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5 Ways AI Can Help Small Businesses

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In the quickly changing world of small business, AI is becoming a key ally. It’s already helping businesses grow, become more efficient, and make better decisions. 

 

Because AI tools are still fairly new, the future possibilities are endless—right now, companies are only scratching the surface of the AI impact on business. AI is changing, and the future holds even more potential as small-business AI evolves. In the meantime, read on to learn five ways that AI is making a difference for small businesses today.

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1. Enhancing customer service

A large portion of customer service work is spent answering repetitive and straightforward questions, which takes up valuable time. 
 
Enter AI for small businesses—a game-changing way to increase customer service efficiency. AI tools excel at automating responses to routine questions, freeing up customer service representatives or small-business owners to focus on more nuanced and personalized interactions. By automating replies to common questions, small businesses can significantly increase the efficiency of their customer service, so clients receive faster assistance, even during peak times. 
 
Impressively, you can also train AI to emulate your business’s brand voice and tone. This maintains brand consistency and creates a cohesive, personalized customer experience (CX), which is noticeably improved compared to older, more robotic sounding chatbots.

 

 

2. Boosting employee productivity

Small-business AI offers a versatile productivity aid that’s applicable across all kinds of roles and departments. Much like how AI helps customer service roles, it reduces repetitive and time-consuming tasks so employees can redirect their work to more complex projects that require creativity, strategic thinking, and a human touch

Some examples of tasks that an AI productivity tool can tackle include:

  • Streamlining administrative work, including data entry, file organization, appointment scheduling, document management, and expense tracking.
  • Improving time management by having AI analyze your work patterns and suggest prioritized task lists. 
  • Quickly catching you up on meetings you’ve missed by providing an outline from the recording with the main points and takeaways.
  • Providing employee training and professional development through AI-personalized programs that take individual learning styles and preferences into account.
  • Simplifying communication by asking AI for help writing an important email or summarizing long chat and email threads that you need to catch up on.

The AI impact on business in these scenarios goes beyond being helpful to individual employees—increased productivity and efficiency contribute to business growth overall.

3. Improving marketing efficiency

Using AI for small business marketing is a powerful and efficient way to take your marketing campaigns to the next level. The AI taps advanced algorithms and data analytics to optimize different parts of the marketing process. Here are several examples of AI for small business marketing:
  • Personalized CX. AI can draw on your existing customer data to create personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. By understanding individual preferences and behaviors, AI for small businesses delivers relevant content, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
  • Predictive analytics. Forecast future trends and consumer behaviors with AI that pulls from your historical data. This allows your marketing team to make data-driven decisions, optimize campaigns, and allocate resources properly, improving the overall impact of your marketing.
  • Lead scoring and qualification. Automate lead scoring and qualification based on prior customer interactions and behaviors, helping ensure that you prioritize leads more efficiently by focusing efforts on prospects with higher conversion potential.
  • Better-informed pricing strategies. Small-business AI can optimize pricing strategies by analyzing market trends, competitor pricing, and customer behavior. As a result, you’ll have the information you need to price products competitively and in line with market demand. 
  • Social media management. AI tools can assist in managing and scheduling social media posts, analyzing engagement metrics, and identifying the ideal times to post, helping marketers maintain an active online presence while maximizing the effect of their social media campaigns.
  • Ad targeting. AI enhances ad targeting by analyzing audience data and finding the most relevant segments. AI-driven algorithms can also improve ad campaigns in real time by adjusting bids and placements to maximize ROI.
  • Email marketing automation. By automating the email process with small-business AI, you’ll be able to segment audiences with personalized content much faster. In turn, the overall process for your team becomes streamlined, allowing employees to focus on strategy. 
  • Customer journey analysis. From initial awareness of your product or service to converting consumers into customers, small-business AI is great at analyzing the entire customer journey. And with AI suggestions for areas that could be improved, marketers can refine their strategies to create a smoother and more effective CX.

4. Strengthening data-driven insights

Traditional data analysis might involve many hours spent studying datasets and consulting others to see if their opinions about what the data say match with yours. But with small-business AI, you’ll dramatically cut down analysis time and be able to focus on strategic next steps based on the AI-provided insights. Here are some examples: 
  • Sentiment analysis. Use AI to analyze text data, such as customer reviews and social media comments, to gauge sentiment. Sentiment analysis helps you understand customer feedback, identify areas for improvement, and tailor strategies based on public perception.
  • Inventory management. Transform how you handle inventory by having AI analyze historical sales data, demand patterns, and supply chain dynamics. This helps ensure that stock levels are properly maintained, reducing holding costs and minimizing the risk of stockouts.
  • Recommendation engines. An AI-driven recommendation engine reviews customer preferences and behaviors to suggest personalized products or services. As a result, you’ll enhance the CX and increase the likelihood of upselling or cross-selling.
  • Workforce analytics. Have AI examine your workforce data to find where you need more staff, identify skill gaps, and improve employee productivity.
  • Financial analysis. Get robust insights into budgeting, cash flow forecasting, and financial performance to make more informed financial decisions and allocate resources effectively.
  • Fraud detection and security. Feel more at ease about financial transactions and online interactions with AI that detects anomalies and patterns associated with fraudulent activities. This enhances the security of small businesses by providing real-time insights and alerts, which will help mitigate potential risks.

 

Because many AI data-analysis tools are built to be conversational in nature, the learning curve is minimal—just ask the AI to perform your desired task, no formulas or code necessary.

 

5. Jumpstarting content creation 

The popular saying “content is king” has been around for so long for good reason—the quality and relevance of your content play a major role in your business’s success. Consider the following ways that AI for small businesses can assist you with content creation and ideation:
  • Brainstorming. Sometimes the biggest barrier to getting started writing new content is staring at a blank screen feeling overwhelmed. To unstick yourself, ask an AI assistant to help you come up with ideas. For example, ask it to suggest product names, how to approach making a presentation on a specific topic, or best practices for capturing an audience’s attention quickly.
  • Drafting outlines. Speed up your approach to writing longer-form content, such as white papers, blog posts, reports, and articles, by telling an AI tool the subject you’re writing about and the main points you’d like to cover. 
  • Research. As you set out to write content and specific questions occur to you, simply ask the AI. Depending on the AI tool you’re using, it may also provide you with the sources for the answers, which is helpful when determining if the answer could have any bias. 

 

Although AI is a powerful writing tool, it’s not infallible. Be sure to fact check any output you receive from it to make sure your content stays accurate and trustworthy.

Now that the benefits of AI for small businesses are stronger than ever before in terms of improving customer service, productivity, marketing, data analysis, and content, it’s compelling to think about what the future AI and small business landscape will look like as the technology continues to expand.

The Microsoft 365 team is focused on sharing resources to help you start, run, and grow your business.

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Business Insights and Ideas does not constitute professional tax or financial advice. You should contact your own tax or financial professional to discuss your situation..

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