Artificial intelligence is no longer something that only tech giants have to worry about. Small businesses can use AI to tackle repetitive tasks and make operations run smoother, too.
The question that small businesses should not be asking is, “Can we use AI?”
The question that small businesses should be asking is,
“What tasks can we afford to have AI do?”
When it comes to small businesses, time is a precious commodity. If you can save your employees several hours per week by removing some of their most tedious work, then it’s worth asking if there’s an AI application for that.
Here are 10 places where small businesses can begin using AI:
1. Automate Repetitive Administrative Tasks
Many small businesses waste hours every week being bogged down doing tasks that could be automated.
For instance, many administrative tasks can be automated, such as summarizing reports, organizing documents, managing emails, taking meeting notes, or even organizing documents.
Depending on what you’re working with, different AI applications can help to make this happen.
Often times it’s not about delegating the task entirely to AI, either.
For instance, instead of spending an hour writing a meeting summary, you could let AI do a big chunk of the work and then review and comment on the summary yourself.
This makes your job easier without delegating too much responsibility to AI.
2. Automate Customer Support
Customer support can eat up hours for small businesses, especially if you find yourself answering similar questions over and over again.
That’s where AI-powered assistants come in handy.
You can automate responses to basic questions and concerns, such as hours of operation, order policies, or FAQs.
However, you should also realize that you shouldn’t leave customers on their own.
If they need help with a nuanced concern, they should be able to speak with a real person.
AI assistants should be seen as aids, not replacements.
3. Generate Ideas For Content
Many small businesses struggle to come up with content for their marketing campaigns.
This is something that AI can help with considerably, actually.
You can ask AI to brainstorm article ideas, social media post ideas, email subject lines, and even questions to add to your FAQ pages.
However, you should be wary that the content generated by AI should not be seen as a substitute for a strong human presence online.
You need to put your own ideas, experience, and personality into the content for your small business.
Use AI to jumpstart the brainstorming process, but don’t just publish whatever the software throws out at you.
4. Turn One Piece Of Content Into Many
Many people assume that you need to create something unique for each marketing campaign, social media post, article, etc.
The truth is, one piece of content can be used and built upon in different ways to suit multiple purposes.
For instance, you could take a blog post and turn it into social media posts, email newsletters, FAQs, video scripts, sales enablement content, and more.
AI can help to expedite this process.
It doesn’t always have to be starting from nothing.
You can use existing content as a place for AI to work with and build from to generate fresh ideas.
5. Analyze Customer Feedback
When it comes to customer feedback, sifting through hundreds of reviews or survey responses to find common themes can be a painstaking process.
This is where AI comes to the rescue.
AI can help sort through customer feedback and detect patterns.
You could use this to identify what your customers are talking about most, what they like or dislike most, and what changes you should make.
You don’t have to rely on AI to tell you what to do, per se, but it can help you to identify common themes.
From there, you can make an informed business decision.
6. Help With Email Campaigns
Email marketing is an important part of many small businesses’ overall marketing strategies, but it can take up a lot of time.
That’s where AI can help.
It can help you to identify what subject lines work best, organize your thoughts, rewrite email drafts, and even help to personalize messages to specific customers.
For instance, you might want to send a different type of message to a returning customer than you would to a first-time customer.
The key to success with email marketing is relevance, not quantity.
Make sure that your emails are relevant to the reader and provide value.
7. Help Employees Find Information Faster
When you get a certain size, some businesses begin to suffer from what’s known as information sprawl.
Essentially, important bits of information are buried in various nooks and crannies of the company’s data.
This is wasteful because it takes employees more time to track down a piece of information than it would take them to do the task that requires that information.
Depending on what you’re working with, AI can help to summarize documents, find information, and organize information so that it’s easier to find.
This is especially helpful for repetitive questions that come up frequently.
Instead of having to ask the same person the same question over and over again, you could implement an internal knowledge base and have AI help to organize it so that the information is easy to find.
The same goes for sensitive information.
Make sure that you’re aware of how a particular AI service handles data before uploading any private data, since some companies handle data in a way that could jeopardize it if the wrong people were to see it.
8. Help With Brainstorming Sessions
Sometimes, the problem isn’t a lack of knowledge.
It’s more about a lack of ideas.
Sometimes, when the brainstorming gets stuck, you just need something to kickstart the process.
You can ask AI for help, even here.
For instance, if you’re working on a campaign, product launch, or marketing idea, you could ask AI to generatea few ideas for you.
It’s not likely that AI will be able to come up with a winning idea on its own, but it can give you plenty of ideas to work with.
You can evaluate the ideas that it comes up with and decide what to do with them from there.
9. Create Simple Business Workflows Around AI
You’ve probably found that AI is powerful, but it takes more effort to implement AI than it’s worth.
This is where you want to focus on a simple business workflow with AI built into it.
For instance, if you’re getting dozens of customer questions every week, you could use AI to triage customer emails so that they’re sorted out by category.
This way, they’re much easier for your employees to manage.
Other examples could include having AI summarize a customer’s question so that it’s easy for your employee to respond.
Your end goal should be to let the AI do as much of the repetitive preparatory work as possible so that your employees can save time and focus on the decisions.
You shouldn’t try to implement a full suite of AI workflows at once, especially if you’re working with a small team.
Start with just one.
10. Use AI To Save Time, Not Make Decisions
One of the biggest mistakes that small businesses make is assuming that the information outputted by AI is reliable.
It isn’t.
You should always be careful about letting AI make decisions for you.
It’s important to remember that AI can make suggestions, but you should always do your own research to verify any information, especially when it comes to financial, legal, or customer-related information.
There are some places where the human touch is necessary, after all.
The best approach is usually to use a combination of both.
AI handles repetitive work, and humans make decisions with their own judgment and expertise.
How To Get Started With AI For Small Business
You don’t have to jump right into buying dozens of AI applications the moment you decide AI is right for your small business.
Start slow.
Pick one problem to solve.
Ask yourself, “What task am I spending too much time on every week?”
Once you’ve picked a task, ask yourself, “Could AI help me to streamline this task?”
Once you’ve picked a task and an AI application, test out that application to see how well it does.
See how well it performs and how much time you can actually save.
If results are promising, tweak your business workflow to optimize the process and save as much time as you can.
Once you’re happy with one process, move on to another.
This is a much safer way to get started with AI, rather than jumping in headfirst.
Closing Remarks
AI can open the door for small businesses to do things they couldn’t do before, but it’s not about the technology itself.
It’s about finding those repetitive tasks that are wasting your employees’ time and trying to find ways to streamline them.
A small business can get started by automating customer support, organizing information, generating content ideas, analyzing customer feedback, or any other repetitive administrative tasks.
The end goal should be to save time and make the business more efficient without sacrificing the human expertise that customers look for.
