Business That Ignore AI Will Fail
By Sue Hirst
The Conversation Most Businesses Are Having
There’s a particular misconception sitting underneath a lot of the current conversation around AI in business.
Most discussions tend to revolve around operations. Efficiency. Automation. Productivity. Businesses are asking whether AI will replace jobs, reduce staffing needs, automate admin, or fundamentally change how work gets done internally.
And while all of that is important, I suspect the bigger shift is happening somewhere else entirely.
Not inside businesses — but between them.
Because AI is quietly changing how customers compare businesses, how they make decisions, and more importantly, how quickly they eliminate options that don’t align with what they actually want.
The Holiday Planning Exercise That Changed My Perspective
I realised this recently while planning a holiday to a region of Queensland I’d never visited before.
Like most people, I started broadly — searching for places to stay, looking through recommendations, trying to piece together an itinerary around the sort of experience I enjoy. I decided to use Ai to help narrow things down based on the types of places I usually like, the pace I wanted, and the kind of atmosphere I was hoping for.
The results were genuinely impressive. But there was still a problem.There were simply too many “good” options.
So I changed the approach entirely.
Instead of asking for accommodation suggestions generally, I asked it to find places similar to a boutique property I’d stayed at years earlier in a completely different part of the country. It wasn’t a luxury resort or anything extravagant. What made it memorable was how thoughtful it felt, beautiful gardens, relaxed spaces, friendly hosts, and an atmosphere that didn’t feel manufactured or overcrowded.
Suddenly, the search became dramatically more useful. Not because AI magically found the “perfect” place, but because it became exceptionally good at helping me avoid what I didn’t want.
Customers Are Learning to Filter Faster
As I explored reviews and comparisons, patterns became obvious very quickly.
Travellers repeatedly complained about being packed tightly into camping sites despite advertisements promising open space. Generic accommodation experiences dressed up with better marketing. Places that technically delivered what they promised, but completely missed the feeling people were actually looking for.
And that’s where I think businesses may be underestimating what’s coming.
For years, customers have done the hard work manually. Reading endless reviews. Comparing websites. Taking educated guesses. Tolerating uncertainty.
But AI is changing the speed and depth at which people can analyse information before making decisions.
Customers can now filter businesses out with remarkable precision.
Not simply because of price or convenience, but because patterns become visible faster. Repeated frustrations become easier to identify. Competitor differences become clearer. Experiences become easier to compare emotionally, not just functionally.
That changes the competitive landscape entirely. Because AI is no longer just becoming a tool businesses use internally. It’s becoming a tool customers use externally — to decide who deserves their attention in the first place.
Businesses Won’t Lose to AI; They’ll Lose to Better Experiences
And businesses that ignore this may not necessarily fail because they’re bad businesses.
They may fail because competitors become significantly easier to choose. That distinction matters.
The businesses that will likely thrive over the next few years won’t simply be the ones automating the fastest or talking about AI the loudest. They’ll be the businesses paying close attention to customer friction and using AI intelligently to understand what people are actually responding to.
- What frustrations keep appearing in reviews?
- What experiences are customers actively avoiding?
- What emotional cues keep surfacing when people describe competitors they love?
Ironically, AI may end up forcing businesses to become more human, not less.
Because once customers gain the ability to quickly filter out generic experiences, poor systems, and operational shortcuts, authenticity becomes easier to recognise — and harder to fake.
Where CFO On Call Sits in All of This
At CFO On Call, we still deeply value human judgement, relationships, and experience. Strong businesses are still built by people, not robots.
But we also recognise when systems need upgrading.
AI should not replace the thinking behind a business. It should sharpen it. It should help businesses identify blind spots faster, improve processes more intelligently, and better understand what customers are already trying to say.
Increasingly, the businesses that survive won’t necessarily be the biggest, cheapest, or most automated.
They’ll be the ones paying attention quickly enough to adapt before customers quietly move on without them noticing.
