When it comes to technologies that can help one’s business, there’s nothing more prevalent than the usage of artificial intelligence (AI). Market research shows that the number of enterprises adopting AI-related technologies has grown by 270% over the past four years. After all, they’re known to generate a lot of revenue and make scaling easier. Indeed, the same research above found that AI in marketing and sales alone could produce over $2.6 trillion in value worldwide.
Has your business integrated AI into its operations yet? Today, we’ll be diving deep into how this technology can help your business grow.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Before we can discuss its functions, you first have to understand how AI works. Unlike most technologies on the market, AI isn’t grounded on one program, much less one machine. Electronic manufacturers have used PCB routing software over the years to ensure the quality of their designs. With the right schematics, they were able to incorporate high layer counts, increased density, and more to make machines do complex tasks. This is what AI is at its heart: a collection of different machines working together to comprehend, learn, and act with human-like intelligence.
These days, the wonders of AI can easily be seen in our everyday lives. If you’re into health and fitness tracking, for example, this is the technology responsible for collecting your data and estimating your calories burned. Digital assistants like Amazon Alexa and iPhone’s Siri as also products of AI. In business, the applications of AI are much less flashy but no less useful.
The Benefits of AI to Grow Your Business
Automates Repetitive Tasks
Perhaps one of the most basic uses for AI is its ability to automate repetitive deskwork. Mundane tasks like setting meetings, bookkeeping, and transcribing can be undertaken by machines. Does this mean that you’ll be hiring fewer employees? Hardly. Since AI will take over the most mind-numbing jobs, you’ll have more openings for positions that will require genuine skill like IT, data analytics, and others. With a more talented team in place, this will make your business more competitive, which will only help it grow.
Processes Big Data
Running a business means dealing with large amounts of data. In fact, our studies highlight that 90% of data that exists today was only generated in the last two years. Humans can’t possibly sift through all that information alone, or if they did, it would take a long time. AI software like Google’s AI platform and Wipro automatically collects and processes data. You can then use the generated information to come up with more actionable insights and focus your efforts on creating more successful campaigns.
Predicts Customer Behavior
Predictive analytics is an AI function that uses big data to, well, predict future trends and results. It gathers information from various sources like your customers’ purchasing behavior and the social media posts they’ve engaged with to anticipate their needs. Is it a restock of a particular product? Cheaper deals? More specialized help? You can also use this data to give them more personalized product recommendations via email marketing, a “related products” category on your product page, or chatbots.
Provides Customer Support
Speaking of chatbots, this piece of technology is also the consequence of AI. Chatbots are programs that initiate conversations with users through messaging platforms on your site. They have several uses, but mainly being the first line in customer service. You can program chatbots to answer frequently asked questions and, for queries that their database can’t answer, direct customers to a live agent for support. With a 24/7 service on the frontline, this will increase customer satisfaction, leading to more sales and even improved retention.
Boosts Your Sales
It’s good to have a lot of leads, but not all of them will go through with the purchase. AI-integrated customer relationship management (CRM) systems like Cogito and Oracle automatically score your leads so you can determine which of your prospects are closer to the end of the sales funnel. This lets you know which buyers to focus your efforts on. Data recorded by CRM also lets you know what types of personalities are likely to be prospects, helping you generate even more leads in the long run.
Bolsters Your Cybersecurity
A big part of running a successful business is ensuring the safety of your customers’ data. And as you scale, this data will only grow bigger. Cyber threats have become more intelligent with every update. This is why you need equally intelligent entities that can discover this malware, learn their tricks, and eventually help you counter them—something like AI protection programs. There’s even hybrid AI software that can be integrated into emails, which can automatically detect suspicious letters and prevent them from entering your inbox.
Overall, AI will not only push your business into growing, but it also has functions that you can use while you scale like customer support. Plus, due to its flexible nature, AI will be there to grow with you. Find out which aspects of your business are better off with machine assistance, and slowly integrate the technology into your operations.