The world of work is changing
It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise. Currently, the market value for AI is almost $100 billion USD and that number is expected to grow to nearly $2 trillion USD by 2030. And with ChatGPT and other generative AI tools going viral near the end of 2022, it raised the question: “How can businesses use AI to their benefit?”
Big corporations like IBM, Microsoft and Samsung are racing to leverage this new technology. But can a small business use AI to enhance areas like customer service and online marketing? Absolutely! We’ll explain how you can leverage AI, and provide you with real-world applications to inspire your marketing efforts, improve customer experience and streamline operations.
Why use AI for your small business?
Before we get into the benefits, you might be wondering what advantage AI has over other solutions. After all, why should you invest in a tool that’s relatively new and untested? Here are a few examples of how AI has helped businesses succeed in a variety of industries:
- Retailers have used AI to improve online marketing efforts, optimize supply chains and even predict optimal staffing levels.
- The pharmaceutical industry has used AI to perform data analysis and predictions that have helped speed up drug development.
- The financial industry has used AI machine learning to flag online patterns and activity that indicate fraudulent behaviour.
What exactly is AI?
Simply put, AI is the capacity of a computer to perform operations akin to the learning and decision-making capabilities of humans. Since its inception in the 1950s, AI has continued to become “smarter”.
What benefits can AI offer your business?
Here are some of the ways AI can streamline decision-making, personalize customer service and more.
Efficiency and productivity
AI technology handles tasks at a pace and scale that humans can’t match, which makes it ideal for time-consuming projects. For example, in finance, AI can analyze vast amounts of data to accurately inform business leaders with its insights and help them reach a decision. And in manufacturing, AI is used to predict when machinery needs repairs or maintenance, which reduces the need for inspections. However, this doesn’t mean that human workers are out of work. With AI taking over simpler, repetitive tasks, this frees up your teammates to work on projects that are more important to your business.
New capabilities
Introducing AI to a traditional industry can help you tap into new business opportunities. One example is how self-driving car companies collect a lot of safety data from every ride, allowing them to improve existing services while also creating new revenue streams related to insurance. Similarly, an insurance company can use AI to analyse reports and find new solutions for cutting-edge technology like self-driving cars.
Better customer service
Delivering a positive customer service experience is vital for any business. And despite being a machine, AI can help you build more meaningful and personalized relationships with customers. How can a machine take the place of a customer support assistant? While more complex customer questions and concerns still need the nuance and sensitivity of a human contact, there are many kinds of simple inquiries that an AI can easily handle, such as:
- Troubleshooting
- Order tracking
- Subscription management
- Booking appointments
Because an AI isn’t human, it’s always available 24/7 and can take on as many, or even more queries than a customer support team. This frees up capacity for your customer support staff, allowing them to save their energy and time for only the most challenging or complex questions.
Cybersecurity
AI’s monitoring and data analysis capabilities prove to be effective in the realm of cybersecurity operations as well. AI systems can identify cyberattacks and other types of cyber threats by monitoring patterns in data input. When a threat is detected, AI systems can backtrack through the data to locate its source and aid in preventing future attacks. The addition of an always-on, AI-powered cybersecurity system can greatly benefit the preservation of your infrastructure.
How to use ChatGPT and generative AI to enhance online marketing
While we’ve covered the various ways AI can generally help a business find success, it’s time to talk about ChatGPT, one of the most popular and cost-efficient AI tools currently available to the public. ChatGPT is a generative AI tool, which means it can create content based on any written prompts it’s given. How can this help your online marketing efforts? Just input the right prompts, and your marketing team will be able to quickly:
- Generate new ideas: Whether it’s topics for a blog post or a tagline for a social media ad campaign, asking ChatGPT to give you a range of ideas to choose from can speed up your team’s brainstorming process.
- Simplify complex content: You can ask ChatGPT to simplify content to a different reading level or streamline it to read more smoothly.
- Summarize research: It can be hard to figure out what to focus on when you have gathered a lot of data like customer interviews and written survey results. Just ask ChatGPT to summarize the key points and you’ll be able to quickly hone in on what’s important.
- Repurpose content to different formats: If you’ve written a social media post that’s part of a larger marketing campaign, you can ask ChatGPT to adapt that post into a different format. For example, instantly turn it into a blog article or a lead nurture email. This works the other way too, so you can turn an ebook into a series of social posts.
These are just some of the ways generative AI can be used to power your marketing efforts and speed up the overall content creation process. ChatGPT is a time-saving tool that any business can benefit from, and best of all, the basic version is completely free to use.
It’s time to adapt to an AI-powered workforce
As the market value for AI is rapidly growing, businesses of any size can leverage AI tools to enhance various areas of their operations. AI can streamline decision-making, improve customer service and even open up opportunities for new capabilities. ChatGPT, in particular, is a cost-effective tool that can help businesses generate new ideas, simplify content, summarize research and adapt content to different formats. By incorporating AI into their strategies, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and find success in today’s changing world.