How Can AI Help Your Small Business in 2020?
How Can AI Help Your Small Business? We’re going to look at 5 key ways that AI can help your business in 2020.
At the moment, the global economy is in a bit of a crisis, and entrepreneurs all across the world are trying their best to make their business more resilient to change.
We all know that you should work smarter, not harder, and what better way to do so than to introduce artificial INTELLIGENCE (AI) into your business model?
AI-based tools are a breakthrough technology, providing small and medium businesses with the edge they need in order to survive in the face of their much larger competitors.
Here’s how AI can help your own small business.
1. AI Can Help You Understand Consumer Behavior
It’s safe to assume that the entire COVID-19 leaves its toll, not just on the global economy but also on customer behavior. In the past half-year, the interest in disinfectants, face masks, DIY kits, and home exercise kits has grown exponentially. There has also been a massive increase in e-commerce services demand. People feel more comfortable with door-to-door delivery, seeing as how it allows them to avoid crowded malls. Lastly, since there’s a major uncertainty on the job market, there has been a decrease in purchasing power worldwide. This, too, affects the way consumers think and behave. With an AI data harvesting and processing tool, you can decipher this with a much greater accuracy ratio.
2. AI Can Help Small Business Efficiency
The next crucial thing you need to keep in mind is the increase in your overall business efficiency after the introduction of AI-based platforms. For instance, AI service desk solutions can help you augment your business and automate your processes. This would inevitably lead to lower costs, a decrease in service desk calls, improved service experience, and increased self-service resolution. All of this leads to an enhanced customer experience, which results in positive word of mouth, a greater percentage of return customers, and higher average order value.
3. AI Can Help You Reduce Staff Size
No matter how efficient these tools get, it is unlikely that they will be able to replace your need for all of your human staff, anytime soon. Still, they can allow every single of your employees to drastically increase their productivity, thus allowing a single AI-backed expert to replace an entire department. A smaller staff will lead you directly towards a smaller overhead, which may be exactly what your business needs in order to pull through. The logistical benefits of this are quite numerous, as well, seeing as how a smaller staff is substantially easier to manage. In other words, it’s a direct boost to your HR efforts.
4. AI Can Help Improve Supply Chain
When it comes to logistical issues, your supply chain is probably the single most important aspect of the entire process. With the help of an AI-backed fleet management system, you can easily optimize your routes. This will reduce your overhead through smarter fuel efficiency and save time by allowing your fleet to take the shortest, quickest routes available. The best thing about this kind of improvement lies in the fact that it can help you improve your operations while sacrificing nothing in the process.
5. AI Can Help Automate Customer Communication
In this age of uncertainty, the last thing you want is to be deemed as unresponsive. Your customers need someone to immediately respond to their problems, seeing as how they, too, are afraid and confused. By switching to AI-powered chatbots, you can easily reduce the time of response, improve customer satisfaction, and really make a difference. It also lifts a huge burden off your customer support team. Overall, it’s a worthwhile investment that can help you make a better impression.
6. It’s not a fool-proof idea.
The very last thing worth keeping in mind is that, while AI does make a positive difference, it’s just not big enough of a difference in some industries. Sure, implementing these tools and integrating them into your business model will allow you to achieve an increase in efficiency, but this increase’s profit won’t be big enough to justify the investment. Also, if your business is on a downward spiral caused by a post-COVID-19 recession, the integration of this business idea might not be enough to save it. In other words, while it’s incredibly effective for some businesses, it may not work for others.
In conclusion
At the end of the day, while the effectiveness of implementing this strategy may be quite situational, the truth is that you, as a business, need to reevaluate your current status and your short-term strategy. Consider your survival conditions and try to break it down to simple numbers. This will allow you to figure out whether AI will make a big enough difference to help your business survive. Still, you shouldn’t put all your hopes in AI and AI-based tools alone. Instead, try looking for other ways to make your business more resilient, as well.
