David is a best-selling author, speaker and trainer. He is also CEO of IPD, a world-class marketing agency based in Tampa, Florida.
Artificial intelligence is leading the pack as we move into Q4 this year. It’s a hot topic that proponents and detractors alike are discussing. What can AI be used for now, and what changes could it create for your industry in the future?
Now, admittedly, I was very skeptical of AI in the past. It was only when learned more about it that I started to see its potential. Once I had implemented it within my own processes, I came to a pretty bold conclusion: AI as it is today can directly increase your efficiency and productivity and therefore boost your bottom line.
What I found upon implementing AI within my company is a more efficient way to eliminate the tedious tasks that weigh down my team so they can focus on the tasks within their roles that require a human touch.
So, are there places where you can apply AI in your business? And if so, how?
Now, I’m not going to profess myself to be an expert on AI itself, nor do I have a dog in this fight. I have simply reaped the benefits of incorporating the technology where I saw fit. I’ve found success in using AI within my company, and I’m sharing my own experience in the hope that others may consider whether or not it can benefit their effectiveness, their efficiency and their team members.
For me, it’s been working quite well, and I will focus on general uses for every industry or type of business. With that being said, here’s where we’ve seen substantial benefits directly through the use of AI.
Sales
If you’ve ever managed a sales team, then you’re well aware of the problem with follow-up. I would argue that follow-up is the piece of the sales cycle where most salespeople drop the ball. Yet we know for a fact that follow-up is where most sales are made. In order to ensure that proper steps are taken during the follow-up process, my agency has made pre-scheduling contact attempts a step in our process. From the moment a client is entered into our customer relationship management platform, follow-up messages are created by AI and scheduled to be sent within the time frame that we have determined based on our average sales cycle, as well as the specific customer. Gone are the days when a customer doesn’t receive a scheduled text, call or email because a salesperson was busy with other tasks, out of the office or simply forgot.
Another benefit to automated follow-up is that my sales team no longer spends hours leaving voicemails or sending texts to clients. Instead, it’s handled through AI in a matter of seconds, and my salespeople are busy prospecting and working with the customers they have at the moment. A simple text that will be sent at the right time with the right message is nearly foolproof.
Furthermore, any information that your salespeople must notate can be tedious, especially if they’re busy. Automating this makes everyone happy. You’ll be glad you did it, and they will too.
There are many AI sales assistant tools out there, and I implore you to look into them. Chances are, you’ll be just as surprised with them as I was.
Marketing
Being a digital marketing company, we are always creating, filming, meeting, designing and planning, and we often film and share these processes, too. This is a lot of fun at times, but it requires more time and effort than many realize. Using AI as a plug-and-play creative mind that can fill a variety of roles took some practice, but since my team learned how to train it, they’ve championed AI’s ability to take over time-consuming tasks so they can focus on more pressing ventures. I believe that this is where popular tools such as ChatGPT are really valuable, especially if you are skilled at prompting them.
You can use AI to come up with content ideas, edit footage, schedule social media posts, analyze data, shorten website code and respond to inquiries from customers. You can tell it exactly how you want it to respond, and it learns instantly. Like with sales, AI can help you ensure that things don’t fall through the cracks, regardless of your current workload. I believe that when it comes to using AI in marketing, the possibilities really are endless.
Finance
You can save both time and money when AI takes on repetitive accounting tasks. By using AI to handle much of the repetition of client billing, for example, our finance department has eliminated the time spent handling these tasks themselves. This means they have more time to dedicate to other more pressing concerns, and they’re able to resolve issues faster and handle projects ahead of schedule.
The last thing anyone wants is for their finance department to be swamped with work that they cannot get through. AI can help make sure that this doesn’t occur by handling the “busy work” so your team can focus on more pertinent matters.
There are a number of popular finance-focused AI tools out there right now, and I recommend checking them out.
Final Thoughts
AI has a wide range of uses, and it seems that it has yet to hit its ceiling. The benefit of AI is that it can constantly be trained and fine-tuned, so really, it may not have one.
Ensure that whichever AI tool you incorporate allows you to properly train it and mold it to the purpose you need it for. I would also make a point to look specifically for AI tools that provide secured and properly sourced data to allow for maximum accuracy.
I, for one, will be keeping a close eye on AI’s advancements to see what else it has in store for my team. Hopefully, you do the same.
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