This article features seven ways businesses are incorporating automation and AI

In an increasingly technological world, businesses need to evolve at lightning-fast speeds to keep up. Customer expectations are higher than ever with 24-hour support and same-day delivery becoming the norm. Businesses are turning to AI and automation to help cut down on the workload and this trend is only growing. Here are seven ways businesses are leveraging automation and AI now.

1. Using Chatbots to Improve Customer Service

While AI chatbot software isn't quite ready to replace live agents entirely, using them as the first line of defense can save countless employee hours, improve response turnaround time, and even improve your sales conversion rates. They offer 24-hour, on-demand support for customers and can cut down on support tickets by automatically answering your most asked questions or by sending customers to your FAQ page. Platforms like Intercom and Zendesk offer chatbots as part of well-rounded customer communication packages that can be scaled to meet individual needs. 

2. Letting Machine Learning Handle the Scheduling

The best scheduling apps and software combine analytics and automation to do everything from handling the back-and-forth emails that come with planning a meeting to managing employee schedules for large corporations. For example, Calendly is an appointment scheduling software that can also follow up with clients, centralize communication for large teams, and even handle recruiting. 

3. Automating Their Accounting Departments

Accounts payable and receivable are a no-brainer for automation. These tasks require tons of data analysis, time-consuming approval processes, and lots of paperwork. Automating these procedures with a tool like Corcentric, an accounts payable automation software can help eliminate human error, save employee hours, and save you from a mountain of paper invoices. Corcentric can handle accounts payable end-to-end for small businesses, but it can also scale up for much larger companies. 

4. Perfecting Their Content with AI

Written content is more important than ever and as the marketing landscape continues to change and evolve, more companies are turning to tools that leverage AI and automation to help perfect their content. Grammarly, for instance, is a popular online writing assistant that checks content for typos and grammar errors but also uses algorithms to help adjust the style, level of formality, and much more.

Another way businesses are using AI to polish their marketing content is through SEO platforms like Semrush. Search engine optimization is a constantly evolving field that is only becoming more and more important. Semrush collects keyword data for your business and gives you real-time recommendations you can use for social media marketing, content marketing, and advertising. 

5. Using Data to Optimize Social Media Accounts

Social media is another area in which businesses are turning to AI and automation to see a greater return on investment. Social media is no longer optional in business and running multiple accounts, keeping up with trends, and keeping content standardized across multiple platforms can be a huge challenge. There are plenty of social media management platforms popping up to fill the gap.

Platforms like Sprout Social aim to help you plan content, improve customer engagement, make posting more seamless, and analyze your content so you can continually be improving your strategy. Some companies are using data to make personalized suggestions the norm. Cortex, for example, promises to analyze data from your previous content, your competitors, your industry as a whole, and more to create a pipeline of tailored suggestions for your creative strategy. 

6. Applying Automatic Analysis to Contracts and Legal Documents

Although legal matters might seem too complicated for today's AI, there are some tasks that machine learning can already help us with. Contract analysis is one of these tasks. Using automated analysis, Legal Robot can identify issues, analyze documents, as well as translate them into easy-to-understand English. For a small business, this could be game-changing, but even in a larger organization, AI can be used to save time and energy for more complex, high-level problems. 

7. Saving Time on HR Processes

Human Resources seems like another unlikely area for AI or automation, but actually, the software can be used to cut down on time spent managing employee information, so your team can focus on people. HR software like BambooHR can aid in the collection and handling of employee data and even manage to onboard new employees. 

Summary

We may not always notice, but AI and digital automation are already being used in almost every sphere of business. In fact, in most cases, this subtle design is intentional. Machine learning is most often used in a way that feels very seamless with our other work processes. Solutions based on machine learning are also highly scalable which means that small businesses have access to tools that they might not have had the resources for in the past while larger organizations can cut down on many time-consuming and labor-intensive tasks. AI can be used to complete many of the most tedious tasks which save time at every level of business for more complex and human tasks.