27-05-2025
Checkup Time: The Lurking AI Danger That Can Kill A Successful Business
Businesses need quality data. If they operate on the wrong data, their tools can guide them in the ... More wrong direction.
When's the last time your organization had a thorough data checkup? Not just a quick scan, but a deeper, more thorough search for hidden problems that could lead to disaster? The chances are it's been far too long.
Surveys have found that the vast majority of businesses rely on stale data, which ushers in a host of hazards. 'Failing to update data regularly can have significant consequences for businesses, including targeting the wrong contacts, making decisions based on outdated information, and exposing the organization to unnecessary risks,' Moody's warns.
While these dangers have existed for decades, they've gotten far bigger in the last couple of years. Businesses are rapidly adopting and deploying AI-powered technologies that offer tremendous benefits, like vastly improved CX (customer experience). But if they operate on the wrong data, these same tools can guide an organization in the wrong directions.
Just as AI can attract customers, it can also repel them. Nextiva explained in a research survey The Leader's Guide to CX Trends in 2025, 'AI can predict what customers need, assist during live conversations, and save time through automation without making reps feel marginalized. However, poorly implemented AI will frustrate customers and drive them away.'
Data hygiene is key
One of the biggest mistakes companies make in implementing AI is poor data hygiene. 'AI learns from the data it's fed, and the results can be damaging if that data is outdated, inconsistent, or biased,' Nextiva explained in a blog post. 'Bad data can lead to inaccurate predictions, skewed insights, and poor personalization. For example, if your CRM (customer relationship management tool) includes duplicate customer records or missing information, an AI-driven email campaign could send irrelevant messages, or worse, the same message twice.'
Today's consumers want to feel that brands recognize and respect them. They want interactions to be personalized. Irrelevant or duplicate messages send the exact opposite signal. Working with organizations across a wide array of industries, I see this happen all the time.
And these days, data decays (becomes obsolete) more quickly than ever, given the rapid pace of change in both business operations and consumer habits. People constantly update what they want or need, and their expectations keep climbing higher and higher.
Sending them the wrong messages is just one way your business can go wrong. Recent research highlights other pitfalls as well. For example, a study on financial risk management found that poor data hygiene 'can expose firms to legal consequences and damage customer trust.' Also, independent researcher Anshul Vyas wrote, 'As AI models increasingly demand real-time or streaming data for predictions, the pressure on IT infrastructure, cloud security, and cyber resilience intensifies.'
Then there's the environmental impact. 'Storing and processing data has an environmental cost, so 'data hygiene' is gaining importance,' researchers Sergiu-Alexandru Ionescu, Vlad Diaconita, and Andreea-Oana Radu of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies wrote in a recent study. This problem is especially big for financial institutions, which are 'notorious for hoarding data due to regulatory needs (e.g., storing years of transaction records) and analytical ambitions,' they added.
These concerns are likely to grow as businesses put increased focus on climate efforts. In addition to tracking their carbon footprint, some are now looking at their 'nature footprint,' which the World Economic Forum describes as 'a holistic understanding of a company's impacts and dependencies on nature.'
How to get a clean bill of data health
Businesses should use data cleansing tools to automate validation, eliminate duplicate records, purge stale information, and more. They should also conduct regular audits.
It's helpful to assign a data steward as well. As defines it, 'A data steward is an information technology employee who controls the quality of data a company gathers and the method it uses to collect it. These stewards are important for a company's data security by creating and enforcing data policies.'
Crucially, businesses should combine all their communications into a single AI-powered tool like a unified customer experience management platform (UCXM). These kinds of technologies can automate numerous processes including for data hygiene, while protecting privacy and security.
The importance of data hygiene is a powerful reminder that, even in this era, humans are still in charge. AI tools are packed with potential, but even the best are only as good as the data they run on. With employees overseeing data hygiene, your business can proceed much more confidently into the new world of AI -- and trust that you'll maintain a clean bill of health.
