Using AI To Help Your Business Flourish

Running a successful business has never been easy. Owners and operators can find themselves overseeing a whole host of operations, from financing and budgeting to recruiting and management to marketing and sales — all to keep their enterprise afloat.

This can be a formidable task for any entrepreneur, no matter how talented or experienced. However, in today’s increasingly competitive and highly volatile market, the challenges of maintaining a successful business have perhaps never been greater.

The good news, however, is that business leaders today have an array of technologies to help them manage their business effectively. Among the most promising of these tools, perhaps, is artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Indeed, you don’t have to be operating a vast multinational corporation to benefit from the power of AI.

What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

In a nutshell, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are those which deploy powerful, computer-based algorithms to automate processes previously performed by humans. AI systems are unique, however, in their capacity to improve and evolve over time through the power of machine learning.

In other words, the more work they do and the more “training” they receive, the better their performance. AI can be programmed to automate a host of processes that would otherwise consume massive amounts of time and human resources.

With the proper programming and oversight, for example, AI technologies can benefit cybersecurity processes within an organization. They do this by identifying deviations from events that they have been trained or programmed to recognize as “normal” operating procedures. Because AI technologies never get tired and never need a break, the security surveillance they provide is both continuous and, in general, highly accurate.

To be sure, AI-based cybersecurity systems cannot entirely replace the work of human security experts. These technologies can provide a powerful supplement, though, enabling human analysts to focus on oversight and other duties that cannot be automated. The end result is a more efficient, cost-effective, and cyber-secure business.

AI in Customer Service

Providing stellar customer service is essential to the success of any business, but it is especially important when you’re operating a small business with little room for error. Bad customer experiences can not only cost you the customer’s patronage, but they can also wreck the company’s reputation and drive both existing and prospective customers away.

AI systems are enormously effective in supporting customer service in myriad ways. First of all, the extraordinary analytical capabilities of AI in business operations mean that these technologies are able to rapidly collect, parse, and analyze massive quantities of customer feedback and use these analyses to identify weaknesses and opportunities in a company’s service strategies.

This allows business leaders to quickly and effectively modify operating strategies in response to customers’ evolving needs. The result is an exceptional service experience for clients and the cultivation of more effective, data-driven processes for the company.

In addition to optimizing customer analytics, AI business systems are also highly useful in engaging with clients. Chatbots, for instance, are an increasingly popular tool for responding to customers’ queries and concerns without calling on the time and efforts of human agents. Chatbots are often able to resolve customer issues autonomously — through the use of AI-driven machine learning — or to direct customers to the information they seek. When human support is needed, chatbots can triage customer concerns and direct customers to the appropriate human agent.

This creates a more efficient workflow, consuming few human resources without compromising the quality of the customer’s experience.

Automating Marketing

Similar to the use of AI in customer service, these technologies are also demonstrating their value in the arena of marketing. In much the same way that AI can be used to enhance customer service and address evolving market needs by comprehensively monitoring and analyzing customer feedback, so too can these systems evaluate external data. This might include anything from analyzing competitor data to evaluating industry trends to using predictive analytics to formulate market forecasts.

Armed with these data, marketers are better positioned than ever before to devise evidence-based, customer-driven campaigns that truly speak to the needs and interests of the target market.

AI is used for digital marketing effectively, as well. For instance, AI systems can collect and analyze data from existing customers or target demographics and create customized content for the desired client or client demographic. This also enables business leaders and marketers to automate their customer outreach strategies, including using AI to generate personalized marketing emails and online ads.

Once again, the benefits in regard to human resources are clear. With every automated process, you not only reduce the risk of human error, but you reduce time and labor costs. Employees who would otherwise have been required to devote most of their workday to generating promotional emails, for instance, can attend to other matters while AI systems execute their automated, data-driven email campaigns.

And because AI-generated content is often highly personalized, it is also far more likely to elicit a response from the intended viewer. This is due principally to the fact that relevance is a key priority in marketing automation. AI-based analytics have an unparalleled capacity for defining what customers want and need and for generating outreach strategies that speak to those wants and needs.

The Takeaway

Whether you’re running a large, established enterprise or a small startup, your ultimate mission is the same — to help your company survive and thrive for years to come. In today’s increasingly competitive and crowded global market, however, that goal is not always easy to achieve.

Nevertheless, ambitious entrepreneurs now have a host of innovations at hand to help support their company’s success. Artificial intelligence systems (AI) are proving highly effective in driving business performance across a range of functions. From customer service to automated marketing to cybersecurity, AI is ensuring excellence in all domains. The result is a leaner, more cost-efficient, and higher-performing organization — as well as a customer experience that is consistently second-to-none.