12 Benefits of AI for Small Business to Streamline Workflows

In a recent survey, C-suite executives estimated that 56% of their workforce is directly using AI to automate or augment job tasks, and 75% of employees who are transparently using AI say it makes them more efficient, productive, and accurate.

This trend is expected to continue. Companies using AI today estimate that 70% of their total workforce will use AI to automate or augment some of their job tasks by 2028.

If you’re a small business owner or manager, you need to understand how AI can help you grow your business. For example, Podium’s AI Employee can help you improve workflows, convert leads, and drive revenue.

Below, we’ll explore what AI is used for in business and the key advantages of it.

AI in Business: What Is It Used for?

Artificial intelligence increases the speed and versatility of software and platforms companies already use. AI is found in cloud-based tools such as marketing tools, accounting platforms, and customer relationship management (CRM) software.

AI applications in business automate repetitive tasks and analyze customer data using machine learning, natural language processing, and predictive analytics. This technology streamlines business workflows while improving customer experience, helping grow your business.

12 Key Advantages of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

How does AI help businesses? By leveraging AI, small businesses can significantly streamline their workflows to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance their overall competitiveness in the market. Let’s take a closer look at twelve ways AI can benefit your small businesses.

1. 24/7 Availability and Responsiveness

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants enable small businesses to be available to customers 24/7. These AI-driven tools can handle basic customer inquiries, provide helpful information and links, schedule appointments, and assist customers in other ways outside regular business hours. For example, Podium’s Webchat can automatically respond to FAQs such as hours of operations and accepted payment types and engage with leads who message after hours. Podium’s AI Employee does even more with the power of AI. It can turn every lead from web, email, text, phone, and third-party sites into meaningful conversations that drive sales.

This constant availability enhances customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty by ensuring that their queries are addressed promptly. Additionally, AI systems can learn from interactions, improving their responsiveness and accuracy over time without human intervention.

2. Enhanced Customer Engagement

AI also enhances customer engagement by enabling personalized interactions and tailored communication. Through AI-driven analytics, businesses can gather insights into customer preferences, behaviors, and buying patterns. Utilizing this information, AI can personalize marketing campaigns, recommendations, and customer support interactions.

By offering personalized experiences, businesses can strengthen relationships with customers and improve engagement, which may result in increased retention rates and ultimately more sales.

3. Improved Lead Generation and Qualification

AI can improve both lead generation and qualification. First, it can streamline the lead generation process in several ways. AI algorithms can sift through customer data, online behavior, and interactions to identify prospects who exhibit buying intent or align with the business’s ideal customer profile.

AI tools like Podium’s AI Employee can pull email leads from sites like Angi, Thumbtack, CarGurus, and more right into Podium and send a pre-approved auto response in under two minutes so you can respond faster than the competition.

Second, AI can automatically qualify leads by assigning scores based on predefined criteria about behavior, demographics, and interactions, allowing businesses to focus their efforts on leads more likely to convert. This targeted approach saves time and resources while increasing the effectiveness of marketing and sales efforts.

4. Optimized Supply Chain Management

AI can optimize supply chain management by predicting demand, managing inventory, and identifying cost-saving opportunities.

AI contributes to optimized supply chain management by analyzing various data points such as historical sales data, market trends, weather patterns, and supplier information. This analysis helps in predicting demand more accurately, managing inventory levels efficiently, and reducing excess stock or shortages. AI-powered systems can automate inventory replenishment, logistics planning, and warehouse operations, leading to cost reductions, minimized wastage, and improved supply chain efficiency for small businesses.

5. Efficient Customer Support

By providing immediate assistance to customers, chatbots and AI-driven customer service tools can improve response times and reduce operational costs for small businesses.

By using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to understand and respond to customer inquiries, these AI-driven systems can handle basic customer queries, provide instant responses, assist with issue resolution around the clock, and escalate more complex issues to human agents when necessary. This can help your customer service team help more customers, improve their response times, and reduce operational costs while scaling.

6. Automated Responses

AI enables the automation of repetitive tasks, such as data entry, invoicing, and responding to customers. The latter can be particularly valuable for saving time and resources.

AI enables automated responses across various business functions. For instance, AI-powered tools can be used in marketing and sales to automate email responses, schedule appointments, and personalize communication that’s based on customer behavior. In administrative tasks, AI can automate scheduling, data entry, and routine office operations, freeing up valuable time for employees to focus on higher-value tasks.

Automated responses through AI not only save time but also ensure consistency and accuracy in communication, enhancing overall productivity and customer experiences.

7. Data Analysis and Insights

AI-powered analytics tools can process vast amounts of data quickly, providing valuable insights into customer trends, market patterns, and operational efficiencies.

AI excels in processing large volumes of data and extracting valuable insights. AI-driven analytics tools can analyze diverse datasets, providing small businesses with actionable insights into customer behavior, market trends, and operational performance. This data-driven approach aids in making informed business decisions, identifying growth opportunities, and fine-tuning strategies for better outcomes.

By leveraging AI for data analysis, small businesses can gain a competitive edge by staying agile and responsive to market changes.

8. Fraud Detection and Prevention

AI excels at detecting and preventing fraudulent activities by analyzing large volumes of data and identifying suspicious patterns or anomalies. For small businesses, AI-powered systems can monitor transactions, user behavior, and other activities to detect potential fraud in real time.

By utilizing machine learning algorithms, AI can continuously learn and adapt to new fraudulent tactics, providing more accurate and proactive fraud prevention measures. This capability helps in safeguarding businesses from financial losses and reputational damage caused by fraudulent activities.

9. Optimized Marketing Campaigns

AI algorithms can analyze customer behavior and preferences, allowing businesses to deliver personalized marketing campaigns, and increase engagement and conversion rates.

AI plays a crucial role in optimizing marketing campaigns for small businesses by leveraging data-driven insights and predictive analytics. AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of customer data, including preferences, behaviors, purchase history, and interactions across various channels. With this information, AI can personalize marketing campaigns, targeting specific audience segments with tailored messages and offers.

By utilizing machine learning, AI continually refines these campaigns based on real-time feedback, improving targeting accuracy and campaign effectiveness. This results in higher engagement, increased conversion rates, and better return on investment (ROI) for marketing efforts.

10. Cost Savings and Efficiency

AI implementation in small businesses often leads to significant cost savings and improved operational efficiency. Automation of repetitive tasks, such as data entry, customer support, and inventory management, reduces the need for manual labor, saving time and resources. This can be particularly useful for financial management, where automating invoicing or expense tracking and streamlining financial operations can help minimize errors and reduce overhead costs.

AI-driven predictive analytics helps optimize processes such as inventory management and supply chain logistics, reducing waste and enhancing resource allocation.

11. Adaptability and Scalability

AI provides small businesses with adaptability and scalability in several ways. Firstly, AI-driven systems can adapt to changing market conditions, customer preferences, and industry trends by quickly analyzing and responding to new data inputs. This adaptability enables businesses to make timely adjustments to their strategies, products, or services.

Secondly, AI technologies often offer scalable solutions that can grow alongside the business. Whether it’s an AI-powered customer support system, analytics tools, or automation software, these solutions can be easily scaled up or down to match the evolving needs and size of the business without significant infrastructure changes.

12. Competitive Advantage

Adopting AI technologies can provide small businesses with a competitive edge in the market. The ability to streamline processes, save costs, make data-driven decisions, offer innovative solutions, and deliver products or services more efficiently due to AI implementation can strengthen a small business’s position against larger competitors.

Disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

While AI offers many advantages, it also comes with challenges like high implementation costs, the need for specialized expertise, and steep learning curves. These challenges may hinder its adoption and deployment within organizations, especially for smaller businesses.

Let’s take a closer look at these disadvantages below.

High Initial Implementation Costs

One significant drawback of implementing AI is the high initial costs. Developing or adopting AI systems, acquiring the necessary hardware and software, and hiring or upskilling necessary personnel can add up. Small businesses, in particular, might find it challenging to invest in AI due to these high upfront expenses.

Lack of Understanding and Expertise

Another drawback is the lack of understanding and expertise in AI among the workforce. This lack of in-house expertise can lead to challenges in deploying, maintaining, and optimizing AI systems effectively, which can impact the full potential that AI can offer to the business.

Steep Learning Curve

Employees willing to upskill face the complex challenge of understanding how AI systems work and how to effectively integrate them into existing business operations. This will likely require extensive training, time, and resources. This steep learning curve might slow down the initial implementation and impact productivity during the transition phase.

Examples of AI Applications in Business

Since many platforms already incorporate AI technology, it’s not difficult to find an AI application for your business. Here are a few ways businesses like yours are using the technology.

Business phone systems

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems have AI features that consolidate and manage calls, texts, and other messages in a single platform. This AI phone service uses automation to transcribe and summarize all communications so you can see your customer’s entire conversation history to improve their experience.

Marketing platforms

Many marketing, advertising, and CRM platforms already use generative AI and machine learning to automate and streamline workflows and repetitive tasks and tailor campaigns to their target audience’s preferences.

Chatbots

Conversational chatbots use language learning models (LLM) and NLP to offer customer support on your website. And, chatbots do more than just answer FAQs—they can help gather leads or schedule appointments 24/7.

The AI Tool Your Business Was Missing

Podium’s AI Employee can help you unlock many of the benefits above. With this AI tool, you can simplify and automate the following tasks:

• Responding to email leads and customer inquiries
• Crafting review invites and review responses
• Generating call summaries
• Write messages and campaigns about marketing promotions, appointment confirmations, and review invitations in bulk

Watch a demo today to learn how Podium’s AI-powered platform can help you grow your business.