Examples of artificial intelligence in use by business

Artificial intelligence (AI) has permeated our society. Whether you realise it or not, there are plenty of examples of artificial intelligence in use by business in our everyday lives.  Like most people, you will have used it daily, checking your social media feed or while searching and shopping on the internet.

With the advance of e-commerce, artificial intelligence has had a significant impact on business. With the pace of AI uses increasing, the emergence of IoT, and deployment of 5G networks, it is likely there is much more to come in the foreseeable future.

How can artificial intelligence (AI) be used in business?

For today’s businesses, a variety of diverse applications for artificial intelligence is possible. Before listing detailed examples of artificial intelligence in use by businesses, here are three various ways that businesses are taking advantage of AI technology to enhance their business:

• Improving user experience – Regardless of the user being a customer or employee, AI integration with the business website or intranet provides an enhanced visitor friendly experience. With AI, businesses can introduce features such as autocomplete, autocorrect and spell-check into their website’s search facility to make it simpler to locate the information required.
• Automating support – Chatbots have been around for a while. However, recent advancements have led to their increased effectiveness to the extent that live customer service agents are no longer required as the initial point of contact for certain types of user queries. Chatbots are now deployed by business to help customers, and users locate support information and navigate knowledge bases, manage accounts, and order products.
• Monitoring and analysing feedback – Customers have many different mediums to provide input to the business. Mediums such as social media, interenet review sites, website contact forms, and support tickets, encourage and allow customers to provide useful input about the brand, product and service. But how do you manage all the feedback from various mediums?  Artificial intelligence technology can aggregate all the feedback, converting it into valuable insight helping the business improve its products and services.

Artificial intelligence examples in business

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing and advanced analytics are used in various ways behind the scenes to impact our daily lives, driving business decisions and optimising operations for many businesses.  Here are some examples of AI that business may already use:

Examples of Artificial intelligence (AI) in business management:

• Automated insights, especially for financial services or e-commerce
• Automated responders and online customer support
• Intelligent email categorisation
• Process automation
• Virtual personal assistants, such as Google
• Voice to text capabilities
• Sales and business forecasting
• Spam filters

Examples of Artificial intelligence (AI) in e-commerce:

• Dynamic product pricing
• Fraud detection and prevention
• Personalised offers based on customer’s previous history
• Product recommendations and purchase predictions
• Smart searches and relevancy to cross-sell products

Examples of Artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing:

• Customer segmentation
• Convert unstructured customer data into valuable insights
• Personalisation of news feeds
• Pattern and image recognition
• Messenger bots
• Real-time ad targeting and optimised bidding
• Predictive customer service
• Social media monitoring
• Survey analytics

Read more about the business benefits of artificial intelligence.

10 Examples of artificial intelligence in business

As evidenced by the examples above, artificial intelligence has wide-ranging use in business. It is disrupting every business process in almost every industry.  Below are examples of how artificial intelligence technology can be used by small and medium business to improve product or service.

1. Analytics and Insights

There are many benefits for businesses in accumulating reviews for products and services. For businesses, reviews can be used for seller ratings on Google Ads, while for potential customers it increases confidence.

AI technology, such as NLP-equipped tools can pull together customer reviews and feedback, and analyse it, highlighting a product’s best qualities, and which product features might need more work.

A leading solution, such as Wonderboard, goes further by compiling data from surveys, internal sources, and more. Such features can actually help businesses formulate valuable insights about their product or service performance.

2. Customer Service Automation

With artificial intelligence technology, bots can be used to process unique support tickets and help customers navigate knowledge bases.

Some customer service automation technology use proprietary NLP and AI engines to learn from each interaction, making future support tickets and customer interaction improving their effectiveness with every interaction. This doesn’t only save businesses money, it also expedites help for customers, leading to more satisfaction.

3. Contact Form spell check

Spell check has been around for a while.  Using a type of NLP, form spell check reduces the number of error-ridden messages received by a business, which may be difficult to interpret.  Such errors can lead to miscommunication.  Equiping contact forms with spell check reduces headaches for both users and employees.

4. Machine Translation

Led by the digital economy, globalisation has opened previously inaccessible markets to businesses, thereby increasing the opportunies and prospects for growth. But adequately serving and communicating with potential buys from a variety of countries can be challenging and lead to miscommunication and frustration.

Translation tools, such as Lilt, integrate with other popular tools, such as Zendesk to overcome  communication hurdles quickly and cheaply.  Such tools become increasingly effective over time by learning from a human translator.

5. Knowledgebase Support

Many businesses have integrated chat windows on their websites to allow visitors to ask a customer services agent for assistance or further information immediately. Serving the same role as a live customer service agent, these chatbots can free up live agents to manage higher-priority tasks and complex tickets.

Answer Bot software, such as that offered by Zendesk, helps users to locate knowledgebase articles, guiding them to the best answer to their questions. In case, the user isn’t satisfied, answer bots can raise a support ticket to get the user in contact with a human customer agent.

6. Smart search, autocomplete and autocorrect

Smart search tools, such as Klevu, not only uses NLP but also self-learns. Best used for e-commerce, Klevu intelligently includes relevant synonyms to a catalogue search delivering three times the results.

Search autocomplete and autocorrect is another forms of AI that many people use daily. Autocomplete and autocorrect features are extremely helpful when integrated into business websites.

Features such as search autocomplete will help users locate the correct information faster, without knowing the full term and thereyby reducing the likelihood of disinterest.

Failing to catch a typing mistake, may result in the search engine showing no results, leading to potential buyers assuming you don’t have what they are looking for. Equipping a website’s search engine with autocorrect will enable it to catch errors and display the appropriate results.

7. Survey Analytics

AI technology, such as Wonderboard mentioned above, can also improve the business’s experience. It can achieve this by looking for keyword trends and frequency in the data provided.  These trends can help gauge overall customer awareness or perception about a brand, or particular products and services.

8. Social Media and App bots

Bots do not have to be restricted to a business’s website.  For example, Uber launched its Facebook Messenger bot in 2015, allowing customers to to book an Uber from within the Facebook Messenger app.

The phenomenal rise of social media creates a new way for customers and businesses to connect and interact with one another. Similar to customer service automation, bots can be used on social media sites to interact with customers to provide guidance about products and services and answer any queries.  For customers, this offers a unique experience.  The easier it is to interact with a business, the more people are likely to use the service or purchase a product.

9. Social Media Monitoring

For businesses, interaction with customers has intensified.  Keeping a track of what is being said about a brand by customers on social media can be challenging.  However, using AI technology, businesses can monitor and respond to any input quickly.

Using a social media listening tool, like Sprout Social, monitors and analyses the social media news concerning a brand. Metrics that are being monitored, such as Twitter mentions for a particular product, can help businesses gauge consumer perception of a specific product or service or customer experience.

10. Virtual Assistants

Artificial intelligence–powered virtual assistants, such as Google Assistant, are available on mobile and smart home devices, engaging in two-way conversations.  Virtual assistants can complete a number of different tasks for users, such as search the Internet, provide an accounts overview or schedule events and alarms for particular products and services.