Homo genus, the human species, evolved over many millions of years. Artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone its progressive transformations in far less time, taking only 70 years to hatch and evolve into the powerhouse it is today.
This upward trajectory, bolstered by cutting-edge breakthroughs in deep learning and neural networks, shows no signs of slowing down. Technology revolutionises our day-to-day activities in many different ways.
More and more businesses – large, small, and everything in between – are incorporating AI into their operations to boost efficiency and accuracy on different levels. These improvements often positively impact bottom lines, regardless of what a company does or sells.
However, implementing AI in business is not just smooth sailing. Many enterprises primarily focus on the concept that AI ‘makes things better’, and do not carefully weigh up where AI is needed or not needed, or beneficial or counter-beneficial.
In this article, we look at some of the core considerations regarding the adoption of AI in your business.
AI in business: what it does well
AI can perform a bunch of time-consuming activities. For example, AI for accounting or AI for admin potentially frees up a significant amount of time and empowers employers and employees to zoom in on more important tasks. Let’s take a look at the areas in which AI makes a positive difference.
Automating repetitive tasks
AI in small businesses, or any-sized business for that matter, can handle tedious tasks. It can speedily evaluate large amounts of data to improve operations and strategies, and reduce errors.
Models such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot transcribe calls to improve customer insights and services, while Motion and Gemini manage diaries to maximise your schedules.
On the accounting front, AI programs such as QuickBooks Online can effectively handle invoicing and analyse financial information.
AI call answering services route calls to the right people in your business. This function reduces call waiting times, which indirectly bumps up customer satisfaction.
Improving marketing and communication
Systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Jasper help businesses ideate and create targeted content for marketing and communications. This can be anything from product descriptions to internal emails. Grammar programs, such as Grammarly, are especially helpful when it comes to professional writing.
Improving customer satisfaction
Research indicated a spike in customer satisfaction in businesses that use AI chatbots to handle everyday queries. These ‘virtual assistants’, such as Freshchat and Kustomer, effectively address issues, such as how to access something or recall a password, without putting customers on hold.
This 24/7 AI customer support not only takes the load off human call centre staff, but also analyses customer interaction trends to identify gaps and inform better strategies. Overall, customer-oriented AI opens doors to faster response times and valuable insights.
Boosting information organisation and retrieval
Thanks to machine learning algorithms, AI can analyse and organise large amounts of data in no time.
Categorised information is easy to retrieve, which means that employees can get what they need in a jiffy. This boosts the distribution and accuracy of the company’s knowledge base, which in turn improves decision-making.
Large language models (LLMs) make it possible to pose questions (or search parameters) in everyday, conversational language. This means that people can pinpoint the information they need more quickly.
Analysis for better business
Quick analysis enables businesses to accurately identify positive and negative trends and implement the required reinforcements or corrections. These include anything from targeted marketing campaigns and better communications to service and goods dispatchments.
AI can effectively track uptrends and downtrends to inform better financial decisions – for instance, inventory control (buying less or more of certain items based on selling patterns during specific periods).
Cybersecurity
We live and do business in a digital age. Data threats can seriously harm the finances and reputation of a company, making cybersecurity a top concern.
AI security programs monitor network patterns and highlight irregularities or deviations – for example, stacked failed login attempts with varying passwords. Generative AI also uses algorithms to ‘learn’, which bumps up the ability to detect threats.
These preventive and predictive actions help companies safeguard their precious information.
AI in business: areas where AI does not make the cut
Are you wondering if replacing employees with AI is a good idea? The answer is a double-edged sword, and sound business decisions toe the line somewhere in the middle to maintain balance.
There are areas where AI comes up short. As effective and supportive as it is when it comes to collecting, analysing and predicting data, it does not have the intuition or perception of people.
Human resources
Employees are more often than not an expression of your business. When looking to fill positions, you have a certain personality type in mind. Although AI can screen CVs, it cannot determine if a candidate is a good fit for your company.
There are also a few legal issues to consider. AI learns from the data it receives. If such data contains biases, AI may adopt them and unwittingly expose your company to legal issues based on prejudice. We recommend using AI for the preliminary screening process, but rely on expert human insight when it comes to hiring and firing people.
Company content
AI-produced materials or responses are generic, and often sound or ‘read’ stale or repetitive.
Take chatbots, for instance. They are great when handling routine queries and routing people to standard information on a topic. However, when an already upset customer calls, instead of being helpful, the AI can alienate and anger them even more. It does not understand human emotions and cannot offer placating or supportive empathy as a response.
The same holds true for content, whether it is a blog, product description or campaign message. AI is on point when it comes to things such as ideation and research, but humans are needed to inject a voice, a tone, a deeper-lying connection into it.
Unregulated data distribution
Data protection is a serious matter. Many free AI tools use customer data for training and may inadvertently ‘divulge’ confidential information.
Making costly mistakes
Critical decision-making is the anchor that protects a business’s brand reputation and ensures its sustained competitiveness. Leaving strategic decisions in the hands of AI can seriously harm a company. AI can be used to follow trends and make predictions, but it is always better to check the details and numbers before making (or not making) a move.
Before onboarding AI in your business, clearly define the areas where you need it and determine how you will control it.