Why AI needs to be part of your business

Navigating the entrepreneurial seas brings its share of smooth sailing and stormy weather, with an endless list of considerations and countless pitfalls lurking. Yet, amidst the chaos, there lie golden opportunities to craft a life beyond your wildest workaday fantasies.

In this era, tech savvy is not just an advantage; it’s essential. The broader your tech toolkit and the deeper your digital dive, the fresher your business breathes. This tech embrace not only polishes your operation but also endears you to customers and clients. Moreover, staying ahead in the tech race means outpacing your competitors, a constant battle for business leaders.

Now, let’s talk AI – artificial intelligence. It might come with its fair share of cautionary tales, but dig a bit deeper, and you’ll uncover a treasure trove of opportunities to propel your business into the future. AI isn’t just about keeping pace with the times; it’s about setting the pace for tomorrow. AI could very well be the turbo boost your business needs. So, why not dive into how AI could be the game-changer for your venture?

Easier to get data

If you want to be successful, you need to gather data within your business (sticking within the legal limits and making sure you don’t breach GDPR regulations, of course). Data from your customers and the market in general is what will give you insights into how well you’re doing, what your marketing is achieving, who your ideal customer is, where they spend time online (that’s going to help you with your marketing, as you’ll be able to pick the right social media platform, for example), and so on. Data is a massive part of running a successful business because it informs everything, from your marketing to your pricing to your branding, and much more. 

Now, the question is where that data comes from. Where can you find it? Where should you be looking? You’re not going to be surprised by the answer considering what we’re talking about here, but we’ll tell you anyway — it’s AI. You can use AI how Google uses AI, by feeding all the data you’ve gathered together into a program that can then give you the details you need to make a plan to work on for the future. That means you can make more informed decisions, you’ll be able to see patterns, you’ll notice trends (maybe even before your competitors do) and it all comes from the analytics you get from your AI. 

Better customer experience

When you run a business, it really needs to be all about the customers. Yes, you’ll have started the business for yourself (even the most altruistic person will still want to make a profit, after all), and that’s wise as it means you’ll be more motivated to push forward, even when things are challenging, as they will be in business at least some of the time, but without your customers, you’re not going to make sales, and that means no profit. That’s not a good position to be in because no profit usually ends up meaning no business – you’ll make a loss and have to close. 

Where does AI come into this? 

The truth is that AI plays a big part in improving the overall customer experience in a number of different ways, ensuring that your customers are happy. Happy customers come back to buy again, they leave good reviews, and they spread the word on social media about your business to family, friends and colleagues, so it’s definitely something you’ll want — happy customers are worth their weight in gold. 

One way to use AI to enhance the customer experience is to install a chatbot on your website. These pieces of tech might not have been all that great in the past as they were very simple and could only handle a few different queries, plus, they would infuriate customers rather than be helpful — but today, things are different. Today’s chatbots are much more sophisticated thanks to machine learning, which basically enables chatbots to learn and understand customer preferences and behaviours. That means they can offer a much more personalized service, answering more complex queries at the same time. This is fantastic as it not only makes the customer experience better but it also gives people answers to help them decide what to buy or even persuade them to buy at all. Rather than turning people away, chatbots, powered by AI, could actually make sales on your behalf. 

More efficient business 

When it comes to making your business more efficient and productive (something all business owners should be looking for), AI can step in to help. AI can actually assist by powering various automated tasks, and by taking on these more repetitive and perhaps boring jobs, can free you team to do more complex things that AI can’t do and that require the human touch. 

What does that mean for your employees? Essentially, it means everyone should be able to do the job you’re paying them for and the job they want to do — the job they enjoy and have the skills for. It means they don’t have to do jobs that aren’t really in their wheelhouse but that have to be done nonetheless (that’s all handled by the AI). That includes things like invoicing, answering customer queries, sending out quotes and even packing items to be sent out if that’s the kind of AI you happen to have installed. 

With this kind of AI-powered automation, you can get ahead of your competitors, keep your customers happy and be a whole lot more productive. 

Risk management 

Business is a risky thing, no matter what sector you’re in. You’re always going to have to make decisions, and in a lot of those decisions, there’s going to be an element of risk involved — how risky your choices are will depend on a few different factors, and using AI is one of them. 

When you have the right AI program in place, you can reduce your risk by a huge amount, and make decisions more easily with a more positive outcome. Some of those AI programs will exist to identify potentially fraudulent activities on your website, for example, and others might be there to predict when a piece of equipment is going to fail (or at least when it’s not working as it should, meaning you can get it serviced, fixed or replaced before anything goes wrong). This, and plenty of other ideas, means you can take more risks because they’ll be calculated and there will be a safety net to help you bounce back should anything go wrong. 

If you want to get ahead in business, you’ll have to take some risks, and if you take more than your competitors, you’ll definitely find you’re ahead and start growing in the way you want to. If AI can help with that, you should probably let it. 

Become adaptable

AI can be whatever you want it to be — it can be whatever you need it to be. It’s adaptable, and depending on your specific business requirements, there’s going to be some kind of artificial intelligence to help you get the job done. But what’s even better is that once you have the AI and it’s part of your business, it can still adapt — that means you don’t have to keep updating the software you have, and it means you don’t have to keep buying new versions of something that works perfectly well. 

That’s all down to machine learning, as we mentioned above. Machine learning algorithms can keep evolving and changing, enabling businesses to quickly adapt to market trends and what their customers happen to be looking for. This adaptability is really useful in industries like tech, where things change quickly, but it can be useful in any kind of business — the world moves fast, and having something to help you move with it is always going to be useful. The more AI you can have and use in your business, the better. 

Product development 

AI is something that can really drive innovation, and that links to product development as well. From creating new products to making existing ones better, AI can help businesses move forward and even push the boundaries of what’s currently possible. Now that’s exciting, and it’s potentially what could make your business the success you want it to be. 

When you add AI to your business, you open up a whole new world of possibilities that will take you forward, make your employees happy and make your customers more loyal, so it’s certainly something to consider at the very least. 

VentureBeat newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content. 

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz