Digital Transformation of your business is the new metric that measures and defines the success of your business. And to thrive in the dynamic business culture, you don’t necessarily have to be a leading enterprise to leverage the benefits of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
But the problem is, small and medium enterprises hesitate to adapt to any new technology trend as these might seem out of their league in terms of adaptation and capital.
But to be very clear.
AI won’t burn a hole in your pocket.
By beginning on a smaller scale and leveraging already existing solutions, organizations can efficiently harness the ability of AI and improve performance across different departments.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can seem to be an alien concept that only big tech companies are using and understanding, but this is the wrong perspective. There are many small organizations that are successfully taking advantage of AI technology.
“And if you are the ones who still fear AI, then I must tell you to prioritize its implementation in your business because your competitors will certainly won’t wait.”
> SMBs Get to the Brave New World of AI and ML
So, why should small business owners leverage AI in the business?
AI and ML can drive a significant number of advantages to your business in a number of departments, from product development, sales, customer service, and marketing to operations.
Even though AI is still evolving, it still has the potential to manage the businesses through the level of technology it provides.
As their business structure is smaller and more flexible, they can respond to the insights and opportunities faster, when compared with big tech orgazniations”
“As a matter of fact, SMBs will actually benefit more than big enterprises because they will accommodate AI technology more easily and quickly.”
Here are some of the ways that AI will benefit SMBs.
> To Deliver Effective Customer Service
It is no surprise that customer service has become a top priority of every company, no matter what size. Businesses are putting a lot of efforts to ensure that their customers are not left alone after taking up their services. One such effort is incorporating AI in the customer service process.
Four ways you can use artificial intelligence in customer support to help your support team are –
> Instant Responses
AI has the ability to handle FAQs, simple questions through live chat experiences and can also refer customers to helpful self-service articles. In addition, they are available 24 hours a day, meaning customers can get answers from your company at any time.
> Customer Engagement
By leveraging information procured from customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, AI can highlight key customer information and make it immediately accessible to agents.
> Predictive Insights
While a customer support agent isn’t able to quickly scan previous products and inventory to recommend similar items a customer may like, AI is able to do that instantly. Artificial Intelligence with predictive insights helps elevate your work.
> Increased Conversation
One of the toughest things for a support team to immediately gauge is the true importance of a customer issue. AI technology using sentiment analysis can help agents determine when to escalate issues and who should handle them. With sentiment analysis, tickets are automatically categorized as “excited”, “frustrated”, or other classifications, which helps agents understand how they should prioritize their work.
> In-depth Market Insights
AI-powered competitive analysis tools help in correctly understanding the market trends and staying ahead. These tools provide much more significant insights into the leading business processes present in the market. Some of the tools are so effective that they can help you track your competitor’s activities across various channels like social media platforms, websites, and web applications.
This enables small and medium businesses to better understand the ongoing changes, the upcoming market trends, and the new opportunities.
> Enhanced Marketing Processes
AI can help businesses create a more effective marketing and social media strategies that attract their users. Starting with –
“More than 2.6 billion active social media users and among them lies your potential customers. But the problem is, how do we reach them.”
- Recognizing the buyer’s persona
AI-powered persona tools produce insights on your customers that will help you and guide you in exhibiting processes that improve the customer experiences.
AI has a splendid ability to collect a lot of data about your audiences and allows you to create a precise buyer’s persona. This information is important for advancing personalized social media marketing campaigns.
- Social Media Monitoring
Your customer’s share a lot of information on their social media platforms. By monitoring their handles, you can easily perceive how they take up your brand. AI-powered tools can help you –
- Recognize influencers
- Identify customer’s views
- Select trending topics
- Segregate customer information
- Listen for specific brand mentions
- Content Optimization
AI-powered marketing tools optimizes your content based on key insights and in-depth analyses. This helps boost your visibility and also drives traffic to your website. AI also helps in analyzing your page to identify content improvement opportunities. Find topic gaps and use the click-and-replace feature to quickly diversify the language.
- Cost & Time Benefits
Leveraging Machine Learning by small businesses can end- up saving a lot of time and capital, which is otherwise spent on resources.
When repetitive or time-consuming work is done quickly and efficiently at the push of a button then employees are freed up to do creative work that will help the company grow.
All-in-all, let’s look at AI as a catalyst for new ways to build markets and drive new forms of innovation.
Bonus Tip
| What should SMBs consider before implementing AI?
SMEs need to consider a range of factors in order to evaluate and ensure to get the maximum return of their investment.
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Don’t be intimidated by AI
SMBs should not fear whether they should opt for AI and seize the opportunity. AI is changing the dynamics of every sector and every department in it. For the organizations who have adopted and implemented AI, initiatives have already experienced the outcome with better customer engagement, higher competitiveness, higher margins, accelerated innovation, and more productive employees. And this adheres not only to the enterprise-level but also for small to medium business owners.
— Amit Dua is the Co-Founder of Signity Solutions a company which is aimed at providing AI solutions to entrepreneurs and professionals
