How to Streamline Your Small Business with the Help of AI

How to Streamline Your Small Business with the Help of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is making its way into everything we do. Those recommendations for new shows on your favourite streaming platform, the facial recognition software on your smartphone, the voice-activated smart home device -- AI is integrated into all of them.

There are pros and cons to AI, which we explore below. But first, let’s look at some of the ways AI can enable small businesses to operate at lower cost and greater efficiency:

Customer service. AI-powered chatbots can be integrated into websites and communication channels, providing instant responses to common customer queries. One example is Leedoo, which provides a live chat experience for customers and website visitors to access the information they need quickly and easily. Using a tool like this also frees up your employees’ time to concentrate on more complex issues.

  • Try our chat feature below! UBC uses Leedoo’s smart chat tool to provide an interactive experience for customers and website visitors. You can book a meeting room or office tour, learn more about our services, or connect with a member of our team for more detailed requests.

Data analysis. Small businesses often generate large amounts of data, such as customer preferences, sales trends, and marketing data. AI algorithms can analyse this data, offering valuable insights that can inform decision-making processes without the need for extensive manual analysis, saving time and minimising the risk of human error.

Administrative tasks. Tasks like appointment scheduling, invoicing, and bookkeeping are essential to small business health and growth -- but they are time-consuming. AI-powered tools can automate these processes, reducing the administrative burden on your team. For instance, scheduling tools powered by AI can manage appointments, send reminders, and even reschedule appointments based on availability, streamlining the workflow and ensuring a more organised business operation.

Marketing content. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard can rapidly create content for marketing channels, such as social media, email marketing, blog posts, and more. You can even instruct an art generator tool, such as Jasper.ai, to create unique images based on your prompts. These tools can dramatically speed up the time it takes to create content, while reducing costs and enabling businesses to maintain a consistent online presence.

Transcriptions. Phone calls and recordings such as podcasts and video content can be automatically transcribed using AI tools, such as Otter. You can even have a tool that ‘sits in’ during online meetings to provide post-meeting notes along with a summary of the key points and actions. One example of a tool that can do this is Fathom.

These examples illustrate the diverse ways in which AI is becoming an integral part of day-to-day business, offering convenience, cost savings, and efficiency.

However…

AI should be supervised (by humans). Let’s say you’re writing a blog post with the help of an AI tool such as ChatGPT. Unless you’ve already spent time educating the tool on your brand style and language, it won’t create an article that matches your company tone of voice.

You may notice that its choice of language doesn’t feel quite right. It is a machine after all, and sometimes automated tools miss the nuances of human conversation and meaning.

All that means is, you should read through AI-generated content carefully and be prepared to edit and adapt it to match your brand style. Also, question where information and sources came from, and if necessary, adjust your prompts to request specific data or resources.

Pros and Cons of AI for Small Businesses

Pros:

  • AI doesn’t get tired. After a few hours in front of a laptop, humans can easily lose focus. This impacts accuracy and leads to mistakes. And although no technology is failsafe, AI tools don’t suffer from fatigue, enabling better accuracy, output, and consistency.
  • Fast results. Humans simply can’t match the speed of machines. From analysing research, to trawling through marketing data, to producing goods in a factory, AI can speed through requirements in minutes, even seconds.
  • Cost efficiency. The speed at which AI tools operate combined with the vast amount of tasks they can achieve in that time, means they are typically much cheaper than their human counterparts. However, AI always requires human intervention. By utilising AI for tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks, the human members of your team can be freed up to focus on other, more complex requirements in the business.

Cons:

  • Lack of human emotion. When you direct a machine to carry out a job normally performed by humans, you will notice a distinct lack of ‘humanness’. This could be creativity, empathy, imagination, or personalisation. That’s why it’s important to monitor your usage of AI tools, especially when using it for direct customer interaction through chatbots or marketing.
  • Ethical questions. There are security concerns over AI, ranging from hacking threats to the possibility that machines could outsmart humans in the future. Some people -- your customers included -- could be strongly against the use of AI tools in business and may even be wary of engaging with your company as a result.
  • Machines replace human jobs. You only have to look at our own history and the Industrial Revolution to know that machines can, and do, take over human jobs. This is a concern with no universal answer, which is why it’s important for companies to continually invest in their people and offer training and upskilling at every opportunity. It’s also important to note that, while AI can take over jobs, it can also create new jobs along with fresh opportunities for people to work with AI tools and develop new skills and career prospects in the process.

All things considered, while the use of AI should be carefully monitored, it can be incredibly valuable for small businesses. It can help by automating time-consuming tasks and freeing up employees’ time, enabling your team to focus on strategic aspects that can drive business growth in the future.

Do you have experience of using AI in your business? Let us know by joining the conversation on Facebook, X, and Linkedin!