UTILIZING AI FOR IMPROVING SALES AND MARKETING PROCESSES

Many businesses are afraid of technology. The feeling that robots and AI could take over our jobs has never seemed more real than it does today, but that simply isn’t the reality. In fact, brands that choose to embrace technology and AI and use them to the company’s advantage are often more successful than brands that shy away from these advancements.

Uber, DoorDash, grocery pickups, and many other services provide products, services, and solutions at the push of a button. Because of platforms such as these, consumers have grown accustomed to having their needs met immediately. If they want to get ahead of their competition, both B2B and B2C brands must embrace technology as a solution for making their systems more accurate, efficient, and helpful to their customers.

Smith.ai is devoted to making these things possible for companies. The brand provides virtual receptionist and web chat services for businesses, and they utilize a human and AI hybrid strategy to do so. Maddy Martin, Smith.ai’s VP of marketing, recently joined the Press Play podcast to discuss how embracing AI can help generate sales as well as bust a few AI-related myths!

AI Generates More Sales

Convincing brands to embrace technological advancements such as AI can be challenging, but showing how it can generate more sales is typically a good place to start. As we’ve mentioned, consumers are demanding immediate solutions to their problems. They want answers to questions at all hours of the day, but it rarely makes sense to keep someone available to answer inquiries from a website chat 24/7.

Utilizing chatbots that run highly specialized sequences tailored to your business seems like an obvious solution to this problem. Smith.ai integrates its chat agents with several other platforms, including prominent CRMs. Because of this, when potential clients ask questions through a chat agent, the transcript is added to their profile in the CRM, making it available to the salesperson when they jump on a call.

“How can you use the language that they bring to you back to them for improved marketing, for improved advertising, and in those sales discussions, equip your sales team to better enable those deals to go through.” (12:00)

Chatbots also make salespeople more efficient, as the salesperson will already understand what the potential customer is looking for in your product. The chatbot can ask the potential customer questions that will steer the future sales call.

“You want to help people use their time wisely to evaluate your business. And asking them the questions is a steering mechanism. It sets good guidelines and boundaries for how the relationship will move forward.” (17:43)

Is AI Eliminating the Need for Humans?

When we think about technological advancements and the development of high-level AI, so many of our minds run towards 80s sci-fi movies about robots and computers overtaking the human population. We must stop thinking this way and start considering how these advancements can serve as tools that make us more efficient, accurate, and fast.

After all, how can something we create be more intelligent than we are? Technology is only as smart as we tell it to be.

“Robots are very capable, but they’re only as capable as what we can write algorithms for. And there’s a certain heart and soul piece that we haven’t figured out.” (26:34)

Smith.ai has found that a blend of AI and human interaction is the most effective way to help customers. Both parties have their strengths and weaknesses, and we must play into the strengths of both so that they perfectly supplement each other.

For example, robots are incapable of the compassion and empathy that the human experience requires. Similarly, humans are susceptible to errors that bots are designed not to make.

“Right now, we see the blend of human and AI being the best hybrid use case, greater than the AI alone because that lacks the personal finesse and that compassion and human connection. But the human alone is, as we know, very error prone. No matter how great their training or background or experience, and they do benefit from some technology backing them up.” (25:37)

Utilizing the different strengths that both humans and AI provide is necessary to the success and forward progress of our brands. How will you integrate AI into your human-based strategy?