Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a fantastic tool. To get started writing this article, I asked Chat GPT to write a very short summary of the value of artificial intelligence. This is what it provided:
Artificial intelligence delivers value by automating complex tasks, enhancing decision-making with data-driven insights, and enabling faster, more efficient solutions across industries—from healthcare and science to business and everyday life.
This is much more succinct and useful and much faster than anything that I would have written. AI can speed up lots of processes which makes us more efficient.
However, what happens when you charge for your time by the hour?
Being more efficient means completing tasks quicker than you previously could. If you charge for your time by the hour, then you spend less time completing work and so could end up charging less for your services.
This may be a positive as it might enable you to win work ahead of the competition who are not using AI because you are cheaper than them. However, unless you can find more work to fill the time that you have saved, you will have earnt less overall.
You could, of course, charge more for your services as you are delivering them quicker, which is presumably of benefit to your customer. However, that might not be the case and even if it is, they may not be happy to pay more. Customers typically want more for less, regardless of how you do the job so trying to get paid more for “doing less work” is a difficult ask.
There is also a slightly cynical way of looking at it. Use AI to complete the work quicker, charge for the time that it would have taken you with out it and then go on holiday in the time that you have saved!!!
However, being honest with your customer is one of the most important things you need to do in my opinion so I would not advocate that approach!
The pragmatic way to resolve this might be to charge a little more to cover your investment in AI and deliver quicker, so that both you and your customer benefit equally. However, this still requires additional sales effort to persuade the customer that this is reasonable.
To do so, you need, as ever, to understand your customer’s requirements. Do they want it quicker? Are they under time pressure? What is their budget? How well do they understand the process that you use? If you know the answers these questions, then you can determine the most appropriate way forwards.
Which ever path you choose, more sales effort is required because you are changing your typical delivery to the customer and they need to understand why and what it means to them.
So, AI can be a great blessing but be careful when you use it to deliver and ensure that your customer fully understands what you are doing.