Twilio CMO: We shrank 2 weeks of work down to one day with AI. Then the unsexy work began

Chris Koehler is CMO, Twilio.

Our marketing team used to spend more than two weeks on account research and personalized content creation for a single campaign. Now it takes under a day, and we run as many as 15 account-based campaigns a quarter, a significant jump up from our previously standard three. 

The AI model didn’t do that alone. What did was the unglamorous work underneath it. That is the unsexy part, and it’s the part most companies skip.

As Twilio’s CEO Khozema Shipchandler put it in August during our Q2 earnings, we’re not in early innings, we’re still at batting practice. 

Our results are real, but they’re the exception. Most companies aren’t there yet.

When vision keynotes and customer stories promise an autonomous future, but lived experiences don’t match up, trust fades. Surveys point the same way: 86% of companies believe customers are satisfied with their AI-powered service, but only 51% of customers agree. And much of what’s promised isn’t running at scale yet. Deloitte found only 25% of organizations have moved 40% or more of their AI pilots into production. The distance between pilot and production is where a lot of companies are losing footing.

Where we actually are

I think of enterprise AI adoption in three phases. This is my own framework, not........

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