In 2024, a big buy-now-pay-later company announced that its AI assistant was doing the work of 700 customer service agents.
Read that again. One tool, doing the work of 700 people.
In its first month, it handled 2.3 million conversations, about two-thirds of all support chats. Resolution time fell from 11 minutes to under 2, and repeat questions dropped by a quarter. If you’ve ever stared at an inbox full of “where’s my order?”, you know how big that is.
A year later, the company started bringing human agents back. Its CEO said cost had been the main goal, and quality suffered.
Some people read that as “AI failed.” At Ergode, we read it differently. AI did exactly what it was aimed at. It was aimed at “spend less,” so that’s what it delivered. Put skilled humans back at the wheel, and the tool gets pointed at the right thing.
Here’s the simplest way we’ve found to explain AI: it’s like cloning yourself, minus the emotional baggage. A clone that doesn’t get tired, doesn’t have a bad Monday, and doesn’t mind when you say “redo it.”
But a clone only knows what you teach it. Ten times zero is still zero, and ten times a sharp marketer, buyer or analyst is a force. That’s why your skills matter more now, not less.
In a Harvard and BCG study, consultants using AI finished about 25% faster, and their work was rated over 40% higher in quality. Same people, same brains, plus a clone.
Start with something so boring you’ve stopped noticing it. A furniture distributor with 1,500+ products used AI to turn raw product data into on-brand copy for each marketplace and cut content creation time by 75%. The owner says unit sales doubled on the same traffic, though that’s self-reported, so treat it as promising, not guaranteed.
To pick your own first task, ask three questions:
Three yeses? Hand over the first draft and be the editor.
Question two matters because even superheroes check the map. In that same study, on a task outside AI’s strengths, consultants answered correctly almost 20 percentage points less often. AI sounds confident either way. Your expertise is the quality check.
Shoppers have already moved. Adobe expects AI-referred traffic to retail sites to jump 130% this holiday season. Early adopters set the pace.
We picked up AI early, and we love it. Planning, reporting, analysis, even hiring: in almost every team, someone has built an automation so nobody does the same task twice. It always starts the same way: someone says, “I’m sick of doing this,” and builds a clone for it.
The people who get the most from AI don’t write magic prompts. They give it context, push back on the first draft, and treat it like a brilliant right hand who still needs a boss.
If that sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you. Send your resume to info@ergode.com and tell us the one thing you’ve automated that you’re proudest of.
And if you’re just starting? Pick one boring task tonight, run the three questions, and meet your first clone.
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