Technology has changed everything in the business world, from automating repetitive processes to transforming the way companies communicate customers. Three fields playing a huge role in this transformation are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science.
Artificial intelligence is the ability to program machines to simulate human activities, while machine learning is the ability to learn without human intervention. Both of these disciplines work directly with data science, which is used in many industries such as medicine, the stock market, and sales. Thanks to these three technology revolutions, the business world has dramatically changed. Here, we’ll show you some of the ways that tech is changing the way businesses operate.
Email Marketing
Several years ago, businesses managed their communication processes through letters. Then, with the arrival of emails, they migrated their communication processes to platforms like Gmail or Outlook. Emails now form a huge part of a company’s marketing efforts. Emails play a big role in digital marketing strategies. But today, processes are more automated than ever. Artificial intelligence has allowed companies to automatically detect whether an email is a spam letter or threat, and this is technology that we would have never imagined 20 years ago.
But this isn’t all you can do now with emails. Maybe at least once in your life, you received an email from a company saying “we miss you” or “we haven’t seen you in a while”. This is an AI-driven system that detects when you (or any customer) have not visited their websites in a while. And what happens with local events? These same systems like Mailchimp or POS can segment the company’s contact list by region and send messages to customers that live in the city where the location will be.
Technology Reduces Repetitive, Mundane Tasks
AI is here to stop us from doing repetitive and redundant tasks. This is something that scares many people in several industries because they believe they are going to lose their jobs. However, one should know that AI complements their job. Workers should know that with AI, they would not have to spend time doing repetitive tasks. They can instead focus on generating more positive outcomes for their company.
If you think about it, there are several tasks you can automate at your company. This includes inventory management, replying to emails, and transferring files. All these could be done with machine learning software. For example, inventory management is one of the most tedious tasks in the HR department. What if you could sync your inventory system with your website so the number of goods in-store will automatically be updated when a purchase is made? This would be awesome, right? Well, it’s happening now thanks to technology - artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Customer Service Automation
Having someone on the phone for seven to eight hours per day is something from the past. Although companies need a human touch for customer service, there’s no need for a huge team if you can have chatbots and automated voice systems to help customers find solutions. Chatbots, which are AI-driven tools, don’t sleep, don’t eat, and don’t rest, so they’ll be available for your customers 24/7.
Automated voice systems storage data with responses are available to help customers with requests. If there’s a request that the system doesn’t recognize, it’ll just transfer the call to a human customer service assistant. There are still people who attend calls, but they don’t spend too many hours as they would before the implementation of chatbots or automated voice systems.
Track Your Customers’ Journey on Your Website
AI-driven platforms, like Google Analytics, allow you to track your customers’ journey on your website. This way, you’re able to see which products are generating more leads and which aren’t that successful. Besides, this also allows you to create a personalized experience for your customers by showing them products they might be interested in. If you’re interested in knowing which items your customers don’t like or aren’t interested in, Google Analytics can show you something called ‘bouncing rate’. This reveals how much time users spend on a specific page and whether they just leave immediately or continue browsing there.
Human Resources
HR processes like onboarding new employees, tracking time, or doing accounting tasks are no longer done by humans. There are several AI-driven human resources software like HR Bamboo, which allows you to automate these processes. This way, employees can spend more time doing something that would help your company hit business goals.
Data Storage
In the past, companies used to have large data servers hiding in a closet. This was expensive and also insecure. Companies now store data on cloud servers that provide more security and high-quality bandwidth. They also can access data everywhere. Cloud services are less expensive than maintaining on-site servers at the office and today more companies prefer to store data with these services. Another benefit of cloud services is that the customer service department can send large files like how-to videos to their customers easily thanks to the large bandwidth.
Remote Workforces
The remote work trend is dramatically increasing these days. More companies are willing to work with a completely remote workforce for many reasons. One of them is that they don’t have to rent an office. They can reallocate resources into other things that help reach company goals. Cloud services have made remote work possible. Employees now can access data no matter where they are. This way they can respond easily to the requests by using the company’s dataset from the cloud. Some of the most popular cloud services are AWS and Microsoft Azure.
Eco-Friendly Approach
Without the need of having a physical space, companies also decrease their energy consumption levels, maintaining an eco-friendly business approach. Besides, this also helps them reduce their costs related to office real estate or janitorial service expenses. And without people going to work in their cars, CO2 emissions will also be less.
Authored by guest contributor Artur Meyster