GenAI assists writing platform Grammarly in AI strategy

To prove to enterprise customers the value that they can gain from using its products, the AI-enabled writing platform Grammarly decided to bet with potential customers.

The vendor put Grammarly in an A/B test, in which an enterprise installs two different versions of Grammarly across a group, such as a customer support team. Half the team gets all of Grammarly's generative AI and LLM writing capabilities and features. The other half gets Grammarly with most of those features turned off, but the AI writing assistant checks for the number of errors sent.

The AI assistant vendor performs this test for about two to four weeks, and then provides feedback to its potential enterprise customer.

"In all cases, the results have been positive," said Luke Behnke, head of enterprise product at Grammarly, on the latest episode of Informa TechTarget's Targeting AI podcast. "We have seen a 17% increase in customer satisfaction for customer service agents who are using Grammarly, versus those who aren't. And that's because their writing is clearer, it's more mistake-free, it sounds more on-brand, and they're able to write faster."

Grammarly's experiment is one of two ways that the AI-powered writing vendor seeks to show enterprises the benefits that they can get from a platform powered by large language models and GenAI.

Grammarly was that first kind of AI interaction that I think a lot of people didn't even realize how it was working.

However, as a vendor that built the foundation of its product with earlier AI technology, Grammarly has seen the benefits of LLMs over other AI technologies. When Grammarly launched in 2009, it used natural language processing to power its platform.

"Grammarly was that first kind of AI interaction that I think a lot of people didn't even realize how it was working," Behnke said.

Since GenAI has become widely popular, the vendor has begun to see LLMs as a way to help enterprises go beyond proofreading.

"We think we can use generative AI and those capabilities, as well as the 800-plus integrations that we support with other systems, like Salesforce, like Google Calendar, to bring these little productivity agents beyond just proofreading," Behnke said. "Everything we're doing moving forward centers on the capabilities that AI has unlocked."

Esther Shittu is an Informa TechTarget news writer and podcast host covering AI software and systems. Shaun Sutner is senior news director for Informa TechTarget's information management team, driving coverage of AI, analytics and data management technologies, and big tech and federal regulation. Together, they host the Targeting AI podcast series.