizes sequences, and makes sure the platform is producing pipeline, not just activity.” My own experience of their GTM efforts leaves me unimpressed with their claims.
Stop. Think
Using ai to generate prospecting emails makes a lot of sense — until it doesn’t. If your ai isn’t smart enough to recognize a response that may represent an opportunity that doesn’t fit the script, it’s going to turn off people in an instant as it did with me.
What’s next in the ai game? Individuals fielding their own ai agents to take over their inbox and phone lines, so that ai talks to ai forever?
