Artificial intelligence continues to prove its advantageousness across industries and organizations of all kinds, but its benefits remain elusive for many small and medium-sized businesses. While the advantages of AI can arguably stretch further for SMBs than other market segments, many SMBs still struggle to see AI as useful in their daily operations.
AI can assist in alleviating a plethora of challenges – offering tools that help with marketing and content creation, pricing, automating rote tasks, customer service, budgeting, and more. The vast potential of AI tools continues to gain traction and legitimacy, with new legislation to provide AI training and resources to small businesses even making its way through US congress.
So why are so many SMBs still reluctant to view AI as an essential tool? There are three primary reasons.
Firstly, SMBs often use generic artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and become discouraged when they receive broad, non-specific advice. These tools do not have access to the business’s unique data, such as details about their target audience, the specific services they offer, or insights into past strategies that have proven successful. For instance, if ChatGPT suggests marketing tips without knowing these critical elements, the advice will likely not align well with the company’s needs, leading to missed opportunities.
Next is that AI tools often feel intimidating and out of reach for SMBs. The solution here lies in embedding artificial intelligence into the tools that SMBs already use for their daily business operations, making them more accessible and trustworthy. Finally, current AI tools require SMBs to know where to implement AI in their operations. To make an AI tool of maximum value to SMBs, the tool must not only be trained on SMBs bespoke business data and embedded in a preexisting system, but also pop up in a relevant context with proactive advice and suggestions.
Once these issues are addressed here are five ways AI can deliver true value to SMBs.
1. Marketing & Content
AI can do more than help SMBs write copy for their marketing materials. It can also ensure that their messaging is tailored, timely, relevant, and personalized to each customer.
Additionally, AI can analyze a business’ customer base, recommend segmentation strategies, and based on this segmentation, craft personalized email content or targeted ads tailored to individual customer preferences. When AI is embedded into a business management system it will have access to an SMBs customer base saving them the time of having to manually input information about their customers’ behavior and history. This enhances the effectiveness of campaigns by suggesting deals and discounts for items or services that individual customers have purchased in the past.
2. Competitive Intelligence
By rapidly analyzing large swaths of data, AI can conduct market research on behalf of SMBs – identifying audience demographics and behaviors and assessing competitors. Natural language processing can turn this information into in-depth reports on industry leaders, consumer trends, and more. AI can also scan competitors’ websites and social media pages to leverage data to assess prevailing currents in the market.
These data-driven insights allow for predictive modelling that eliminates the guesswork from strategic decision making. The ability to anticipate market needs through data is essential for future growth, especially in today’s digital reality.
3. Offering Optimization
With the market intelligence gathered through AI, SMBs can fine-tune their strategies to stay competitive and responsive to market demands. AI systems can analyze patterns and predict consumer responses, enabling SMBs to strategically price their products and services. This includes suggestions for promotions or adjustments during peak and off-peak seasons, ensuring that pricing is dynamic to market needs.
Furthermore, AI can guide SMBs in expanding their portfolios by identifying gaps in the market or upcoming trends. It can recommend new products or services that are likely to resonate with target demographics or suggest modifications to existing offerings to enhance their appeal. This proactive approach not only captures emerging opportunities but also mitigates the risk of market saturation.
4. Automation and Efficiency
Among AI’s most promising features is the ability to streamline and automate manual tasks like data entry and management. This is particularly important for stretched-thin SMBs as it saves time that could be spent on other tasks while reducing manual errors.
Another valuable benefit of AI is in optimizing workflow. AI can automatically analyze historical performance metrics to identify areas for improvement and recommend changes that streamline processes and identify bottlenecks. Consider how much time a one-employee small business could save by allowing AI to handle scheduling and appointments. For example, AI can summarize long client conversations into notes for easy review. It can scan and condense all client communication history and recommend next steps for correspondence. It can also fill in scheduling gaps by suggesting clients that are most likely to schedule the open slots based on their history. This opens clear additional revenue to the SMB and a great service to the client.
5. Customer Service and Support
AI-powered chatbots have already revolutionized the way businesses of all sizes communicate with customers. It’s impossible for small business owners and solo-preneurs to be available to their customers at all times of day but missed messages or laggard responses are surefire ways to lose customers.
AI chatbots and automated phone answering solutions can field basic inquiries on their own, allowing businesses to stay responsive 24/7 and improve their reputation for customer service without eating up valuable time. An AI chatbot can provide quality, specific answers for each client based on their business data of appointments and payments history.
artificial intelligence can also rapidly analyze customer feedback garnered from chatbots and other communication channels, and accordingly implement proactive measures to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Finally, AI can track customer behaviors and prompt businesses on the best timing to contact them – if they’re due for an appointment, if there’s a sale on an item that’s relevant to them, and more.
Big Benefits for Small Businesses
With its unique ability to automate tedious tasks, communicate with customers, and provide insights on competitors, market trends, and more, AI is revolutionizing SMB operations.
However, AI is not a one-size-fits-all solution – adopting it just to follow the trends of the moment might lead to disappointment. Instead, SMBs should look for AI capabilities embedded within the business management tools they already use. This integration ensures that AI remains hyper-relevant to their specific business needs, allowing them to streamline operations without the need to juggle multiple interfaces. With this strategic approach, SMBs can consolidate their tools and quickly begin to reap the rewards of AI.
Itzik Levy is the cofounder & CEO of vcita. Levy has been instrumental in guiding the company’s growth over the past 13 years, overseeing the expansion of the product and company. With over 200 employees across several global offices, vcita has grown to support dozens of enterprise partners and empower over 150K SMBs worldwide.