Summer is in sight and vacations are on people's minds--but there's no such thing as an enterprise going on holiday. Businesses need to run 24/7, which is why leaders need to take a hard look at their digital processes and ask themselves: Where can technology really step up to make a positive impact while ensuring everything's running smoothly? When you digitize the enterprise, it's easy to get your wires crossed. I've noticed something curious while meeting with business executives recently at ServiceNow's InnovationPark, which is traveling around the country to immerse customers in real-life Now Platform experiences. Regardless of industry or the size of their enterprise, these executives were telling me very similar stories.

Organizations are leaning in hard to technologies like AI to facilitate faster, more productive operations. But in a recent meeting with a large company to discuss how AI can improve their customer and support experience, I was reminded there's more to the story than zeros and ones. AI works best when you put people in the center of your efforts. After my presentation, one of their AI experts started peppering me with questions on model recommendations for different situations in the customer support journey. Valid questions, all--but she was missing a crucial part of the conversation: people. I asked her, "What behavior are you trying to change?

Your first thought likely goes to the doctors and nurses involved in an appointment or procedure. You might love your doctor. The last things healthcare practitioners want to spend time on are slow, disconnected, manual tasks. There is also a "before and after" to consider. To secure an appointment, you had to work with someone in scheduling.

When I started working as a mainframe operator in IT in 1988, I felt like I was part of a secret club. None of my family understood what I was doing; my friends would ask, "what's a mainframe and why do you have to work nights?" My onboarding took months, and a typical workday began with staring at a blank screen. Since mainframes didn't come with a mouse, I would enter memorized commands like " 3.4" and "Sys3.AF*" to navigate the data sets I needed to find. I don't think many workers today would put up with that.

Here's a fun game: Name one person you know who enjoys sitting on hold, waiting for a customer service agent to resolve an issue or answer a question. AI can transform your customer service experience--if you implement it with care. But what if I were to say that AI can enable a world where you'll never again be held hostage on hold, wincing every time the smooth jazz version of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" repeats ad nauseum? It's true--customer service and support is a prime candidate for using AI to improve the customer experience and enable the team to scale. As the person responsible for operationalizing AI within ServiceNow's customer support experience, I seek out stages in the customer journey where AI can automate processes.

Love them or hate them, chatbots are here to stay. According to Mordor Intelligence, the chatbot market will grow over 34% between 2021 and 2026, when the market is expected to reach $102 billion. Driven by advances in natural language understanding (NLU), chatbots have become a staple of digital transformation in customer service, healthcare, and financial services by providing intelligent interactions between people and a digital interface. Today, many organizations are embracing internal chatbots as a way to improve the employee experience and reduce costs. While this sounds relatively straightforward, there's a difference between implementing an internal and external chatbot.

There was a time not so long ago when certain software companies thought the world revolved around them. Those days are gone--as are some of those companies. Today, our world revolves around our customers. We're constantly iterating and innovating in a quest to supply them with the tools, deployment, account reps, developers, and intelligence to succeed. The path to workflow hyperautomation is on the horizon.

The Ancient Greek playwrights knew how to tell a good story, but occasionally found themselves searching for a way to solve whatever conflict they had concocted. So they invented the "deus ex machina"--literally, god from the machine--in which an actor playing a god was brought on stage via a mechanical device to miraculously resolve the problem as only a god can do. Where we go, AI follows--for better or for worse. These days, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming our version of the deus ex machina, promising to swoop in and solve our most pressing business problems. But, like the Greek gods, AI can be fickle and fallible.

Love them or hate them, chatbots are here to stay. That's not to say that chatbots are the be-all-end-all of customer service. Just as ATMs didn't make bank tellers obsolete, neither will chatbots fully replace "real" agents. In fact, cutting-edge customer service centers are using the technology that powers chatbots to help human agents to do their jobs better. AI can augment the human customer service experience.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have made the leap from futuristic technology to an integral part of our daily routines, from getting directions from A to B to asking Siri to play our favorite song. At work, AI enriches our lives by automating the time-consuming, mundane tasks we used to do ourselves. As an all-around data analytics evangelist at ServiceNow, I've seen firsthand how connecting data to automation can pay off--literally. And in ways you might never expect. Done right, data analytics can capture and maximize sales leads.