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9 Major Reasons Why Your Business Should Be Adopting AI in 2021
By Kristina Radovic
Some people invest a lot of time and resources in developing artificial intelligence (AI), while others, like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, are warning mankind about the existential threat of AI in the near future.
Whether we like it or not, AI is increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives and everyday functioning. It’s inside our smartphones, in our home appliances, our cars, the list goes on and on…
Source: YouTube/Bernard Marr
In the business setting, more and more organizations are adopting AI for multiple reasons, depending on the industry. In 2015, only 10% of organizations reported using AI or are planning to soon. In just four years, that number rose to 37% of businesses that have implemented AI in some form.
Corporation giants like Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Amazon, Facebook, etc., are integrating AI to a greater or lesser extent into their everyday processes or some of their products, like Apple with iPhone.
With the global AI market size valued at $39.9 billion and expected to rise every year at a rate of 42.2% until 2027, it’s clear that artificial intelligence is one of the fastest developing technologies today with the most diverse variety of applications.
In this article, you’ll find out how exactly omnipresent is AI and how can your business benefit from adopting it.
Do you know you’re already using AI every day?
Even though some people may find the very notion of artificial intelligence intimidating, they are not aware that AI is found in almost every digital device and is a part of many services we use.
If you’re using Gmail, then you know that your mail is sorted into several categories. Google’s AI is responsible for that.
It’s also responsible for protecting you against spam. Google claims that their AI-powered filtering system prevents more than 99,9% of spam mail from landing in your inbox.
Speaking of Gmail, you’ve probably noticed these simple one-click replies showing up while responding to someone. They’re customized to each mail and your writing style. AI is responsible for that as well.
Chatbots
We’ve already written about chatbots and how Amazon sellers could use them to increase their sales, but we haven’t mentioned that they are AI technology.
Source: Upwork
With Natural Language Processing (NLP), chatbots are learning how to talk like humans while they perform tasks like responding to various questions, booking tickets or appointments, finding and recommending products, track shipping, etc.
Recommendations
When you shop or listen to music, you may wonder how do they know which products or songs to recommend to you? It’s all AI’s doing. It collects information and based on your search history, it assumes your needs and taste and presents you with appropriate options.
That’s how online retailers like Amazon try to personalize your shopping experience as much as possible and Shopify to get a hold of your listening habits.
Source: Amazon
Google is, of course, going one step further. Next to your music choice, Google Play takes into account things like weather, day of the week, time of the day as well and suggests music based on the combination of these.
This is just a fraction of what AI can do. The main characteristic of AI is that it’s continually learning and using its experience to improve itself. Reminds you of someone?
What can AI do for your business?
Businesses and industries are facing critical challenges all the time. Some overcome them and persevere, others can’t keep up and fail.
The same will happen with artificial intelligence.
As we can see from the examples above and our everyday lives, the integration of AI is inevitable. Those who embrace and welcome AI into their business operations will thrive, while those who continue to resist the adoption of AI will more likely than not fall behind.
Because AI is the future of business.
So here are 9/11 reasons why you should start thinking about adopting AI into your business processes.
1. Become more efficient
Time is money. That’s what every CEO and manager will tell you. It’s the most valuable and the scarcest resource of every company. That’s why some of the largest investments are into new technologies that will speed up and automate processes and tasks.
Artificial intelligence has shown the best results when it comes to increasing efficiency by taking over repetitive work that overwhelms employees and takes up most of their time.
Many processes can be automated, like troubleshooting most common issues. The majority of user inquiries to customer service are simple questions and issues, requiring simple answers and solutions.
That’s why many companies, like Upwork and Paypal, are using AI-powered chatbots to provide quick answers to simple queries, while employees can focus on more complicated tasks.
2. Provide excellent customer service
Automated customer service doesn't only relieve employees, it also provides much better customer service to your clients.
Poor customer service can cause serious financial losses to a company. If they don’t feel like their complaints are being resolved properly, around 56% of customers will stop doing business what that company.
And they will share their experience with other people, making them less likely to even consider buying your products or using your service.
Companies that resist introducing conversational AI’s will face huge losses because customers, like 60% of Americans, are not only becoming used to but preferring an AI customer-service, either through an app or website, resolving their simple issues.
3. Provide a better customer experience
We’ve already seen in the previous examples how AI can provide a customizable experience for users of various services.
AIs collect and analyze user behavior data to make quick and accurate in-the-moment recommendations related not only to product descriptions but also to the user’s visual preferences.
These AI-powered recommendation engines speed up the time shoppers spend on an eCommerce website and moves them up faster in the sales funnel.
They also create a more enjoyable personalized experience for users of streaming platforms like Netflix, HBO, or YouTube.
Source: HBO
The final goal is that by analyzing an enormous amount of data and learning continuously, AIs can provide 100% correct assumptions of the user’s taste and preferences.
4. Enhance your marketing strategies
AI is rapidly transforming the marketing industry and every company relies heavily on it. If you still haven’t at least thought of adopting AI for your marketing efforts, you’re already at a loss.
The above-mentioned recommendation system is just one of the examples. AIs can not only develop marketing campaigns, but they can also execute them.
Some of the most used AI-powered marketing technologies are predictive analysis, programmatic advertising, and responsive search ads.
Source: YouTube/Growth Tribe
AIs help in identifying potential customers, tailoring messages to their specific needs (called hyper-personalization), and find the most effective way of communicating that personalized message, as well as the most suitable time.
It’s particularly helpful in locating the best places to run ads, scanning through content on the internet, taking into account several factors such as audiences, locations, interests, etc.
5. Improve your HR services
AI doesn’t need to be focused solely on your customers. The greatest asset of every company is its employees and AI can greatly contribute to this department.
Recruitment can be a time-consuming process involving a lot of people who are too busy to spend hours looking for the perfect candidate.
AI can step in here for several tasks:
- Posting job ads on various platforms;
- Analyzing resumes and classifying them accordingly;
- Screening candidates, eliminating those that don’t fit the desired qualifications and criteria, and retaining those that do for the next step;
- Collecting additional data during job interviews such as verbal and non-verbal behavior (body language, tone of voice, verbal and facial expressions, etc.);
- Storing all of this data in one place, analyzing it, and providing the required results.
Apart from that, AI can conduct surveys and monitor certain employee behaviors, to ascertain the level of employee satisfaction within the company and room for improvement.
6. Enhance your cybersecurity
The biggest threat any company faces are hacker attacks. No matter how much the technology of cybersecurity advances, hackers quickly catch up. In a matter of seconds, your company can experience grave damage and losses.
Source: Freepik/rawpixel.com
Since AI is a technology that constantly learns, it improves itself continually. That means that with every hacker attack or an attempt, your AI-powered cybersecurity will immediately improve itself and never again be susceptible to that kind of attack.
With employees being the weakest link, unintentionally letting hackers in through phishing, AI can provide continuous education and warning to employees, to prevent these attacks.
7. Put your data to use
Companies gather and store a tremendous amount of data. However, they usually never actually use it. And that is a huge oversight.
AI can process a billion gigabytes of data in minutes. Imagine what that power of information can do for your company.
Source: YouTube/World Economic Forum
How AI works is that it analyzes all of that big data, identifying any patterns, and offering valuable insights on how to improve the company’s processes and helps them make more informed decisions.
8. Fraud detection
As an eCommerce company, you will have countless financial online transactions carried out each day. What are the chances some of them would be fraudulent? Huge!
Thieves steal credit cards and other personal information and use them to purchase goods and services online. To spot fraud, there are so many things to look out for. Especially if you are handling huge volumes of orders.
AI is great at identifying any unusual behavior, immediately alerting you. If you confirm fraud, AI will learn and continue to provide improved fraud prevention services.
9. Become a more desirable employer
The talent shortage is a growing issue for many companies. It’s becoming increasingly harder to get a hold of high-quality staff. That’s why you need an additional competitive advantage.
Adopting AI into your business processes and culture is a sign for experts that you are ahead of your competitors. The companies that have taken that step of becoming an AI-powered business are still in the minority. And therefore, they are definitely a more attractive employer.
You can only benefit from AI
If you are at that stage where you are looking at how to scale your business and in which direction to take it, don’t waste too much time thinking.
Whether we are ready for it or not, AI is the future and those that don’t jump on the bandwagon will likely face failure.
CodeDesign is a performance digital marketing(internet advertising agency) and Amazon agency. We help clients worldwide in creating a digital marketing strategy and optimizing how they use digital marketing channels. For Amazon marketing, we help vendors and sellers in Amazon listing optimization and creating an Amazon marketing strategy.
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