Spice It Up: How AI can be Used for Small Business Opportunities
Not only the preserve of large enterprises, AI tools can benefit your small business too
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are often associated with tech giants such as Google or Amazon, but they’re also highly useful for small business opportunities. Of course, there’ll always be naysayers who come along with quips like, “Small businesses don’t have the budget” or “You just don’t have the resources”, and it can be difficult to block out these dissenting voices.
The truth is, AI is not just for billion-dollar-budget companies; it’s fast becoming widely available to small businesses and they’re delivering awesome customer experiences using this technology. Let’s take a look at how AI can be used to increase small business opportunities.
Smart customer relationship management (CRM) systems
CRM systems are tools that are designed to compile information about consumers across different channels. They provide your sales force with the data they need, and with an integrated environment to manage interactions with customers.
Today, your small business can benefit from “smart” CRM systems which have artificial intelligence functionality embedded into them. These CRMs can analyze consumer sentiments in recorded phone conversations, emails, and social media posts and enable salespeople to adjust their methods accordingly. You can get a better understanding of customer wants and needs and provide personalized replies to queries thanks to this smart CRM system and the data it gathers.
Chatty chatbots for customer experience
By now, you’ve heard of chatbots in some way, shape or form. One of the advantages of artificial intelligence is that you can easily create chatbots with one of the many options out there, such as the easy-to-use Clickatell Touch.
Chatbot builders like Touch allow you to easily build a personalized chatbot that works across any number of platforms, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Twitter.
Chatbots are extremely useful for small businesses that might be short on manpower and need a simple yet effective way to deal with customers.
A chatbot has the ability to reply to customer queries based on previous interactions and give useful answers. This can save you time and cut your costs significantly, as you’ll retain customers and won’t have to train new staff to deal with them.
Personalized digital assistants
If there’s one thing that all small business owners need more of, it’s time. And one of the many advantages of artificial intelligence is that it has produced personalized digital assistants to help with mundane tasks that take up much-needed time and effort.
Incorporating a digital assistant into your work will help to alleviate your workload and remove the huge amount of guesswork needed for sales.
You can program the assistant to set up automated sales messages to customers from different time zones and provide a reply that best fits with the customer query. A digital assistant can also manage your schedule by creating alerts for important dates and reminders for meetings.
Competitive intelligence for an edge
If your competitors are producing gigabytes of content every day, it can be difficult to keep track of their strategies. But, knowing your competitors well is crucial to reacting to market trends and staying competitive.
There is AI software available on the market that can analyze and track your competitors, such as Crayon. The AI in Crayon can help you to track your competitors across different channels and identify changes in pricing, marketing, and PR strategies. As far as small business opportunities go, knowing what your competition is doing can be highly beneficial. You’ll never be blindsided again by changes in a competitor’s strategy thanks to the advantages of artificial intelligence.
Determine your market fit perfectly
If you are a small business that is just starting out, you might not have a clear idea of your market fit yet.
You can use AI-enabled tools to help you to determine your product-market fit by tapping into the power of machine learning.
Instead of having to spend valuable time pouring over pages and pages of data manually, you can use AI to collect and analyze market data. You can then use this data to create more targeted advertisements instead of blindly sending out ads to consumers. Once you’ve determined your market fit, you’ll be able to improve your marketing strategies and your overall profits.
AI and small business opportunities: a match made in heaven
To stay ahead of the curve, you’ll need to embrace any new technology that is emerging today. Your consumers are looking for a business that is up-to-date and able to answer their demands as quickly as possible, which is where AI comes in to save the day.
Invest in a smart CRM system and use an effective tool like Clickatell Touch to build personalized chatbots to improve the customer experience. A personalized digital assistant will help to knock hours of time off administrative tasks, allowing you to focus on important issues. If you’re interested in using the advantages of artificial intelligence to build more small business opportunities, read our recent article on how it can help to streamline marketing and sales.
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