Artificial Intelligence: Using Technology to Make Smarter Business Decisions

The way companies operate has significantly changed over the years. We are seeing an ever-changing face of business (of all sizes) because of our increasing dependence on technology. Artificial intelligence may seem to be something for huge companies rather than your average business owners, but it can be utilized in various ways in order to improve productivity, save time and money, and create a much better customer experience.

Here are a few ways in which AI and new tech can help businesses make smarter business decisions, no matter the size of the company.

Improve customer service… There are many AI-based services that focus on helping businesses improve their customer service. Crystal, for example, uses machine learning to help businesses understand their customers better so that they can tailor their interactions. Crystal provides personality reports for your email contacts so that you can draft an email that the receiver will appreciate and even be more likely to respond. Another AI-based service is Digital Genius, which helps customer service teams “analyze incoming messages, predict meta-data and route cases”.

Manage marketing budgets… Marketing budgets for both small and large businesses can be quite limited for how complex marketing activities get. With help from technology, marketing campaigns can be supported through each step. Campaigns commonly operate across many channels, meaning that the advertising, allocation of money and overall success can fluctuate. Acquisio, for example, is an AI-powered platform that helps you manage all this and in turn, make well-informed decisions. This can mean a great difference for small businesses especially, as AI marketing solutions can help them hone in a marketing strategy, automate simple marketing tasks and monitor the budget.

Virtual assistants… Based on artificial intelligence, virtual assistants are able to create a human-like dialogue to communicate with customers. Virtual assistants, such as chat bots, can provide basic information requests, remember previous interactions by connecting with databases and provide customer care. Through online communication, they can understand what a customer is asking and answer the question appropriately as well as channel more complicated requests. As a result, businesses can deliver greater customer experiences, free up human resources for more complex issues and reduce operational costs.

Competitive analysis… AI can greatly help with daily business activities, but also with maintaining a competitive edge. There are now AI-powered competitive analysis tools that can help you stay up to date with the performance of your competitors and how you can adjust your own strategy to become more competitive. Crayon AI, for example, can help to track competitors across social media, websites and more, to notice any price and message changes. The little changes that your competitors make can give you the insight you need to understand both their strategy, as well as the direction of yours.

Technology only continues to evolve and AI is becoming further integrated into daily action. AI may have once been only associated with tech giants and high costs, but it is now more accessible. It is wise for all businesses to stay up to date with modern technology in order to best understand how it can be utilized. Artificial intelligence does not just mean robots from science fiction, but can in fact be a game changer for your business.