What is AI and why should small businesses care?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology that offers the possibility of building smart applications and machines to do our work for us. The impact of AI on society and business is expected to be enormous. It will significantly reduce the cost of doing business for SMEs and create opportunities where none has existed before.
The first step in understanding AI and how it can help your business is to understand what it could mean to you.
Artificial Intelligence and Small Business
Much has been said about artificial intelligence and its potential impact on business. As we move towards a future where AI becomes more prevalent and powerful, businesses that learn to leverage its potential are going to be the ones that thrive.
While we can only speculate on how soon artificial intelligence will make its way into our daily lives, it’s already making small inroads into our day-to-day activities. Here are four ways that AI is helping small businesses grow.
Improving customer service with AI
Customer service is one of the most important aspects of the business. The success or failure of a company depends on how well they treat their customers. A company that has poor customer service will be punished by consumers who will take their business elsewhere, but so will one that has great customer service.
That’s because the bar is continually being moved higher and higher by companies that are already doing a good job. What was once considered to be exceptional service is now expected, leaving companies looking to stand out in a big way.
Welcome to the age of artificial intelligence (AI). The days of talking to an agent who does not understand your concerns are gone. AI offers multiple means to reboot your customer service, customer support, and client relations for the better.
AI-powered chatbots for small business customer support
Chatbots are one of the hottest trends in digital marketing right now. A chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet. Chatbots can be built for many different uses, but most current chatbots are used for simple, specific purposes.
Chatbots are a hot topic, and they are sure to remain a hot topic in the coming years. They serve as excellent service to small businesses and entrepreneurs looking to get help with their customer support management. It is a type of software application that can be deployed as a virtual agent interacting with the user through text or audio.
To make things better chatbots can easily handle multi-language situations.
Chatbots can handle a variety of different tasks, such as setting up meetings, making recommendations, answering questions, organizing files, managing workflow and so much more!
Long story short, if you’re looking for an engaging way to provide instant customer support, a chatbot might be your answer.
If you are looking for an area where you can try your hands on AI for your small business, a chatbot might be your answer.
Are AI-powered chatbots beneficial for small businesses?
An AI-powered chatbot will streamline your customer support process by answering common questions that customers have and interacting with them in a more personal way. A chatbot is ideal for responding to queries that frequently come up, and require the same answer over and over again,
Which is, let’s face it, about 85% of customer support.
Well-built chatbots will also do a good job in ‘escalating’ other inquires, that don’t fit the above category and forward them to an actual human.
So yes, chatbots for customer service are a really failsafe and ideal way to move forward any small business.
AI in sales for small businesses
Sales is a tough gig for most companies and in most business segments.
It’s always been the case: you can develop the best product in the world, but only to very little use if you are unable to sell it.
AI-powered sales assistants, while won’t provide a plug-and-play solution, can be transformative in streamlining a business’ sales procedure, increasing its efficiency, and ultimately moving the needle for the entire company.
AI can also change how sales teams interact with clients, by increasing their productivity and providing more in-depth information about their customers.
By using AI, sales teams can streamline some of the most time-consuming processes that they go through on a daily basis.
For example, they can use it to set up meetings with prospects or connect with relevant decision-makers at target organizations.
Or, in other scenarios, sales teams can use AI to be elaborate and consistent in all their follow-up and follow-through efforts.
Finally, AI will be able to help the whole company (not just sales) move towards making decisions based on actual data, and not just on gut feelings.
Gut feelings are great, don’t get me wrong, but on the grand average data-based decisions will prove more effective.
AI in product testing and quality assurance
Research shows that artificial intelligence is going to play a major role in the future of product testing and quality assurance. AI is going to be used to sift through the massive amount of data involved in testing a product, and it will help companies reduce their costs and improve their bottom line.
When AI is applied to product testing, it can scan through all the test results much faster than a human ever could. It can analyze these results quicker, too, and pick up on little patterns and nuances that might have taken years for a human to discover.
Amazon’s AI-based services offer readily available solutions for looking for product deficiencies on product images or looking for product deficiencies using product metrics.
Imagine this: you put a camera at the end of your production line, and an AI application will immediately let you know if a freshly made product is deficient or not, with no human labor involved.
Artificial Intelligence is a key technology that can help businesses improve the quality of their products and get faster to market with innovative features. It’s like having your own personal assistant that can run thousands of tests in parallel, 24/7, and instantly alert you when something goes wrong.
AI in optimizing work hours for small businesses
Human costs like salaries, recruitment are still the biggest expenses to any given company be it an SME or an international organization.
So it’s always wise to make the most of the workforce you already have on board.
Recent developments in artificial intelligence have led to new features in scheduling systems that are able to optimize work hours for employees. These include the ability of the computer-generated schedules to predict employee attendance and even make suggestions for improvement.
While AI is not perfect and still has limitations, it’s up to companies to take advantage of these capabilities by integrating them into their scheduling policies.
This will lead to a better-equipped and ideally better-motivated workforce and will allow people to work smarter instead of harder.
AI in security for small businesses
Artificial intelligence can be used to protect small businesses as well as larger ones.
Technology is changing the way we handle information and make decisions.
The security of small businesses is still a big concern, even though most of them are not aware of it.
When it comes to online security, most of the time, small companies rely on inexpensive antivirus software or firewall solutions that are unable to protect them from cyber-attacks.
This is a very common problem because most small businesses don’t have IT staff and they don’t know how to secure their networks.
Small business is one of the biggest markets for cybersecurity. Small businesses are more vulnerable to security threats than large companies because they do not have the resources and money to invest in advanced technologies and solutions.
Their vulnerabilities, on the other hand, are even bigger than that of a large company, by virtue of the simple fact that a large company is a lot more diversified.
To solve this problem, AI developers create AI-based security solutions for small businesses day in day out focusing on the needs of the segment.
AI-powered content management for small businesses
Artificial Intelligence is an amazing thing. As it becomes more and more advanced, we see AI being used to create content in nearly every industry.
For example, some AI applications can help companies create more engaging content. Softwares use machine learning to automatically read documents and abstract key points into shorter summaries that are easier to read and understand.
Today, small businesses are using AI to create targeted, relevant content for social media posts, blogs, and landing pages.
These content elements can then be further optimized based on user data to generate more engagement, user interaction, and ultimately more sales.
Sounds attractive, huh?
AI for process optimization for small businesses
AI is a great tool for business owners to use in order to streamline processes and ensure that employees are working efficiently. That’s because AI can take in data, analyze it and provide insights that help owners make better decisions. The data that AI uses is available through big data analytics, which has gained popularity recently due to its use by big corporations.
Making data-driven decisions can be a huge win for small businesses, especially as this area used to be a privilege of giant companies that acquired tons of data and had the resources to process it.
Now, with the help of artificial intelligence both of these requirements become within reach for small businesses as well.
AI for reporting and forecasting for small businesses
At the moment, most small business owners do not trust AI with their data. They don’t understand it and they don’t trust that it will keep their data private. This is a big problem because in a few years AI is likely to become one of the key factors for success in driving a small business forward in the future.
One such task is reporting and forecasting. Companies can use AI to analyze previous data, identify trends, and predict future outcomes. The result is a decision support system that’s always ready to provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision.
The consequence of this decision can then be something that is the difference between business success and failure.
AI-based collaboration tools for small businesses
With a global pandemic being around, online collaboration tools have become essential in communication and team-working today.
We live in a world that is more connected than ever, yet we are forced to social distance and work remotely.
Artificial intelligence is changing the way that we interact with each other and streamlining the way we do business. Thanks to AI, collaboration tools are becoming smarter, more efficient, and easier than ever before.
With businesses and consumers interacting with one another through messaging apps more regularly than ever, AI-based messaging platforms are providing companies with a way to provide better service to their
AI-based collaboration tools have also evolved to be more than just a place for data storage but a platform for communication, sharing, and brainstorming ideas.
Collaboration tools have a lot of potential in the workplace, but they’re not always easy to use. Many collaboration tools are overly complex, or they have a steep learning curve.
AI-based collaboration tools can help solve these issues.
With AI-based collaboration tools, users can create and edit documents through voice commands and speech-to-text technology. The AI will automatically suggest revisions that make the document more accurate, and it will allow people who speak different languages to collaborate seamlessly.
AI for small businesses
All in all, artificial intelligence has been around for years, but it has only gained momentum in recent years.
With the help of AI, small businesses can automate tedious tasks and manage their operations more effectively.
If a small business has the right data, it can use AI to develop solutions that are specifically tailored for its needs.
There are many ways that small businesses can make use of artificial intelligence technology. We’ve covered some simple ways that you can get started with AI today!
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