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Artificial intelligence is something that computer scientists have been working towards since the 1950s, ever since the days of John Von Neumann and the early computer pioneers. However, it has taken a long time to come to fruition. It turns out that imbuing a machine with human-like intelligence is much more complicated than it looks.
However, we’re now reaching the stage where machine intelligence is offering real-world commercial applications. It’s not quite replacing the function of the human brain. We will need that for a while longer. But we’re getting there. And the future looks very exciting indeed.
In this post, we explore some of the ways that the AI revolution is impacting brands today. We also take a look at how it might support your enterprise in the future, making it more efficient and profitable.
It Saves Time
Running a business is time-consuming. Until you get to the stage where you can leverage an army of other people, you’re at the office seven days a week, 365 days per year. It’s not fun.
AI, though, allows you to get more done in less time. In fact, according to Forbes, the average Fortune 500 company saves around $5 million per year using automation, and they’re not even exploiting it to its full potential in many cases.
Automating repetitive tasks has numerous benefits. First, it elevates worker morale. Colleagues aren’t just mindlessly pushing the same buttons over and over again.
Second, it improves customer service. When you automate certain tasks, you find that you’re able to respond to people faster.
Lastly, it allows you to do more with a given set of inputs. By automating various tasks, you can then dedicate your time to other things that really matter.
It Improves In-Store Experience
Artificial intelligence is now changing in-store experiences, promising customers a whole new level of engagement and interaction.
At the moment, this experience is largely taking place via customer devices. AI software is able to remember what customers purchased before and then use this to make recommendations for what they should purchase in the future. It can even show them directions to new products that might interest them using recommendation engines similar to those YouTube and Netflix use. In other words, customers will find that real-world shopping can be just as easily curated as the online equivalent.
If AR takes off, you can imagine how this experience could be even more seamless. Algorithms could mark objects in the user’s environment that might interest them, showing them the distance they would have to travel to pick it off the shelf.
It Improves Security
Getting human beings to monitor your IT network and premises is expensive. Companies did it in the past, but they disliked it. Spending all that money just to protect your enterprise feels like a sunk cost.
AI, though, promises to change all this. Researchers are creating algorithms that are becoming extremely adept at identifying things that look out of the ordinary.
In a digital environment, this could take the form of unscheduled login attempts from unknown locations or certain packets of data that don’t look like the regular versions. In physical environments, it could involve using cameras to identify authorized people and block anyone else who doesn’t have permission to be on your premises.
With every year that passes, AI is becoming better at security. In many cases, it is surpassing hand-coded antivirus solutions. Google is already using this type of technology to protect its users, and it won’t be long before regular, run-of-the-mill firms will be doing the same.
It Helps To Optimize Pricing
At the moment, most companies set prices manually and then adjust them through a process of trial-and-error. However, that’s not always the best policy. It can lead to issues that make it difficult to correctly price at all times.
Take airlines, for instance. Their pricing strategy is extremely complicated. They know that certain people are willing to pay more for flights, particularly business users. That’s why ticket prices tend to rise considerably in the run-up to take-off. In the last couple of days before a flight, it is usually only business users who book tickets. Everyone else, such as holidaymakers, have already bought theirs.
Most brands use manual ticket pricing to set prices, often in cahoots with other industry players. However, AI algorithms are now available that can set prices themselves, according to company objectives. This way, firms can collect all the data they need from the market and then set prices accordingly. In some cases, they might be able to price discriminate, charging some customers more than others, to achieve maximum profitability.
It Improves Customer Support
The best live chat is one that costs your firm almost no money and offers customers answers to their questions. However, getting a solution like that is easier said than done. You either offer a chat bot or you pay a customer service rep: there’s no middle ground.
AI, though, could potentially change this. Already, there are examples of bots that are getting close to passing the Turing test, meaning that they are indistinguishable from a human operator. And many are actually better because they are able to provide customers with information at lightning speed that a real person simply couldn’t.
What’s more, these customer service bots wouldn’t necessarily have to be brand-specific. Yes, it helps if they have information about your company, but they could also provide customers with broader information to help them better enjoy your products and services.
AI-based customer support may potentially fully automate this aspect of your business over the next decade. Already, we are seeing firms looking to replace traditional call centers with website-based chat options.
It Can Boost Competitive Intelligence
Imagine if you were able to know everything you wanted to know about your competitors without sleuthing on them or doing anything illegal. You’d put yourself at a massive advantage.
Well, that’s precisely what a new type of competitive intelligence-based machine learning is offering. This technology promises to skim publicly available data about your rivals and then use it to generate profound insights. You can then use this understanding to position yourself optimally in the marketplace, hopefully giving yourself an advantage in the process.
The emergence of this type of technology began around ten years ago and has since grown substantially. Practically speaking, it allows you to see how they’re attracting visitors to their website, the type of promotions they’re running, and even the people they hire.
With this technology, you can see what’s working (and what isn’t) for other businesses and then capitalize on it. The more you do, the better off you’ll be.
It Can Improve Your Understanding Of Your Customers
There’s a wealth of blogs and information available on the internet describing how you can better understand your customers. The amount of literature is just staggering. Guides multiply every year.
But why is this? It comes down to the fact that understanding customers is challenging. Some companies are successful, but only after many years of trial and error. Others fail along the way – not good.
The basic problem is one of digesting data. There’s just so much of it that it can be hard for the average business to get a handle on it. Firms think that they’re doing the right thing, only to discover that they’re missing opportunities (and have been all along).
AI, though, is a data-crunching technology, almost by definition. It loves sifting through and interpreting mountains of information, and can generate insights from it.
Companies are now using artificial intelligence to get the low-down on their customers. During this process, they’re discovering all sorts of interesting and unusual things that they didn’t know before. By better characterising the people who buy from them, they are also able to sell more.
It Can Improve Sentiment Analysis
Related to this is the concept of sentiment analysis. This tool allows companies to see how people regard them in general. Do they perceive their brands positively or negatively?
Getting insights in this area is challenging. PR reps at firms must scan thousands of posts, comments and forum conversations to build up an overall picture.
However, with semantic algorithms, that sort of work is becoming a thing of the past. Firms are now leveraging AI technology to scrape the internet for all mentions of their brand and then evaluate the level of positivity surrounding it. AI is also being used to identify common problems or public relations issues that are bringing firms down.
Better sentiment analysis ultimately means greater brand control. The more that firms can control the conversation, the better.
It Helps With Content Marketing
Lastly, AI is a wonderful tool for content marketing. While it’s not good enough yet to actually write blogs or generate convincing videos, it is getting better at telling you what topics you should cover.
AI in content marketing looks at your existing data (and that of other companies), and then tells you which strategy is most likely to work in the future. Through data-driven analysis, you can get direction on the type of content you should create, instead of relying on intuition alone.
