It feels like the entire CRM industry is racing to add AI anywhere they can. Finding data, pulling numbers, generating reports automatically. Sounds great…in theory.
Except it doesn’t work.
The results are full of errors and made-up information. You ask for donor trends and get numbers that don’t match your actual records. You request a ticket sales breakdown and receive confident answers that are confidently wrong. You end up spending more time verifying the AI’s work than you saved.
That’s not innovation. That’s a promise the product can’t keep.
The Hallucination Problem
While AI will eventually become reliable, here’s what nobody in the industry likes to admit: AI isn’t ready to find and pull your data. The technology hallucinates. It invents. It confidently presents fiction as fact. The more unique your data, the bigger the issues.
For arts organizations where every dollar matters, where niche data abounds, where fundraising decisions depend on reliable data, this isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s a liability. 🚨
We’ve been watching other platforms rush AI features to market. We see the demos. We also see what happened when real organizations tried to use them with real data.
It isn’t pretty.
Where AI Actually Excels
At UpStage, we knew that wasn’t the game to play. We asked a different question: where does AI actually deliver value without the risk?
Here’s what we discovered: AI struggles when you ask it to find and pull data. Too many variables, too many opportunities for hallucination. But once you’re looking at real data? It’s remarkable.
Organizing. Grouping. Calculating. Reshaping. All through plain English conversation.
This is why we decided to integrate our AI Assistant to focus on data you’re already viewing. You use our existing user friendly reporting setup to run the query and pull the data. That process is 100reliable. Now the AI helps you organize and analyze it:
- “Group by user email.” There’s your pivot table.
- “Show total revenue by event and ticket type with columns for ticket revenue and fees.” Subgroups with totals per ticket type and event, calculated instantly.
- “Find patrons who bought two or more tickets AND donated $20 or more.” Used to take an hour. Now, seconds.
No errors. No mysterious results. No hallucinations. Just your data, transformed the moment you ask. ✨
The Difference Between AI Theater And AI That Works
Most vendors are adding AI because everyone else is. Check the box. Update the marketing. Hope customers don’t notice when it fails. 😰
We chose a different path: add AI only where it genuinely solves a problem.
That meant saying no to flashy features that demo well but fail in practice. It meant investing in the work of incorporating AI that operates within boundaries where it actually excels. It meant honest self-evaluation and accepting that we needed to update our own data practices to maximize what AI can do, not take the lazy way out and force AI to do what it can’t.
The result? Reporting that feels like a conversation instead of a wrestling match.
Questions To Ask Every CRM Provider
As more vendors rush AI to market, protect yourself with these questions:
- Does your AI find and pull data, or does it analyze data I’ve already pulled?
- How do you prevent hallucinations and verify accuracy?
- Can you show me the AI working with my actual data, not demo data?
- What happens when the AI gets something wrong?
- How did you update your own platform to maximize AI’s strengths, or did you force AI into existing workflows?
- Is this AI solving a real problem, or checking a marketing box?
The answers will tell you everything about whether you’re getting genuine innovation or AI theater. 🎭
See It In Action
Enough reading. Watch the AI Assistant transform reporting in real time.
