According to Klaus Schwab, the Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, we are living on the precipice of the fourth industrial revolution. A new era is about to begin, one defined by the proliferation of digital technologies.
Chief among these technologies is artificial intelligence (AI), the discipline of designing software systems with the ability to ‘think’ and solve problems without direct human intervention. The number of AI-powered software solutions on the market has been steadily increasing in the past few years, giving businesses of all sizes the opportunity to leverage this revolutionary new technology. From marketing automation and customer service, to recruiting and fraud detection, AI has changed the face of modern business.
If you’re looking to upgrade your tech stack with AI, but don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place. In the remainder of this article, we will examine some of the most common use scenarios for AI. Read on, and find out how to best leverage AI for your business.
1. Enhanced CRM
AI has revolutionised the process of customer relationship management (CRM). Modern-day customers have many communication channels at their disposal to reach out to you, including email, phone, instant messaging apps, and social media. Keeping track of all these channels involves a lot of work, but with the help of AI you can keep it at manageable levels. An AI can synthesise data from a variety of sources, allowing it to predict the course of action that is most likely to lead to a conversion. AI-based CRM solutions can help you create in-depth customer profiles based on your existing customer data. These profiles can then be used for predictive lead scoring, another feature of AI-powered CRM. Another way AI can help with CRM is through predictive lead scoring. Your sales department will have a much easier time closing deals if they have a list of leads arranged by their conversion potential.
2. Streamlined HR
You can harness the data-crunching power of AI in more ways than one. For instance, you can use an AI to help you find and recruit promising candidates. AI recruiting tools can help HR personnel evaluate CVs, cover letters, and online profiles, eliminating a lot of tedious busywork from the process. Because an AI only cares about facts and data, it will help your staff avoid personal biases when examining new candidates. And once you find the right candidates, you can also use an AI to streamline your onboarding process. Finally, you can use AI for employee leave management, training, and performance evaluation. This will help you maintain your HR department lean, while still producing results.
3. Simplified Accounting
Accounting is an integral part of every business operation. Unfortunately, it is also an error-prone, time-consuming process for everyone involved. Accounting software can make things easier, but it will only take you so far. Only with the emergence of AI-powered accounting software is the problem truly solved. For one, using AI for accounting will make your financial reports more accurate by reducing human error. Second, an accounting AI can help you derive meaningful insights from your financial data, thus helping you with strategic planning. Finally, keeping all your financial data in a single, AI-managed database is more secure than keeping stacks of documents and receipts around. All of this makes AI-based accounting software a worthwhile investment. You will keep your finances organised, reducing the need to maintain a fully-staffed accounting department.
4. Data-Driven Marketing
Marketing thrives on data, and AI can help you leverage this data to gain a better understanding of your customers’ needs and wants. An AI can analyse the past behaviour of your existing customers to determine how they would behave when presented with a new offer. This includes past purchases, but also things like social media activity, search history, email transcripts, and more. This makes it much easier to provide a personalised marketing experience for each customer. Using an AI-powered marketing automation platform will also help you keep your customer data up-to-date at all times. As soon as you convert a new customer, the AI can adjust its approach based on sales data.
5. Automated Customer Service
Customer services is the foundation of business growth. Keeping your customers happy and engaged will keep them invested in your brand, and create more selling opportunities. Unfortunately, quality customer service is not easy to pull off. The more customers you have, the more services reps you will need to hire and train, which is rarely feasible in the long-run. One way you can solve the issue is by using an AI-powered chatbot for customer service. Modern AI-based chatbots can parse complex user input, provide convincing responses in natural language, offer personalised product suggestions, and even complete orders. Moreover, they can do all of the above at scale. A chatbot can provide ‘round-the-clock customer service to multiple users at once, wherever they are on the globe.
Hack Your Growth with AI
Whether or not AI represents a new step in the technological world has no impact on its current usefulness as a business tool. Almost every business can benefit from the introduction of AI-powered software. The gains to be had from advanced data crunching, task automation, and dynamic personalisation are simply too valuable to pass up. If you start using AI today, your odds of becoming a market leader in the future will improve significantly.