3 ways to integrate AI into your business right now

Artificial intelligence (AI) is easily one of the most popular and versatile technologies at play in business right now. Not only can it help your company work smarter, work faster, and accomplish more with less, but it is also one of the least understood tools for most business owners. A 2017 report by MIT and Boston Consulting Group had this to say:

“Three-quarters of executives believe AI will enable their companies to move into new businesses. Almost 85% believe AI will allow their companies to obtain or sustain a competitive advantage. But only about one in five companies has incorporated AI in some offerings or processes. Only one in 20 companies has extensively incorporated AI in offerings or processes. Less than 39% of all companies have an AI strategy in place. The largest companies — those with at least 100,000 employees — are the most likely to have an AI strategy, but only half have one.”

As such, here are 3 ways your business can integrate AI in the next 12 months:

Optimize Your Website for Voice Search

According to NPR and Edison Research, among U.S. adults, “53 million people (21% of the population) now own at least one smart speaker. And, the total number of devices in homes has increased 78% year-over-year. With 52% of all smart speaker owners now using their device daily, findings suggest that voice-activated technology is increasingly integrated into millions of people’s everyday lives.” According to Google, 72% of people who own voice-activated speakers say that their devices are used as part of their daily routines. That means that millions of people across the country (and globe) are using AI for search. If that doesn’t convince you, go read this mega list of every smart search stat and you will quickly be swayed. One quick way to utilize AI right now is by optimizing your website for voice search. For this you’ll need to think deeply about how your audience speaks about your business, products, and services.

[Need help in optimizing your website for voice search? Let’s talk.]

Employ AI Tools to Assist Customers

Customer service bots are a relatively easy way to integrate AI into your business. In addition to being a major time saver for your customer service team, they reduce pain points for your customers by allowing them to quickly get information without waiting – one element that can enhances consumer opinion, and differentiate you in a crowded marketplace. These bots have been around for some time now. Experts even predict that by next year more than 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human. That means you need to get on the bandwagon now. Start out by identifying the issue(s) you want to solve with automation. This could be as simple as answering basic consumer questions that are asked all day long. Then a bot will need to be built, implemented, and then refined (yes, nothing’s perfect day one!). A bot will need to be monitored to be most effective. There are simple off-the-shelf bots, but for more complicated tasks, a custom bot might be the best approach.

[Need a custom bot built? We got you.]

Implement smart software to aggregate and synthesize social media streams

When Kanye West made a bid for president, we wondered what the public was actually thinking. It’s easy to get distracted by only looking at news articles. Conversations are happening so quickly that it’s critical to capture what the public is saying in real time. So we aggregated more than 15 million tweets from 200+ countries around the world, feeding them through a custom built tool to determine whether the tweets were mostly positive or mostly negative. Interested in the result? 77% of all compiled tweets about Kanye West have been positive since we began this project back in 2015. See for yourself at KanyeQuest.com. This is only one example of utilizing AI to analyze how your consumers are reacting in realtime to your product, your company, or your business decisions that are making headlines.

[Want a Kanye Quest for your product? Let’s talk.]