92% of Companies Are Increasing Investment in AI: Here’s Why These Investments Can Help Your Company Thrive
Artificial intelligence (AI) may be the new frontier, but it’s not entirely new. Though significant advancements in the past few years have placed AI more in the public eye, many companies have been utilizing AI for some time. And more and more businesses are getting on board, according to Twilio’s State of Personalization Report. According to their research, 92% of companies adopted AI tools to drive their growth.
Companies hesitant to invest in AI may fall behind the times, but their hesitancy isn’t entirely unreasonable.
Let’s dive into the benefits and challenges of using AI.
How AI Can Help Your Company Grow
1. Increase Customer Retention.
According to Twilio’s research, personalization is crucial to customer loyalty. Of those surveyed, 56% said they would become repeat buyers after a personalized experience. However, personalization requires the use of extensive data collection.
As a growing business, asking your employees to collect, manage, and use customer data to create individual, personalized experiences is unsustainable. There simply will not be enough time or people to accomplish this daunting task.
But if you invest in building an infrastructure using AI to collect and maintain data, your team can focus on improving customer relationships by personalizing their experience. From ads to emails, your team can use AI to reach your target audience with the right products, making your customers more likely to return for more business.
2. Develop New Products Without Old Problems.
Data usage goes beyond customer relationships. Using AI tools allows you to implement data usage to solve internal problems, as well. Say your company is building an app. Just in this one product, AI can address many concerns.
AI tools can collect and store data from your customers. There may have been an issue in a previous app version that many customers found less than user-friendly. If you do not have this information available while working on the new version of the app, you might make the same mistake and end up with a less-than-optimal user interface.
Data collection is also beneficial for tracking internal issues, such as time management. As you gear up for a sprint, you can use data collected from previous time-tracking sessions to ensure you’ve allotted the proper time to stay on track and complete tasks efficiently.
3. Boost Efficiency Across Your Company.
Today, AI tools benefit all aspects of your company, from product engineers to content marketers to accountants. These tools allow your teams to automate processes, maintain data collection, and improve their deliverables.
While we’ve already discussed how AI can help make newer and better products, it doesn’t stop there. It can also improve your marketing around the product and your company systems, which allow the product to come to fruition.
AI tools can function as jumping-off points. When your marketer is looking for new ideas for how to show off the product, AI can help generate topics to help your new product get noticed. These ideas help the marketing team see new areas of opportunity, allowing them to grow their audience and potential customer base.
Meanwhile, AI is a great boon to your accounts payable team. Gone are the days when your team needed to collect and process invoices, track their data, submit them for approval, follow up with approvers, and all the other steps that go into ensuring you’re making payments on time and keeping up a good relationship with contractors and vendors.
Today, your team can automate their invoice processing system, which protects you from potential human error and keeps your payments on track.
4. Improve Profitability.
With increased efficiency comes higher profitability. One of the most significant benefits of automated systems and AI tools is they do more work than humans can accomplish. As your company grows, your team takes on new responsibilities and deals with a much larger customer base.
Even if some manual processes were doable in the early stages of your start-up, those systems can become too time-consuming as you grow into an enterprise business.
Moreover, in an AI-driven world, those processes are no longer necessary. Adopting AI allows your team to grow differently and take on new challenges rather than having their time bogged down with procedures they could automate.
Gaining back time isn’t the only way AI helps you increase your profitability. Using technology like revenue intelligence tools, AI can help you find growth opportunities that may have gone undetected by your team. These tools provide a detailed view of your prospects, giving an in-depth overview of your collected data.
You’ll learn more about buyer behavior, potentials for upsells, and much more information than your sales team has the time to compile manually. With such tools, your sales team can focus on selling while AI works on pointing them in the right direction for significant sales.
Challenges to Adopting AI and How to Overcome Them
1. Concerns About Data Privacy.
Twilio’s State of Personalization report found half of consumers trust brands to secure their data. While customers want personalization, they also hesitate to trust data collection processes.
However, many companies are paving the way to building trust. Of all the companies surveyed for the report, 97% said they’re taking steps to address customer privacy concerns and committing to responsible data usage.
Being a part of this movement is essential if you intend to utilize AI. You have many options to prove to your customers you care about their privacy. From encrypting their data to running regular cybersecurity audits to ensure your protection methods are working, these steps can help you build trust and maintain a positive relationship with your customers.
Using AI helps your company in many ways, but it’s up to you to ensure you’re using it responsibly.
2. Resistance To Change.
According to Twilio’s research, AI isn’t just beneficial. It’s becoming necessary, particularly if you want to target a younger demographic. Almost half of all Gen Z customers in the report said they were less likely to make a repeat purchase if the experience wasn’t personalized. And they understand personalization requires AI. A third of Gen Z respondents said they already expect AI usage in their experience with brands.
However, some are still hesitant to use AI, with many employees concerned AI will replace them. The reality is AI works in tandem with people, not against them. Consider content marketers.
AI tools do not come up with and implement content marketing strategies on their own. Instead, content marketers use such tools to generate ideas and topics to build their plans around.
3. Lack of Company Understanding.
While AI isn’t completely new, it’s still an unexplored frontier for many workers today. If you implement AI without training, you might find it underutilized or misused. Much of today’s workforce has no or little experience with AI, which may make them unprepared for these new technologies in their workplace.
However, because AI is here to stay, it’s essential to begin training your team on automation and AI as soon as possible. Doing so may help with employee retention. According to a survey by The Conference Board, 58% of respondents said they would likely leave a company if they didn’t receive opportunities to grow their professional skill set.
Teaching your employees how to utilize AI can help them advance their careers, which may make them view your business more favorably and envision themselves growing with your company.
AI and Your Business’s Future
AI is advancing daily, and new opportunities to grow your business come with it. With AI, you can improve customer relationships, employee relationships, and your products.
You can also create a happier workplace, where employees can spend more time learning new skills and less on manual processes. Moreover, people, especially younger generations, expect AI usage in today’s working world.
You can risk falling behind or pave the way for a more efficient future!