Where to start when implementing AI

So you've played around with Chat GPT, had your socks blown off, and now you're wondering "How can AI help my business?".

Well, we've helped businesses across numerous verticals analyse and identify the best place to start, so we'd like to share our insights into how you can develop an AI strategy to streamline your business.

The most important place to start is to analyze your business and customers needs, this will help you to identify where AI can best enhance your current solutions. Here are 6 simple steps to get you on your way:

1. Start with your customer 1st: Always keep your customer front and centre. Their needs and preferences should be number one when making business decisions. Focus on understanding any pain points and try to identify areas you can better support them and make their lives easier.

2. Research, research, research: Gather as much feedback as you can from your customers before you begin. You can do this using things like surveys, interviews, focus groups, or customer service interactions. By listening to your customers you can begin to understand key issues and identify solutions to overcome common challenges people may be having when interacting with your business. Sometimes solving something simple will have the most impact.

3. Put them into groups based on needs: Delve into your customer feedback and categorize their needs into different business groups. EG; some people might need help with product information, after sales support, processing returns, or simply need help ordering.

4. Understand where AI can help: After categorising customer needs, identify opportunities for AI to improve the customer experience (CX).  Something relatively simple like an AI-powered chatbot or virtual assistant can deliver quick answers queries around the clock, or if it's your contact centre that needs a boost, things like agent assist or an IVR solution may be the answer. It's also possible to enhance your current CX simply by analysing exiting data to offer more custom solutions and further personalisation.

5. Decide where to start: By evaluating the opportunities you've identified you can now prioritize them based on the size of the impact on your business. To maximise your the return on your investment you want to make sure your AI solution will help reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, or increase revenue.

6. Make a plan to implement your AI: After you've identified the areas AI would make the biggest impact to your bottom line, develop a plan to put the solution into place. This plan should include as much detail as possible including the best technology to use, what resources you'll require, what the implementation timeline looks like, your goals and desired outcomes, and of course your budget.

These steps make up the first stage of your AI journey and will enable you to identify the areas AI can help improve customer experience and drive business growth. It's critical to keep your customers at the heart of your decision-making process, then lean on AI to create personalized, seamless experiences that surprise and delight them during all interactions with your business.

If you're ready to jump into your AI journey feel free to download our whitepaper:  Building a Customer-Centric AI Roadmap - A complete step-by-step guide to improving service through AI