Running a business, especially a sole proprietorship or small business, often means juggling many roles. You might be the operations manager, business development officer, bookkeeper, and receptionist all at once.
But did you know that artificial intelligence (AI) can lighten your load, especially with daily administrative tasks?
AI can streamline operations, enhance customer service, and deliver valuable data analysis in seconds. This helps you understand your customers better and meet their needs more effectively.
In this post, we have compiled seven unique ways AI can unlock the full potential of your business. just keep reading!
7 Ways AI Can Improve Your Business
#1: Create automation to save time
Task automation is one of the key business benefits of AI. The more tasks you can automate, like filling out repetitive paperwork or answering basic questions on the phone, the more time you’ll have to focus on billable work.
If you run a tax preparation business, for example, you likely invest a lot of time in onboarding new clients. But, chances are that all clients fill out the same paperwork that you then manually enter into a database.
Skip the time-consuming paperwork by leaving this process to AI-powered tools like Zapier that can add client information to your database as they fill out forms and even follow up with an automated welcome email.
#2: Expand your product offerings
AI can also help your business expand its product offerings, both by freeing up time to develop new lines of business and helping new lines of business work more efficiently.
For example, certified public accountants generally use AI-powered tools to speed up bookkeeping and payroll tasks for clients. This can give them more time to further develop lines of business in tax preparation, for example.
Then as tax preparers, they can use tax preparation software to more speedily work through the nuances of the U.S. Tax Code.
#3: Engage in data analytics
If you’re in any consulting business, like tax preparation or financial advisory services, you probably want to quickly spot trends about your customers and target new ones better.
AI-powered tools can automate data analysis and give you fast predictive financial models. These tools help you understand your clients’ financial health, cash flow, and even analyze your own business’s potential profitability.
This way, you can make better-informed decisions about which clients to pursue. AI tools like Looker and Tableau can analyze data and generate reports based on the parameters you set.
#4: Improve customer service
A key pain point for many small businesses is managing customer service expectations while also developing the products or providing the professional services that keeps businesses afloat.
For example, if you run a bike shop and are busy engaging in person with would-be buyers or making repairs on bicycles most of the day, answering the phone can quickly consume precious work hours. But you don’t want to frustrate customers by continually kicking them over to voicemail.
Reduce the time you spend answering basic questions about business hours or pricing by using an automated phone answering service, like Nextiva and Grasshopper.
With these tools, your customers can receive a prompt, professional answer to every call and quickly get directed to a real person if needed.
#5: Build out customer segmentation
Though customer segmentation can be a critical part of marketing strategy for a business, it can be time-consuming and highly subjective.
AI-powered tools and technologies, like PeakAI and even Google Analytics, allow businesses to leverage large amounts of customer data to gain valuable insights.
If you’re a wealth management consultant, for example, AI can dig through all your customer data to help you determine who your target customer is.
Perhaps most of your customers are young professionals making six figures, or maybe they’re clients who are mostly 10 years away from retirement.
Whatever you learn about your customers, you can use it to launch highly personalized marketing campaigns, determine what kind of pricing your clients will expect, and ensure you devote most of your marketing resources to customer segments that bring your consulting business the most revenue.
#6: Enhance Productivity
No matter what industry your business occupies, chances are AI can make your business more efficient and enhance productivity.
For example, tax preparers can use AI to prepare taxes with greater accuracy more quickly. Most tax preparation software has anticipatory prompts based on client data the preparer inputs that reduce research hours and automatically determine the implications of new tax laws on a client’s specific circumstances.
In fact, AI can speed up tax preparation services to the degree that enrolled agents can invest more energy in developing new business opportunities and expanding their service to provide clients tax guidance and advice year-round.
#7: Make better business decisions
AI can improve profitability by helping businesses approach their products, services, and customers with data-driven insights, which leads to better decision making for the long-term.
These tools can sift through mountains of data to uncover hidden insights and correlations you might otherwise miss that can help you establish more targeted marketing campaigns and lead laser-focused product development or service offerings.
AI can also analyze historical data and market trends to predict future outcomes. If you’re a financial adviser, AI might give you insights into when most of your clients are likely to retire.
It could also tell you, as a bike shop owner, the key features most of your customers want in their bicycles so you can focus on stocking relevant models only.
Final Note
Now you can see that AI offers powerful tools that enhance productivity and automate tasks. It can provide real-time insights from vast amounts of customer data, helping you make data-driven decisions across all aspects of your business.
This gives you a competitive edge and allows you to optimize operations for sustainable, long-term growth.
Embracing AI can transform your business, making it more efficient and better equipped to meet the demands of today’s market.
