The Transformative Influence of Generative AI
Our way of Doing Business is changing. For anyone who has had the chance to play with any of the Large Language model based Artificial Intelligences for more than a few minutes knows that life will never be the same for any of us. We all sensed this change was coming, maybe some of us for years as fans of science fiction books and movies, but the last few years have been staggering in the speed and evolution of these technologies. It’s impossible to tell exactly what’s going to happen over the next 5, 10 or 20 years but one thing is certain, there are going to be very few, if any people, professions, or industries unaffected by AI.
The greatest irony is that most of us don’t really have an idea of how much the world will change. This isn’t just writing emails, finding recipes, or tweaking your final semester term paper. From streamlining payroll processes in construction, powering search engines, managing large data operations to optimizing supply chains in retail, AI already touches every virtually every aspect of business operations. Most of these impacts are invisible to the average person, and in fact many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) aren’t paying as much attention as they should, nor recognizing how to leverage AI to stay competitive. The question isn't whether AI will impact our businesses and industries, but how we can harness its power to our advantage.
The AI Dilemma: Friend or Foe?
The uncomfortable truth is that as a marketing agency who works in the digital world, there are a lot of AI tools that impact how we have traditionally done business. As a “fun” test we asked ChatGPT if it endangers our digital marketing agency, we get a sensible answer:
“While AI, including ChatGPT, can perform many tasks related to SEO, the human elements of creativity, strategic thinking, personalized client interactions, and deep expertise remain irreplaceable. By leveraging AI as a complementary tool rather than seeing it as a competitor, you can enhance your SEO services and continue to provide exceptional value to your clients.”
Thank you, ChatGPT, even if your answer sounds a lot like a grade twelve teacher making us feel better about our potential. Hopefully, we aren’t obsolete just yet!
This reassurance from ChatGPT holds a critical insight for any business: AI may be viewed as an ally rather than a threat. While AI can automate routine tasks, generate content, and provide data-driven insights, the human touch and experience can remain a vital part of your business. Creativity, strategic vision, and personalized client interactions are areas where humans still have the upper hand. At least until AI can duplicate the unique way, we all interact with our clients, partners and teammates…. Yes, we mean dealing with David! :)
Creating Value in an AI-Driven World
So, what value can we create now that AI can handle much of what we do for our customers? Perhaps, the key lies in redefining value creation and understanding what our customers really value? We’ve done a lot of thinking about this, and we think we have come up with a number of ways that we, and our customers can leverage AI to lead and succeed:
Help Enhance Customer Engagement
AI can analyze customer data to provide personalized experiences at scale. Chatbots, for instance, can handle routine inquiries, freeing up human agents to tackle complex issues and build deeper relationships with customers. There are some great examples of AI Powered Chatbots being trained to answer complex questions, or to simply chat with visitors without getting angry or frustrated, reducing potential conflict when the visitor eventually speaks to a human.
Support Informed Decision Making
AI excels at processing vast amounts of data to uncover trends and insights that might be missed by human analysts. Businesses can use these insights to make informed decisions, optimize operations, and predict future trends. Part of this requires you to have a good understanding of the topics, and be able to ask excellent questions. Also based on our experience I don’t think we’re still in a spot where LLM’s like ChatGPT are always right, maybe do some secondary research before basing all your decisions on AI generated answers
Enhance Efficiency and Automation
From automating administrative tasks to streamlining supply chains, AI can significantly boost efficiency. This allows business owners to focus resources on core business activities and innovation. Think about note taking AI tools that follow along with your online meetings, recording them and making summaries of what was talked about. Maybe you can have meetings with fewer people in them, and not have to worry that information is missed. While we’re pretty confident that these AI models can’t replace the single word notes with boxes around them and surrounded by stars that David sometimes brings back from a meeting, there may be benefits to a full conversation transcript!
Provide Marketing Strategies
Though we are getting on thin ice here, saying that AI-powered tools can generate and analyze content, optimize SEO, and manage social media campaigns more effectively than we can as a digital marketing and web-development services, it’s obvious that business owners can use AI to enhance their marketing efforts without our help. Whether they have the necessary time, resources, and experience to do so is probably a longer conversation. The fact is that there a number of tools that have been available for a long time that can help businesses do this, like Google Analytics, Gammerly etc. So far, our clients think of us as a team leveraging all available tools to help them, with AI being the latest tool to arrive.
Innovation and Product Development
AI can aid in product design and development by analyzing market trends and customer feedback, writing code and helping research what others have done to solve problems. This can accelerate the innovation process, allowing businesses to bring new products to market faster, and possibly with a greater view of the entire market.
Embracing the Future
None of us have all the answers, and between robotics, AI, advanced composite materials, and so many other innovations the world is changing around us. Leveraging AI's strengths and complementing them with human expertise, SMBs can navigate these transformations, driving innovation and success in an increasingly technology-driven world.
We feel that the future is not about how AI is going to do everything for us, but more about how these tools and technologies going to change our businesses and our industries. Keeping an eye on advancements, incorporating the tools that make sense, and creating solid, sustainable plans is what we’ve always done, and is what we will continue to do on behalf of our clients.