Article Insight Survey: Using Generative AI to Improve Productivity and Customer Engagement

Early adopters of generative AI tools are reporting several benefits. As a follow-on to its June 2023 report Beyond Hypotheticals: Understanding the Real Possibilities of Generative AI, Insight gathered information on how 600 director level or above professionals at companies with 1,000+ employees are exploring generative AI.

The survey results show a large interest in generative AI and how it can help teams manage day-to-day work and deliver better outcomes.

“It’s remarkable that most IT budgets did not even anticipate generative AI a year and a half ago,” said David McCurdy, chief enterprise architect and chief technology officer at Insight. “Just about every business leader is fixated on how this technology can reinvent their operations and create new business models. That said, there’s a certain ‘finesse’ that many employees still need to acquire in order to effectively leverage generative AI in their work. As we shift gears into the next phase of adoption, advanced training will be crucial to success.”

Explore the survey results below:

Most organizations have deployed generative AI and are relying on their workforce to devise practical uses to improve the business.

• Two-thirds (66%) of business leaders say their company has deployed private, secure generative AI tools to the workforce; many (62%) also have made third-party tools available.
• Nearly 3 in 4 (72%) say their company has conducted employee training sessions on gen AI concepts and/or event prompting; fewer (56%) have distributed a formal corporate AI-use policy.
• 65% of companies have engaged employees to identify use cases.

Business leaders are finding ample reasons to use gen AI to help manage their day-to-day work.

• About 4 in 5 business leaders (78%) use gen AI tools for content generation (either written or audio/visual).
• Nearly 3 in 4 professionals (74%) say they are using gen AI at work for data analysis and visualization.
• Deeper applications to improve the business also are being readily explored, with 59% reporting using generative AI for product design and development, 52% for software development.

Companies report several benefits they are trying to achieve from generative AI initiatives, most notably improvements in productivity and customer engagement.

• More than half (54%) are trying to achieve better productivity.
• Nearly two-thirds (65%) are seeking to either improve customer service (e.g., chatbots) or how customers interact digitally with their business via web and mobile apps.
• 37% of business leaders expect gen AI to reduce human error and 35% are seeking more automated processes.
• Gen AI is seen as less impactful for deeper innovation (30%) and bottom-line growth (25%).

Relative to the many ways organizations are now using generative AI, business leaders express less concern about barriers to implement the technology.

• Security tops the list of concerns (38%).
• Notably, while the majority (72%) say they have conducted employee training sessions on gen AI concepts, employee knowledge or training on gen AI tools still presents a barrier to implementation for nearly a third (32%).
• Less than 1 in 6 professionals (15%) say ongoing maintenance costs, initial financial investment or technical debt are the greatest barriers to gen AI implementation at the company.

A majority of leaders from across the business have been tasked with helping their company define the return on investment of implementing generative AI.

• Improved customer satisfaction (65%) and enhanced service availability (60%) top the list of business goals where delineating the ROI of gen AI is a priority.
• Perhaps they have been tasked with helping their company define ROI for use cases given that 1 in 5 (20%) professionals say one of the greatest barriers to generative AI implementation at their company is lack of clarity around ROI and business value.

Survey methodology

The research was conducted online in the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Insight Enterprises among 601 U.S. adults ages 25+ who are employed full time as a director or higher at a company with 1,000+ employees. The survey was conducted from Oct. 17-27, 2023.    

Data are weighted where necessary by number of employees to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in our surveys. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within ±4.06 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. This credible interval will be wider among subsets of the surveyed population of interest.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to other multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including, but not limited to coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments.