Most small and medium businesses (SMBs) face a common challenge – achieving the maximum possible results with limited resources. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, they can now implement smart solutions to overcome this issue and streamline their operations.
There’s a problem, though—many SMBs believe AI is only for large corporations and are perplexed about its adoption. But that’s not the case.
With proper technical assistance, businesses of all sizes can deploy AI tools to improve operations, personalise customer services, and automate repetitive tasks.
This article covers 7 practical examples of how SMBs can benefit from AI without spending a fortune.
Let’s explore them right away.
1. Enhancing Customer Support with AI-Powered Chatbots
Microsoft statistics show that about 60% of shoppers say that excellent customer service is crucial for brand loyalty.
Unfortunately, most SMBs struggle in this area because of limited resources.
Thankfully, AI-powered chatbots can take over as a cost-effective customer service solution. These chatbots can take in customer queries and answer them without even needing a human to supervise them.
Here are a few ways how chatbots can become a valuable asset for SMBs:
Quicker Response Times
Installing AI chatbots on your websites or communication channels ensures you have someone available 24/7 to assist your customers.
These bots can receive queries and respond to them in seconds, drastically reducing the response time compared to humans. Moreover, they can handle several queries simultaneously without any errors.
You can even customise the bots to identify sensitive queries that require human attention, which the customer representatives can answer once they become available.
Enhancing Customer Experience
Quicker response times enhance customer experience; however, AI-powered chatbots go beyond that. These bots are excellent at communicating in a natural, human-like tone, improving customer interaction quality.
Previously, SMBs had to hire large teams to handle customers, but they can now dedicate the task to AI and save costs.
Indeed, customer service specialists will still be needed in complex or critical situations, but in most common cases, chatbots can be trusted.
Additional information: These AI-powered bots aren’t limited to just your website. You can install them on common communication channels like your social media pages or WhatsApp.
Multilingual Customer Support
Chatbots can make communication so much easier between businesses and customers via automated translation.
This feature is helpful for businesses operating in multiple locations and facing a communication barrier because of different languages.
These bots can do two things:
- If it is an automated interaction, they can communicate with the customer in their native language directly.
- If a representative communicates, the bot can translate the messages so both parties can converse easily.
It’s undoubtedly much more affordable than hiring native speakers as representatives, who can cost a lot more than these bots.
2. Enhancing Marketing Strategies Through AI-Driven Analytics
Marketing no longer has to be a hit-or-miss for SMBs. With AI, businesses can now better understand their target audiences, their needs, and their pain points.
These can help create better marketing funnels and personalise customer interactions, which will not only increase sales but also improve customer retention.
Let’s see the marketing areas where AI-powered tools can help your business:
Targeted Marketing Content And Campaigns
Most SMBs struggle to connect with their target audiences through messaging. Sadly, they don’t have extensive marketing teams or high trial budgets.
AI can analyse the business audience better and create content that hits the right spot. This helps businesses increase the returns on investments (ROI).
Some AI tools can even help you map the customer journey and their behaviour patterns, which you can identify to reduce abandoned carts and increase conversion rates. Realistically, you can use AI from the first touch point until after the sale.
Predicting Customer Behaviour Trends
Predictive AI is one of the best features that businesses can adopt.
By analysing historical datasets, AI can predict future trends, which businesses can use to make informed marketing decisions. The insights can also help develop growth strategies and reduce the risks of experimenting with new ideas.
It’s also possible to customise results for different marketing platforms. For example, you could gather data on shoppers’ behaviour on your website, Instagram, Facebook, or even X. Then, you could use AI for platform-specific insights.
It will help you understand the trends on different platforms and pinpoint your marketing effort, which will eventually result in business growth.
3. Automating Routine Tasks with AI Tools
SMB owners and managers commonly juggle many tasks at once. They are often repetitive, and getting them off the shoulders would save so much time that could be spent on other essential tasks.
It’s possible with AI to automate repeated tasks and save time and money. Let’s see some practical examples.
Scheduling and Calendar Management
Many SMBs have communication lapses because people discuss something verbally and then forget it. Now, there are AI tools available that can automate scheduling for you and manage your calendars.
You can integrate them with your messages and emails, and they’ll automatically add the events to your calendar. This takes away dependence on human memory and brings errors to almost zero.
Invoice and Expense Management
You can become much more efficient with financial management once you bring AI into the picture. It can help you automate invoices, record expenses in real time and even make financial reports.
Automating these tasks won’t just free up your time but also reduce human errors and get you correct data whenever you want. You can also use the reports for future financial strategies and growth plans.
Moreover, with some advanced features, you can ask AI to analyse your spending and suggest areas where you can reduce costs and save money.
4. Enhancing Inventory Management with AI Forecasting
AI can be a massive help for SMBs with inventory management. It can assist businesses in avoiding excessive stock and preventing understocking, which could lead to missed sales opportunities.
Let’s see how AI can help you have a balanced inventory:
Demand Forecasting
Businesses can never be 100% right about the demands for their products. However, with AI, they can avoid wild guesses and be more prepared.
AI tools can analyse previous sales and forecast future demands, which makes inventory management efficient.
They can also indicate seasonal opportunities to improve preparation and beat the competition. It helps businesses calculate inventory needs more accurately, reducing waste while satisfying customer needs.
Automating Reordering
Most small businesses need to order in a timely manner. With AI tools and automation, companies can set trigger points to receive notifications when their inventory reaches a certain level.
This is super helpful because it eliminates the need to track products and manually determine the right time for reordering. You can also input variable conditions and safely refill your stock before your inventory runs dry.
With sophisticated AI systems, you can even notify vendors about possible reordering and automate the process.
5. Personalising Customer Interactions with AI
Customers love businesses that offer personalised experiences. In fact, McKinsey data shows that 76% of consumers say that a personalised experience makes them more likely to purchase from a business.
Personalising customer interactions can help you grow the business better. Let’s see what role AI can play in this area.
Personalised Product Recommendations
You can use AI to assess people’s behaviours and recommend something that will likely interest them. It will help you with improving sales and retaining customers.
There are even AI bots available that can track shoppers’ website activity and start delivering personalised recommendations.
Businesses that go big on personalisation are clear winners.
Stats show that personalised recommendations influence 92% of shoppers to buy something. Imagine its impact on your business – you only need the proper AI incorporation to you achieve this.
Customised Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to acquire and retain customers. However, it only works if the email is customised to the receiver’s taste. Statistics reveal that 72% of consumers only engage with personalised messaging.
With the right AI tools, businesses can segment customers according to shopping behaviours, preferences, buying frequency, etc.
They can then send targeted emails with promotions, early discounts, or loyalty options to increase sales.
Businesses shouldn’t take AI’s email incorporation lightly. Statistics show that 52% of consumers bought something directly from an email, which is a significant number that should not be ignored.
You can even use AI to craft the email body to customise your message for the target audience.
Provide the necessary demographic information, such as the target audience’s age, gender, geographic location, etc., and it will generate relevant email drafts that you can customise later.
6. Enhancing Recruitment and HR Processes with AI
Running an HR department smoothly is a critical challenge for many businesses. There are many factors to be considered, such as hiring the right people, retaining employees, and fostering employee engagement.
With AI’s assistance, you can significantly reduce the workload and improve HR operations. Here are some areas where AI can be a helpful HR partner.
Screening Resumes
Businesses often receive hundreds of applications for job openings, but many are irrelevant. Manually reviewing them is a draining process.
AI can scan the resumes relevant to the job via keyword searches and experience.
Once you shortlist desirable CVs, you’ll save time with interviews and weed out unwanted applicants.
Predicting Employee Performance
AI tools can give you an idea of how a candidate will perform at your organisation based on their previous performances. It can also review their experiences and estimate how long they’ll stay with your company.
This feature can help SMBs reduce employee turnover and have more stable estimates of employee performance.
7. Securing Data with AI-Powered Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity and digital malpractices are enormous concerns for SMBs.
That’s because SMBs are often short on budget and cannot deploy robust security measures. However, AI-powered tools can help them tighten security without investing large sums.
This is a blessing for businesses because it will help protect the company and customers’ data and even keep legal troubles away.
Detecting Anomalies
AI tools can constantly monitor your websites and servers and notify you if anomalies are detected. Using the warning signs, you can assign experts to detect a possible attack or breach.
AI, paired with the right experts, can prevent digital malpractices in real time. Even then, if something goes wrong, it can help you recover quickly and prevent heavy losses that SMBs could otherwise face.
Automating Threat Responses
Some AI tools are taking cybersecurity to the next level. You can set trigger responses in case they detect anomalies. For example, if they detect bot traffic, they can block it automatically.
Or, if a system is infected, it can be isolated so that other machines aren’t infected. These measures can significantly reduce the risks of breaches or hacks and ensure that the systems and servers run smoothly.
Streamlining AI Integration for Your Business Success
AI integration offers many benefits to SMBs, such as competitive advantage, better cybersecurity, efficient operations, and more.
The above are just a few ways AI can transform businesses. If you want to explore AI solutions and how they can help your business, contact us today.
Our tech experts are ready to discuss how AI solutions can help you achieve your growth goals and protect your business from cyber threats!
