Running a small business is not easy. Small business owners wear multiple hats every day, including visionary, accountant, marketer, and voice of the customer. And the fruits of this labor will not go unnoticed. These seemingly unassuming businesses create jobs, drive economic growth, and empower the communities they serve.
Innovation and ingenuity are essential to entrepreneurship, and the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) offers great promise for such efforts. According to our report, Empowering Small Businesses: The Impact of Technology on U.S. Small Businessesnearly one in four small and medium-sized businesses have implemented AI, citing improved performance in marketing and communications.
In addition to increasing efficiency, saving time, and improving decision-making across operations, AI systems can also optimize resources, personalize customer experiences, and provide valuable insights into market trends.
Here are some real-world success stories of how small and medium-sized businesses are leveraging and reaping the benefits of AI.
Helping you acquire and retain customers with AI
Hulagu Kalebjian is extremely grateful for the countless benefits AI has brought to the business of his family-owned coffee roaster, Henry’s House of Coffee. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), AI tools are essential to developing product descriptions that not only meet a specific set of criteria determined by Kalebjian, but also perform well in search.
As an e-commerce brand, Kalebjan is focused on customer lifetime value, i.e. how much does it cost to acquire a customer, how much is a customer worth, and what kind of discounts certain groups of the customer base should receive? We are deeply invested in understanding the .
The AI tool acts as the “analytics brain” behind these data-driven insights, helping Kalebjian determine the appropriate marketing and customer service strategies to implement. By customizing the chatbot to respond in specific ways, Kalebjian can see these and other insights through specific perspectives, such as those of marketing experts, venture capitalists, and scientists. It will look like this.
AI enhances operational efficiency and customer insights, allowing Henry's House of Coffee to compete faster and smarter, a huge benefit for small and medium-sized businesses.
Use ChatGPT and other tools for marketing
For Kim Cooke and her three daughters, starting and running Something Sweet COOKie Dough was a labor of love. A family-run luxury frozen cookie dough business continues to grow and evolve thanks to AI.
Cook said the back end of his business relies on a variety of AI platforms, including ChatGPT for marketing, social media and content development, and Shopify for inventory management and financial operations. The company's co-manufacturing companies also use AI to measure raw materials and scale accordingly, increasing resource efficiency and eliminating waste.
AI has also become a valuable asset for customer service management, as Cook and the Daughters have been able to offer pre-recorded videos on their website to answer specific questions they receive from customers.
Overall, Cook was quick to acknowledge that AI is playing a key role in staying competitive by expanding business reach and delivery capabilities.
Data analysis and research using AI
Austin Milliken, founder of Aureate Capital, an independent investment bank serving clients across multiple industries and sectors, says AI technology will increase the agility of small and medium-sized businesses. For him, AI is an essential function in the company's ability to analyze research and data, develop marketing strategies and pitch materials, and share and request information from internal and external partners through tools like DocuSign and his Dropbox. is playing.
AI's ability to present rich knowledge at high speed is perhaps as important as improving operational efficiency. Even for many of Aureate Capital's clients, who have limited resources to make stock and investment portfolio decisions, AI tools and integrations can help support the decision-making process, or at least validate their thinking.
So if companies want to bring these kinds of benefits to their businesses and stay competitive, Milliken says it's imperative that they start implementing AI.
As applications of AI continue to expand and evolve, one thing is clear. That means small and medium-sized businesses that use AI have increased growth, profitability, and are better equipped to compete in dynamic markets.
About the author
jordan crenshaw
Crenshaw is senior vice president of the Chamber Technology Engagement Center (C_TEC).
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