So the question I get asked all the time, AI, will it build your business or kill your business? Now the truth is, they’re both. AI could revolutionize the way that you deliver your products and services. However, for a lot of people, AI could mean that their existing business model will need to change.
Today, I want to share with you some top tips that are hopefully going to help your business thrive and survive both the challenges and the opportunities that AI is presenting.
So tip one, don’t hide the humans.
Chances are your business is populated by real people and you need to make that into a tangible benefit for your customers. There’s no point having great people if your customers don’t know who they are or what they do. So feature them on your website, on your social media.
Make sure that you’re promoting the people, the human element of your business so that customers can really build a connection with them. You’ll be amazed at how many customers know the people that work in our retail store in Evesham. They’re not just going into the store to get some new crafting supplies, they’re going there to catch up with a friend, to have a lovely time. And, it’s as nice for our team as it is for those customers.
Tip two, be upfront about when you use AI.
I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of browsing the web on an evening when suddenly a little box pops up in the corner of screen with a message saying, hello, I’m Susan or whatever. How can I help you?
Now, if it’s 11 o’clock on a Sunday night, you can be pretty sure it’s an AI chat bot, not a real person, right? But when something like that appears on screen at two o’clock in the afternoon, it could actually be a real person. And as a business, you should let your customers know which one it is.
As a consumer, it would feel different to me knowing that I’m being dealt with by a tool or by a real human, right? So if you’re using AI for anything, then you should tell people. It’s about being honest. But also, it’s part of differentiating between AI and real people. Most customers will be quite happy to speak to an AI for mundane things like getting through to a department or doing some online banking, but they should never be led to believe that they are talking to a real person. That is how you are going to lose trust with your customers.
Number three, don’t let your people get slow.
One thing that chat bots and AI are really good at is responding quickly. Just after that, they’re really powerful computers with huge, fast internet connections, loads of data, which they can all access in an instant. Plus, they’re just as perky at 3 a.m. as they are at 10 a.m.
They never get tired, they never get bored, they never get demotivated, they work tirelessly 24-7, 365 days a year, year after year.
This creates an expectation amongst customers who quickly get used to instant answers. So when you’re talking to a real person, they can unconsciously expect a similar speed level of response. Now to cope with these expectations, make sure that your staff are well-trained. Make sure they have access to information quickly and easily and they can maintain their energy levels and their motivation.
Now, my fourth tip is about creating the human advantage by playing our inherent creativity and adaptability cards.
AI is brilliant at providing you with information and answers that exist but it’s no good at original thinking and adaptability, innovation, can’t match a real person there.
So make sure that you empower your teams to express their ideas. Encourage them to think outside the box so that they deliver services and solutions that are perfectly suited to each customer. Just as the conversations in my retail shop are unique and individual, make sure that every interaction in your business feels personal.
The fifth tip is to make your business, its product and services, an integral part of your customer’s life.
The more touch points that you have with your customer, the more embedded you are in what they do then the more loyal they will become to your business.
Trust me, I’ve seen it happen time and time again. It’s about creating a level of support that can’t be replicated by a rigid AI process, because they are always processes. Now, my business works really hard at making life simple for our customers. They can watch us online, browse our website or drop into our store. We offer them a choice of how to buy, and they can always talk to a real person. What we do can’t be replicated by AI, it demands a human touch and that gives us true differentiation.
Now I want to finish off by talking about some of the ways in which AI can help you to build your business.
First off, I want you to ask yourself honestly, how much do you know about AI? If we’re being honest here, for most of us, myself included, it’s not much. You might’ve heard of ChatGPT, Ninja, maybe Claude, but how much have you used it?
Think of AI as being like a really keen graduate waiting to help. If you ask them the right question, give them the right brief, they’ll come back with some really useful information. But if you ask them the wrong question, or for a lot of us, you provide them with a really woolly brief, what you’re going to get back isn’t gonna be anything that’s that useful so it’s all about briefing them correctly.
So my big message here is go and find out about AI. Listen to a few podcasts, watch some videos and have a little bit of a read about it. Investing even just a few hours of your time is going to revolutionise your understanding of what AI really is, right?
With your homework done, you can then begin to enact my second piece of advice, which is look out for opportunities to use AI within your existing business. Are there ways it can help by taking some of the heavy lifting out of some of the really mundane tasks, for example?
There’s loads of apps powered by AI that can revolutionise some of the the kind of simple but often time consuming tasks like creating receipts, managing calendars, and preparing accounts. If you employ it well, AI can liberate time for your team and allow them to focus on the creative human parts of their jobs that AI will never be able to manage as well.
It’s safe to say that AI is not going away. The genie is well and truly out of the box, but how you choose to use your three AI wishes could be one of the most important decisions that you make over the next 10 years. So make it wisely.