How the use of AI Can Help Grow SMEs

Featured article by Anthony Adams, Independent Technology Author

AI is growing and improving at a rapid rate, and with every single day that passes, and every single improvement mode, the scope of what AI is capable of becomes wider and wider. Recently though, AI has been shown to help more than just big industries.

SMEs have utilized AI to help get through the pandemic, and in this post, you can read about all the ways AI can help you and your business during the pandemic, or how to use AI to improve current systems and make improvements. 

AI Chat Bot

Even though customer engagement and talking to customers about questions and complaints they have is important, a lot of small businesses just do not have the personnel to allow for one or two people just doing that job every day.

AI chat bots allow for businesses to quickly and efficiently deal with customer complaints and questions, by answering efficiently and sending them in the right direction. Customer engagement is incredibly important, and the quicker and better you can do it, the more happy your customers will be, and the more business you can get done. 

AI Marketing

Considering small businesses don’t have the same marketing budget as Apple or Taco Bell or whoever, the marketing that is done needs to be effective and reach the business’s target audience. This is where AI marketing comes in.

AI marketing and marketing tools will help you target people who have purchased your products before, as well as ensure no marketing budget is wasted on people who have no interest in doing business with you. Not only is this targeted marketing very effective, it is also a massive money saver. 

AI for Hiring

An interesting sector that you probably didn’t know could use AI, is hiring. When a company is small or just starting up, there is most likely a lack of hiring experience or knowing what you need out of someone, there will also almost always be a huge influx of applications.

AI can be used to automate the long processes, scan resumes, using machine-learning to screen potential employees, perform sentiment analysis on applications, and multiple other tasks.

This allows for those already in the business to just do the small, shorter tasks, and will also speed up the hiring process.

AI for Sales

Machine learning can play a crucial role when it comes to training and improving your sales team. It is possible for AI and machine learning to track phone calls, listen to what is being said, and how customers reply.

Using this information, it can then see which language was the best to generate a sale, which words put customers off, and what language or cues to customers respond really well to. All of this can be put together to develop a better sales pitch and sales strategy. 

AI and Logistics

Massive companies and enterprises have vast resources when it comes to improving their logistics, whereas smaller businesses do not have this luxury. However, there are AI programs that are available to help small businesses improve their logistics and turnaround time, and save money in the process.

The current COVID pandemic and forced businesses to change how they do business, and being able to deliver goods, manage resources, and save money quickly became a necessity, AI has helped improve those situations, and small businesses should still use it now, even if the lockdowns are starting to ease. 

AI and Your Competition

With almost every niche being highly competitive these days, it is more important than ever to be a step ahead, or at least keep up with your competition. Once again, AI can be used very effectively to do this.

Being able to keep up with your competitions strategies, social media posts and everything in between is a massive task, but you can use AI to automate it, and have all the information tracked and put into an easy to read format.

AI can be used to keep track of price changes, changes in messaging as well as PR activities. This allows for businesses to always know what their competition is doing, without having to sit on your computer 24/7 looking out for every little change. 

AI and Cyber Security

Smaller businesses are often targeted by online thieves as more times than not, the online security is up to standard at all. AI can help protect your business and money by being able to track suspicious behavior, as well as adapt and learn.

Machine learning is where the AI can learn about different attacks and threats, and change accordingly to ensure that at no point can anyone threat penetrate your system. This is vital for small businesses as one hack can easily destroy you brand and business overnight.

As you can see, there are multiple ways that AI can be used by small and medium businesses to keep their business safe, improve and speed up processes, get more sales, as well as protect themselves from online threats. If the pandemic wasn’t reason enough to look into AI for your SME, you should do it right now, you won’t be sorry.