10 Ways an AI Assistant Can Help Your Small Business

AI assistants can be a game changer, especially for small businesses looking to scale up. Let’s dive into how to use AI at work. With ten key ways AI assistants can help your businesses, from chatbots to scheduling meetings, so you can focus on what matters most. Growing your business.

Who is using AI in the workplace?

AI is becoming increasingly popular. With Forbes finding that 68% of large companies, 33% of medium companies and 15% of small businesses have incorporated at least one AI technology.

Organisations are using AI for a wide range of tasks, including:

• Customer service (56%)

• Cybersecurity and fraud management (51%)

• Customer relationship management (46%)

• Digital personal assistants (47%)

• Inventory management (40%)

• Content production (35%)

• Product recommendations (33%)

• Accounting (30%)

• Supply chain operations (30%)

• Recruitment and talent sourcing (26%)

• Audience segmentation (24%)

How AI Assistants Can Help You at Work

So, how can you use AI technology in your own business? Let’s have a look at how to use AI at work.

1. Customer service

Customer queries can take up a lot of time. Especially for small businesses. AI assistants can be used in various ways to improve the customer experience, including AI-powered chatbots. Like that offered by Intercom.

Research by Intercom found that chatbots increased sales by 67%. Improved customer response times by three. And increased customer support satisfaction by 24%.

2. Sales

From forecasting to AI phone calls, as soon as an inbound lead fills out the form on your website. AI can be used by your sales team to support their activities. Many CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot have AI tools built in. Offering things like predictive sales forecasting, automated data entry, lead scoring and automated follow-ups.

3. Project management

It can be difficult to keep on top of everything at work, especially if you’re running multiple projects or managing several departments. AI assistants can help you to automate task assignments, send reminders about deadlines, and track task progress.

Tools like ClickUp AI Project Manager provide accurate AI updates and status reports for tasks, docs and people. Reducing the amount of time project managers need to spend manually updating statuses.

4. Administrative tasks

A study by Forbes found that 64% of business owners believe that AI will improve productivity. While 42% think it will streamline job processes. One of the easiest ways you can improve productivity is by using AI meeting assistants to automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks like data entry, email management and scheduling meetings.

The best AI meeting note takers do all the mundane manual work, like Microsoft Copilot which automatically creates meeting transcripts and helps you to stay on track during the meeting by summarising key discussion points, as well as creating action points – leaving you to focus on the meeting.

5. Marketing content

Content creation is one of the most common ways businesses use AI tools. With HubSpot finding that 46% of marketers who say they use AI are using it to write marketing content. However, it’s also important to note that 86% of marketers who use AI for content creation also take the time to edit the content it produces.

Still, it can be a great time saving tool for small businesses, particularly those without a dedicated marketing team. Use tools like Jasper, Microsoft Copilot or HubSpot’s AI Content Writer to create social media posts, emails and blog posts – but do spend time tweaking your prompts for the best results.

6. Market research

Market research can be time-consuming, and small businesses may not have the skills needed in-house to conduct in-depth research – or the budget to bring in external resources.

AI assistants can save you time and effort by analysing market trends, looking into consumer behaviour and analysing the competitor landscape. Tools like Brandwatch use AI to analyse data at scale, saving your team time while providing strategic insights.

7. Social media scheduling

Even if you don’t use an AI assistant to write your social media captions, you can use one to schedule your posts in to ensure they go live at the right time, reducing the need for someone to be available at all hours to manually post on your social platforms.

As well as generating captions using AI, SproutSocial uses the technology to determine what the best times are to post the content, based on when your audience is active and likely to engage with your posts.

8. Financial management

Staying on top of finances is crucial for any business – but it’s especially important for small businesses. AI tools like QuickBooks Online’s AI financial assistant, Inuit Assist can automate financial tasks like expense tracking, invoicing and financial forecasting, taking manual tasks off your employees’ hands. Additionally, tools like Microsoft Copilot can help you analyse and organise data in Excel, helping you to make better decisions.

9. Recruitment

It’s likely, as a small business, that you have growth in your sights. Finding, interviewing and hiring the right people can be time-consuming – but AI assistants can help at every stage of the recruitment process.

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) like Greenhouse use AI to automate recruitment tasks like sorting through applications and shortlisting candidates – and 86% of recruiters agree that using this type of software has reduced their overall time-to-hire.

10. Employee support

HR’s job doesn’t end with hiring new staff – there is also a lot of ongoing support that needs to be provided.

Tools such as Betterworks use AI for performance management, using technology to help employees set goals and helping managers to provide clear, actionable feedback. Given that 95% of managers are dissatisfied with their company’s review system and fewer than 20% of employees are inspired by their reviews, automating reviews is likely to improve the process for both employees and managers.

AI isn’t perfect, but incorporating AI assistants can transform the way your small business operates, helping you to streamline your processes, gain actionable insights and focus on strategic growth.

For more information on how AI could supercharge your team’s productivity, get 1-2-1 support from our friendly V-Hub Digital Advisers.