With the influx of artificial intelligence (AI) tools arising for businesses, it can feel overwhelming to dive into this new technological frontier if you haven’t given it a chance yet. What we are most comfortable doing is what we are used to, and AI tools can feel tricky to learn.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to incorporate AI tools into your business, even when you’re not the most tech-savvy. Before you jump to hire an AI expert, consider the following examples of ways AI can be beneficial to your business and easy to use.
What Is AI?
AI stands for artificial intelligence, and it’s best understood as a combination of computer science and datasets to enable problem-solving. AI is constantly developing and learning new information that will help to make certain jobs and tasks easier.
“Regardless of the industry, whether your company is based around services, manufacturing, consumer or business-to-business, AI will and likely already does play a role in company operations,” writes Jason Foodman, President of Rosy Salon Software.
Using AI tools to help further your business will not hurt your employees or manufacturers. Instead, it can help speed up some of their tasks. AI will find a role in pretty much any company operation, so all you have to do is figure out where it will be most beneficial.
What Are AI Tools?
AI tools are the different ways in which developers can harness the power of AI. Developers can program AI to adapt and change based on algorithms and machine learning, meaning the opportunities are endless.
“Depending on your business’s specific needs, there is an AI tool out there that can help. As your business changes and grows, AI can do so alongside you,” says Cody Candee, Founder and CEO of Bounce. “If you need help with marketing, AI has got you covered. If you need to go through some data to learn about last year’s trends, AI is already on it.”
As a result of AI’s ability to adapt, you can learn the different ways that it could be useful to your company. The more familiar you become with AI, the more clear its uses will become.
Why Is AI Important?
In this technologically advanced time period that we exist in, AI is all around us. It has the ability to assist in a variety of jobs and tasks that will help people allocate their time better. It’s not meant to take over but to help move along.
“AI holds the potential for some of the biggest advances we are going to see,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai explains.
Innovators make advancements consistently in all kinds of arenas, including the medical field, education, the arts, and technology. AI can help push these advancements forward, keep track of data, predict future needs, and problem-solve. These use cases help people — and companies — allocate their time and resources better.
How To Harness the Power of AI for Your Business
Everyone’s reasoning for using AI is different. Businesses function off of different models and utilize various departments to keep the company running. It might not be clear how AI can help your business at first, but that’s okay!
“It may seem like your business doesn’t need any outside technological assistance: Everything running is doing so smoothly, with only minor human error. Turns out, minimizing human error is exactly where AI thrives. Just combing over datasets with AI tools can help to minimize any errors before publishing data,” explains Jim Mitchell, Chief Growth Officer of Awesome CX by Transcom.
Just like your business, AI adapts to what is needed and will be the most beneficial. Even using it for grammar- and spell-checking can shave off a little bit of time and allow your employees to put their energy into other tasks. The following are different ways to incorporate AI into your business and how to be successful in doing so.
Familiarize Yourself With AI
Before you can identify how AI can help your business thrive, you need to better understand it. Reading about AI and machine learning helps us understand the ways you can use them and what the benefits are.
“There are classes online that you can take and plenty of resources out there that better explain how AI is used in businesses nowadays. It made it more clear to the business how AI could be implemented without overstepping the employee’s boundaries,” says Jack Carrere, CEO and Co-Founder of Prokeep.
Take a few courses and do some reading on what AI is so that you aren’t jumping to conclusions. Then, when you do begin to implement it into the business, you can answer questions from the rest of your team about how it might affect them.
Identify How Your Business Could Benefit from AI
Once you understand what AI is, think about the tasks of your business that are redundant or menial. These tasks might be the ones that your employees have to do but don’t love to do, like gathering data for quarterly assessments or inputting new customer information into your database. AI might be able to help without completely taking over a job.
“There are some tasks out there that no one really wants to do, but are necessary to keep track of how the business is doing. Those are the jobs that can be done by AI in a more efficient way, allowing for employees to focus more on immediate tasks,” shares Andrew Chen, Chief Product Officer of CommentSold, a company bringing the power of #1 Shopify live selling app.
If you know what your weaknesses are, consider finding ways to use AI to help strengthen them. If staying on top of entering data is difficult, AI can be programmed to sort data and create reports whenever they are needed – weekly, monthly, yearly, or at random. AI is meant to aid your business and be utilized however is most valuable!
Consider Cybersecurity Software
Keeping your employee and customer data safe is important for any business. AI can be used in cybersecurity to help monitor activity in your databases and across your company’s accounts.
“Sometimes you don’t know there is an issue until long after it’s happened. Once AI software was programmed into our security system, it alerted us to suspicious activity and put a stop to it before we could be impacted. It’s like having eyes in the back of your head!” exclaims Michael Klein, CEO of Herbaly.
Being aggressive when it comes to cybersecurity is ideal. You want your customers to know that you are protecting their data and keeping your business from cyberattacks. Using AI is one way to streamline this kind of protection.
Use AI To Help Boost Your SEO Efforts
Not only can AI generate language and text for your business to use in blogs, on your site, and in communication with customers, but it can also give you feedback and alert you to certain trends.
“If you want to be seen online, you have to be using the right language and identifying the right audience — both of which AI tools can do with the click of a button. This kind of use of AI can be a guide for your employees and help to steer them in the right direction when it comes to SEO,” guides Max Schwartzapfel, CMO of Schwartzapfel Lawyers.
AI identifies what similar companies are doing to give you suggestions on topics to write about, trends that are related to your business, and the kinds of content you could be producing.
Assist in Producing Copy for Marketing
Alongside SEO content, AI can produce copy for marketing campaigns on social media and in emails. For small companies that don’t have a huge online presence, AI might be able to help bridge the gap and set you up for success.
“Not all companies need to have a trendsetting social media page, but being able to create blog ideas and maintain email marketing campaigns through AI can help smaller businesses dip their toe into these opportunities,” advises Jaedon Khubani, VP of Business Development at Copper Fit.
You can program AI to come up with outlines that your employees can follow. While the work is still done by your staff, it helps streamline the process while giving them a bit of inspiration!
Interactive Customer Service
Your business might rely on customer service to maintain strong relationships with your customers, but you can’t expect this department to be available all the time. AI is frequently used in customer service to help figure out what the needs are of the customer before passing it along to the representative.
“Using AI to get basic information and questions out of customers has made it easier for representatives to give concise answers. It provides the team with a baseline of the customer’s needs without having to be directly involved,” shares Maggie Brown, Founder and CEO of Recess Pickleball.
AI supports customers at all parts of the day and can redirect them to solutions if a representative isn’t available. Quick response times and redirection are sometimes all a customer needs to feel cared for by a company.
Help Track Your Data
AI tools are great at conducting reviews of data and coming up with reports to track information more easily. Instead of manually entering and finding data, AI can be programmed to do so whenever new data enters the system.
“Businesses can program AI to look through data and search for connections between past customers. Once you collect this information, it’s easier to spot the company’s demographic and peak performance periods, which may help improve business strategies for the following year,” says Amanda Howland, Co-Founder of ElleVet Sciences.
AI tools that track and record data can minimize errors and spot trends more easily than the human eye can. Using AI tools in this way makes it easier for your employees to take the information and actually do something with it rather than spending most of the time collecting it.
Measure Success
AI tracks data and predicts trends, which means that it can help you measure your business’s success. Program AI to review key performance indicators (KPIs) so that you can update them as needed.
“AI tools help you recognize what is working for your business and what needs more assistance. As a result, it cues you into when you need to make changes and adapt your business to ever-changing trends,” suggests Ryan Rottman, Co-Founder and CEO of OSDB.
AI isn’t supposed to overpower your business and take control of all functions. When you use it correctly, it can show you where your success lies. This kind of information is extremely valuable and can make a good business great.
AI Can Help Refresh Your Business
You can’t escape AI tools even if you tried. They are constantly being utilized in functions and programs that you probably use for your business. The best way to adapt to AI tools is to learn the ways that you can incorporate them without feeling overwhelmed.
