Artificial intelligence is being adopted across senior living as never before. The surge is affecting everything from resident recruitment to operational improvements — and more. However, the all-too-common approach of appointing a senior leader to oversee AI adoption can fall short, according to a recent Harvard Business Review article.
Why? Because the czar-in-charge approach often fails to capture critical insights from frontline workers that can fuel effective implementation, wrote Sowmyanarayan Sampath, who is the executive vice president and chief executive officer for Verizon Consumer Group.
“In developing applied technologies like AI, leaders must identify opportunities within workflows. In other words, to find a use for a new piece of tech, you need to understand how stuff gets done. Czars rarely figure that out, because they are sitting too far away from the supply line of information where the work happens,” he notes.
Sampath pointed out that in his firm, AI implementation is decentralized, with frontline teams taking the lead. These teams, equipped with operational expertise, identify opportunities within workflows and drive innovation. Rather than top-down decision-making, Verizon emphasizes frontline-driven initiatives supported by a center of excellence providing necessary resources.
This alternative approach focuses on harnessing AI across three key areas: operations, network management, and customer care/sales. By leveraging AI, they aim to streamline processes, enhance customer experience, and boost efficiency.
For example, AI tools aid sales teams in anticipating customer needs, leading to personalized experiences and increased sales conversion rates.
He added that decentralizing AI implementation empowers frontline employees to make informed decisions, which leads to better customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
“We’ve empowered our frontline teams to guide us on how AI is best used to help them reduce cognitive load and provide efficiencies in the way we serve our customers, so that they can focus on human interaction, empathy, and exceeding the customer’s expectations. There’s no czar in that customer transaction. There are only decisions at the point of contact using the expertise of our frontline employees. The performance results are then sent up the chain so the whole organization can assess the process and fine tune across the enterprise,” he noted.
The full report can be found here.
