GenAI Unleashed: A Leader’s Guide for Maximizing Global Impact in Talent Management, Content Creation, and Customer Support

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

The global marketplace is constantly evolving, and business leaders who want to get ahead of these evolutions can use all the help they can get. The complexities of leading a global enterprise are several orders more difficult than having a successful presence in one geographic region. Luckily, technologies have evolved exponentially to support worldwide expansion and sustainability.

As we near the end of 2023, we are hearing more and more about the impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in the workplace. Using it can be a game-changer for companies operating worldwide in many ways. Still, three usage areas stand out: talent management, content creation and delivery, and customer support. GenAi can transform the operations in these three areas to maximize the global impact of an enterprise. 

Talent Management 

The Conference Board 2023 C-Suite Outlook survey finds that “Despite recession expectations, attracting and retaining talent tops the list of CEOs’ internal concerns. Talent ranks 1st among internal worries for CEOs worldwide.” 

Today, employees expect flexibility in where and when they work, and remote working is possible for knowledge workers. As a global company leader, wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could ask an app to find you a suitable candidate from anywhere in the world (or select regions) for an important project that is coming up? What if you could have this app suggest several candidates from your local office and any global location? 

Conversely, what if all of your employees can find opportunities anywhere in the world and not be limited by where they currently happen to be? That is precisely what one multinational has achieved with the help of AI.

A recent CIO article, “Schneider Electric leverages AI to help develop employees’ careers,” showcases the company’s Open Talent Platform (OTP) that leverages AI to facilitate leaders finding talent and employees finding opportunities to grow their careers. The article says the platform “gives employees more agency around identifying mentorship opportunities, upskilling, and growing their networks within the organization. Using AI, the platform scans user profiles to identify the right skills for projects in the organization or to pair up mentors and mentees who would be a good fit for each other. It even enables employees to market their skillsets internally.” The article quotes Shannon Booth, senior talent development partner at Schneider Electric, as saying, “It really accelerates connections.“ Imagine employees being able to build relations with not only those who are co-located in the same office or geographical region but across the world, just like the 120,000-plus global employees at Schneider Electric.

With the help of AI, leaders can overcome the talent shortage problem. Of course, there is an upfront investment required in the form of creating a secure app that is specific to the company. 

Beyond finding talent, GenAI can help employees become more efficient in their jobs in myriad ways. For example, middle managers may be able to get help in their mundane tasks, such as writing emails and memos faster, and use the time to coach and train their team members.

Content Management

“Content is King” is a quote often attributed to Bill Gates, based on his 1996 essay with the same title. In this essay, Gates said,

“Over time, the breadth of information on the Internet will be enormous, which will make it compelling. Although the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of localized content becomes available in different countries.”

If content is king, GenAI is king in producing content at scale. It can produce high-quality content for all kinds of purposes―videos, marketing collateral, blogs, reports, and training material. But it doesn’t end there. It can produce content for consumption by different geographies and in many languages, accounting for cultural differences. The power of efficiently delivering targeted content is priceless for multinationals.

Images and videos can be created with tools such as Midjourney. Since the turnaround time is so short, creative staff can experiment until they find what they like. 

Writing good content is only half the battle in winning with an audience. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical to making the content discoverable on the web. GenAI’s power to optimize content with razor-sharp precision makes it possible to deliver content that is sure to be discovered by precisely the audience for which it is created. GenAI shines when it comes to tailoring content with keywords. If my Career Strategy class students can tailor their resumes for a specific open position using ChatGPT, imagine what your content marketing staff can do with the tool. 

The tools that create content can’t do it alone. Humans need to work with them to ensure the content is appropriate. Think “Augmentation.” This approach can also help you with copyright laws that are still evolving.

Brandon Copple, Head of Content Creation at Descript, writes, “You can’t copyright AI-generated images, writing, video, or anything, according to a ruling by the U.S. Copyright Office. So if somebody else wants to reuse something you made using ChatGPT, DALL-E, or any other AI tools, they can, and there’s nothing you can do about it, legally…” in his article, “Can you copyright the content you make with generative AI?” His advice to content creators: “…if you’re using GenAI tools to create any part of your content—the cover art for your podcast, the background for your video, anything—the best thing you can do is to be sure you’re employing as much human creativity in the process as possible. This might mean writing prompts with as much detail as possible—well beyond just suggesting ideas. You’ll want to be able to show you had a specific expression of your ideas in mind, and you just used the AI as a tool to generate it.”

Customer Support

We have had chatbots as the first level of support in many enterprises for quite some time. With the explosion of powerful Large Language Models (LLMs), the ability of the chatbots has increased multi-fold. Recently, Zendesk, a premier support platform, announced advanced capabilities using GenAI. It lists Intelligent triage that “Uses intent detection, language detection, and sentiment analysis to create powerful, intelligent workflows that get smarter over time, classify incoming customer requests, and allow teams to power workflows based on these insights.”

Imagine a multinational support agent in India whose native language is Tamil communicating with a customer in the UK via email. An app called Mida can translate an email written in Tamil into perfect British English that the customer can understand and the customer’s email into Tamil that the agent can comprehend. 

While it is true that translation capabilities have existed, they have been limited in the languages they can handle and the fidelity of the translations. In a LinkedIn post, Mida’s creator, Jason Lin, a Stanford student, says, “Our app listens to hundreds of languages (Chinese, English, Hindi, even multiple languages in the same sentence) and turns it into polished, professional English. It’s pretty magical!” 

With GenAI, real-time translation of support calls is becoming a reality, irrespective of where the support agents are located or what language they speak. 

Recently, Spotify announced a Voice Translation Pilot that can let you hear your favorite podcast in your native language but in the original speaker’s voice. The same technology has the potential to allow your customer support person in Thailand, speaking in Thai, to be heard in English, but as if spoken by the customer support agent. The support agent is free to talk in her language, which is natural for her, yet the customer in the US can hear it in flawless English. 

As mentioned under content management, customer support knowledge bases and troubleshooting guides can be easily translated into multiple languages with GenAI tools. Additionally, all support operations are ripe for automation using AI.

Leverage The Power of GenAI to Thrive as a Multinational

There are many ways to use AI in running a global enterprise. Talent management, content management, and customer support stand out as areas that can benefit tremendously from using GenAI. Focusing on these areas can propel your global business past competitors and deliver outstanding customer service.

If you have not given it much thought, I invite you to read my article, Riding The Wave of Generative AI: Tips for Enterprise Leaders, and get started.

Written by Shantha Mohan Ph.D.

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