Companies use artificial intelligence (AI) in various ways to improve efficiency, save time and reduce costs. With steady progress, AI is quickly becoming a valuable resource for companies in various industries. To better understand how companies use artificial intelligence, Forbes Advisor surveyed 600 business owners who use or plan to incorporate AI into their business. The results revealed the impact of artificial intelligence on areas such as cybersecurity, fraud management, content production and customer support, including the use of state-of-the-art chatbots.
Key research findings
- More than half of business owners use artificial intelligence for cybersecurity and fraud management.
- One in four business owners is concerned about the impact of artificial intelligence on website traffic.
- Almost All (97%) Business owners believe that ChatGPT will help their business. One in three companies plans to use ChatGPT to write website content, while 44% plans to use ChatGPT to write content in other languages.
- Almost half (46%) the owner of the company uses AI to create internal communication.
- More than 40% is concerned about the over-dependence on technology due to the use of AI.
- Almost two-thirds (64%) Business owners believe that AI will improve customer relationships.
The use of artificial intelligence in business is now mainstream, with many organisations using AI as stand-alone technology for specialised use cases or incorporating it into common software systems that manage basic business processes.
How does artificial intelligence benefit businesses?
Automation, data analytics and natural language processing (NLP) are among the best applications of AI. But what does this actually mean and how does it simplify processes and increase operational efficiency?
- AI Automation: People are saved from boredom thanks to automation. Teams no longer spend countless hours performing repetitive tasks, and employee time is freed up to focus on higher-value work. Another additional bonus – AI Automation is more precise and any relevant information is less likely to be ignored. Greater employee satisfaction and improved processes!
- Data analytics: Data analytics allows companies to gain insights that were previously unavailable by discovering new patterns and correlations in data.
- Tone Detection and Natural Language Processing (NLP): Natural language processing comes first for many because it allows search engines to be smarter, chatbots to be more useful, and increases accessibility for people with disabilities, such as hearing impaired.
Let's look at the most common and useful cases of using AI in business:
1. Artificial Intelligence in Sales
Professional sellers and sales companies question the balance between people and machines in sales. Automation of AI is already affecting sales and will continue to do so. Study carried out by Harvard Business Review found that companies using artificial intelligence for sale can increase potential buyers by more than 50%, reduce call time by 60-70% and reduce costs by 40-60%. Given these figures, it is clear that companies that want to improve their endpoint should pay attention to AI.
Here are a few uses of artificial intelligence in sales:
- Outgoing email campaigns – Email campaigns are persistent in sales and marketing strategies and for good reason – are delivering results. But sending hundreds or even thousands of emails and tracking their responses can be exhausting. With AI solutions like Levity, email responses are tracked, categorized, and archived however you want. Removing the need to manually track responses and flag really valuable emails. Check out the living proof of AI's success in sales from Incendium, a B2B growth consultancy.
- Demand forecasting – Forecasts are complex but can be automated. Artificial intelligence makes it possible to create automated and accurate sales projections based on all customer interactions and historical sales results.
- Potential Client Scoring – AI helps to prioritize potential clients. These AI tools help sales professionals to prioritize customers based on their conversion probability. With the help of artificial intelligence, the algorithm can rank opportunities or potential buyers in the process based on their chances of successful closure by collecting historical information about the client and social media posts, and the history of the seller's interaction with the buyers.
2. Artificial Intelligence in Marketing
If you work in marketing, you will know that finding a balance between operational efficiency and user experience is crucial. One of the best ways to optimize both is to implement intelligent technological solutions. Here are some of the best ways to do this:
- Market research – do not let customer feedback and other quantitative responses fail in vain. AI tools such as Levity analyse them in large numbers – no manual flagging is required from you or your teams, and insights are centralised for easy access.
- Competitor analysis – instead of spending hours scrolling through competitors' tweets, use AI to categorise by theme or themes and inform you about trends.
- Image recognition – with computer vision, computers and systems can deduce meaning from digital images, videos and other visual inputs, and then act or recommend accordingly. Marketers can use this to analyze millions of images posted daily on social media sites to gain insight into how and where products or services are used. In this way, market penetration and brand awareness can be measured in new ways.
- Search engine optimisation (SEO) – in search engine optimisation, the term “search scope” informs us about how many people search for certain terms and expressions while searching for items or services. Machine learning (ML) algorithms are now used to better understand the intention behind the use of search terms, as well as the content of the search. Another application is to analyze competing SEO tactics to identify any loopholes that might exist in your own or to take advantage of keywords that competitors don't use. AI can also create SEO-friendly marketing material for your website.
3. Artificial intelligence in customer support
- Automatic user message assessments – AI tools use advanced technologies to detect tones and the purpose of incoming messages from customers. More than just revealing a specific keyword such as ‘appeal’, AI will assess the entire context of the message. Which means that even the most comprehensive text can be properly categorized and sent to the appropriate team.
- Highlight the urgency and trigger the answer – Use AI to view tons of conversations with clients and potential buyers. AI models can recognize the most important words that indicate urgency. In case of customer enquiries, AI may pick up words or sentences prone to crisis situations such as “I will leave your brand.” In the case of potential customers, AI can recognize sentences such as: “This offer sounds interesting” or “I would like to buy next week” and others that may indicate a possible sale.
4. Artificial Intelligence in Operations
- Inventory management – Machine learning, a subset of AI, uses image recognition capabilities to increase efficiency and productivity across a wide range of processes, one example of this is inventory management. It's as simple as transferring image data to an AI tool that can detect flaws or categorize and tag images. You can even connect these apps to an existing toolkit or online store, which means labels are automatically assigned.
5. Artificial Intelligence in Human Resources
- Analysis of candidate profiles – many companies have invested in AI to help with the recruitment process. Using artificial intelligence, HR managers can analyze a potential candidate's previous work experience and interests and match them with the best roles.
- Network organisation analysis – to help your company become more sustainable and successful, AI can be used to analyse formal and informal business relationships, which can help develop business strategies that increase organic information sharing.
6. Artificial Intelligence in Accounting
- Perform repetitive tasks – repetitive actions such as recording data, categorising transactions, reconciling invoices, entering and linking data from scanned invoices and invoices to transactions, estimating employee cost statements and tracking price changes are just some of the things that many accountants take up time. Artificial intelligence can do all of these tasks with far fewer mistakes than humans. In this way, employees are spared mental overload and can focus their work on other ongoing tasks.
- Semi-automation of complex processes such as payroll – AI is likely to change the future of payroll. Unlike automation, which is based on a cause-and-effect relationship, real AI systems can analyze data, learn from failures, and strategically solve problems. The cloud-based payroll software market was estimated at $7.88 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach $13.37 billion by 2026. Business leaders are increasingly looking to invest in advanced AI-enabled payroll systems.
7. Artificial Intelligence in Contact Centers
Any contact center meeting with a consumer either increases loyalty or rejects customers. Efficient customer service is the main focus. Contact centers contain a wealth of data, and AI can help companies better understand their customers. Below is one of the most popular uses of artificial intelligence in contact centers:
- Leading public dissemination campaigns – an AI voice robot can contact hundreds or even thousands of individuals to present and sell your product offer. It can answer simple questions and forward them to the sales representative if the person is interested. Automating this was previously an impossible task for most companies, but thanks to the available AI tools, any company can take advantage.
To conclude
As we mentioned, artificial intelligence and machine learning have revolutionized and will continue to revolutionize business for many years to come. From marketing through operations to sales, the implementation of artificial intelligence in business environments reduces the time spent on repetitive tasks, improves employee productivity and improves the overall user experience.
It also helps to avoid mistakes and detect potential crises. No wonder why companies use it in all functions, and you should too.
Do you want to build your personal AI or analyze how AI can help your business? Book a meeting with the EDIH Adria team and we will show you how to go through this process with the least risk!