Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on everyone’s minds right now. Still, many startup owners haven't yet explored the opportunities AI presents, thinking only big corporations can afford and benefit from AI solutions. This couldn’t be further from the truth!
Today we’ll tell you about many ways startups can make AI work for them, thetools available for leveraging AI, and look at the success stories of those who have incorporated AI to the benefit of their companies.
How can AI help my startup scale?
First of all, let’s look at the ways AI can support the growth of your business and optimise the use of your time.
- Repetitive tasks automation.
AI is great at dealing with those low- to middle-priority jobs that take forever and are very mundane but need to be done nonetheless. Think data entries or customer service inquiries. - Customer experience personalisation.
You might not have thousands of clients yet, but your startup can benefit immensely from using AI to scan all customer data and come up with ideas for individual bonuses, campaigns, and offers. It takes the machine seconds to do that, and AI can add creative ideas your team may not have thought of. - Enhancing customer support.
We love to hate chatbots and other AI assistants, but the truth of the matter is they do the job, and they do it pretty well. A well-trained AI-powered chatbot can offload a significant chunk of work from your staff’s shoulders. - Operational efficiency improvement.
A delivery startup can use algorithms to calculate the best route for couriers, or if you’re producing something, AI can plan the process to minimise bottlenecks and delays. - Predictive analysis.
Data analysis is hard and it is time-consuming too. Instead of doing it manually and dedicating hours if not days to the task, outsource it to AI that will identify trends, come up with forecasts, and suggest the best course of action in minutes. - Speeding up the recruitment process.
While we don’t recommend relying solely on AI for hiring, it is a powerful technology to help you find and hire the best candidates for your venture. Hiring is always complex and expensive, and many startups can’t afford to make mistakes with their hires. AI will help you screen and parse CVs to filter out the best candidates who can later be invited for interviews. With AI, you won’t be limited to the human’s ability to look through CVs, and AI precludes any bias a human might possess while doing an initial scan. This means you’ll have full access to the most diverse group of candidates. One of the companies that provide such services is Pymetrics. They also evaluate the candidates’ performance in online games and exercises, along with their resumes. - Reducing risks to secure the startups' future.
We live in a world that is full of risks. Some of them are pretty random and out of our control, and others are a direct result of malicious actions. Whatever it is, AI (for example, by Sift Science) can analyse the data in real time and spot fraudulent activities before they turn into a major disaster. It’s already widely used in the financial sector where humans simply cannot keep up with the vast amounts of incoming data.
What instruments can I use to scale my startup with AI? With real-life examples
There are many instruments that you use today to help your new venture scale and become the next unicorn.
AI-powered chatbots
This is, perhaps, the simplest and the most essential way for your startup to make use of AI. Chatbots can take a significant chunk of the workload off of your team’s hands. For example, they can process client requests, help them troubleshoot minor issues, and even recommend products. Companies like HealthTap, Zillow, and Tesla have been utilising chatbots for years to improve customer service, optimise the process, and provide unique customer recommendations based on chats, information fed to the tool, and history with the company.
Virtual AI assistant
Time is money, and money is time. Startup owners deal with lots of little tasks every day, and that impacts their creativity and productivity. With AI, they can employ a virtual assistant to deal with the minutiae that distracts from more strategic initiatives. Companies like X.ai offer digital assistants that can coordinate schedules for your meetings, including communicating with participants to find the best time for everyone.
Employee satisfaction
Big corporation or a tiny startup, once you get your first employees, you must start taking care of them. People are the key success ingredient to any business, so the way you treat them will have a direct impact on your future growth. Tools like Zestful offer reward and recognition systems for employees powered by AI. This means your startup can automate and personalise employee recognition, track their engagement, and maintain satisfaction at high levels.
Data analytics tools
Airbnb, Salesforce, Amazon, Netflix, and many other giants rely on AI-powered data analysis to optimise their performance and scale exponentially. Airbnb, for example, uses AI to personalise search recommendations, detect fraud, and provide dynamic pricing. Uber uses AI to help allocate the best drivers to incoming orders to minimise wait time.
Every startup can enhance its data analysis with AI too. Not only does it make the entire process more efficient and fast, but you can also hold off on hiring personnel to do the work which allows startups to optimise their costs for the time being.
Note: To be able to make use of AI-based data analytics, you first need to ensure you have all data in one place. If you haven’t already, consider getting yourself an omnichannel platform that will handle all customer interactions in one place (even if you use multiple messengers and emails). Omnichannel platforms can be integrated with a CRM system, so you’ll end up with one big database that AI can work with.
You can also find tools that will analyse external data that is not stored in your databases. For instance, MonkeyLearn is a popular text analysis tool that goes through client feedback, social media posts, forums, and support ticket logs to understand the client’s sentiment and help the startup cater to their needs with more empathy and more relevant solutions and responses.
Research and content creation
Tools like ChatGPT are excellent assistants when it comes to finding the data you need or working on social media posts. Granted, they can make mistakes and can miss context or nuances, so you’ll need to verify their findings. However, even with fact-checking and re-writing, startups can still save a ton of time. It’s important to know how to ask the right question and be prepared to try a few times before you get the desired result. Still, you might want to give ChatGPT and similar tools a try, as they’re able to be the backbone of your content marketing strategy, which is critical for fast growth but can rarely be justified as an expense in the early stages of the company.
AI as the basis of your startup
Artificial Intelligence can be a little thing that improves your operations, or it can be a unique selling proposition (USP) of your product.
Grammarly, for instance, has grown significantly by integrating AI into its text editor. The technology offers suggestions not just for basic grammar and punctuation, but for diction and syntax too. Additonally, Grammarly helps with the style and tone users' content. Because AI learns over time and its performance improves, Grammarly was able to leverage the potential of this technology and has won the hearts of millions of users around the world.
Another company, ZestFinance, incorporated AI to help lenders run more accurate assessments and avoid unreliable clients who won’t be able to pay them back. It’s grown so much that it is now helping many startups manage their financial risks by tapping into underserved market niches and scaling their lending operations.
Final thoughts on scaling your startup with AI
As a software developer that’s worked with many startups and big companies, the Emphasoft team has learned one thing for sure: it’s not worth it to do something for the hype.
There are always new trends, new technologies, and new ideas circling around. Some of them, indeed, turn into new industry standards and everyone has to follow the new rules. Still, before you jump on the wagon and attempt to adopt anything in your business, especially as a startup with limited resources, you must understand the following:
- What goals will it help us achieve?
- How exactly is it going to help our goals?
- How can we measure the help of the new technology?
- Do potential benefits outweigh the cost?
If you don’t do that, you’re risking wasting your time and money on projects that don’t help you scale, and might even do the opposite. So if you’re curious about AI or any other technology, it’s best to speak with someone knowledgeable that you can trust, like your mentor or technology provider, such as Emphasoft. Only you know what’s right for your startup, but an expert’s opinion can help you avoid some mistakes and come up with new ideas.
Read next:
The Startup’s Guide to AI-Driven Marketing: Trends and Tools for 2024
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