Trustworthy AI

Chapter 5Explainable

When it came to marketing efforts at BAM Inc., Chief Marketing Officer Francis was an innovator. He understood the potential in customer engagement leveraging AI, and he was determined to haul his organization into the modern era of AI‐powered marketing. Francis and his team went into the endeavor full of excitement while also knowing that they were treading on new ground for the enterprise.

It was a project with huge potential and few downsides that Francis could imagine. The AI system was a customer engagement tool that generated leads by engaging users across platforms with targeted marketing. The business that sold BAM Inc. the system boasted that the tool could increase lead generation by upwards of 20% and lead conversion by an impressive 15%. All it required was a steady flow of data from which the system could evolve over time to keep pace with the real‐world environment.

After a few weeks of operation, the trend in lead generation and conversion was clear – and it wasn't good. The system had barely moved the needle. A few weeks after that, the ROI on AI‐driven marketing efforts was actually deteriorating.

Then Francis got a call from sales. When the sales team reached out to potential customers, they heard a common refrain: Your outreach and materials are not relevant to my industry. You don't understand my business.

Sales asked Francis what was going wrong, but he couldn't explain it.

With AI tools used across all industries, yielding real impacts ...