The high speed of change is quickly changing how we do business. While we are beginning to glimpse the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI), its immediate future is all about optimization and speed.
Predictive models utilizing AI are serving to eliminate many of the challenges that businesses face in understanding buyer behaviors. It is one of the important ways AI is transforming the way we need to think about business growth; digitizing your business is just the beginning. According to SEO experts, predictive modeling is helping business execs understand the other end of the spectrum such as buyer intent, customer engagement, conversion rates, and even cart abandonment. Limiting its use to marketing neglects how businesses can use the model to move from reactivity to proactivity and identify new revenue streams.
Businesses will always have to react to some environmental changes quickly. Faced with the recent minimum wage increases many businesses were forced to restructure in order to maintain their bottom line. The restaurant industry, with its tight margins, was particularly vulnerable to the change and Red Robin’s reported layoff of busboys recently made the news. Still, across industries, reports abound of businesses replacing lower wage workers with automation; waiters being replaced by self- order screens, delivery service robots and self-driving cars and planes have recently rolled out in cities across the nation.
These changes can best be described as process changes, they deliver on efficiency and save on cost of labor. They answer the how questions executives must answer. It is the why questions however, that will continue to spur creative product change. AI has transformed consumer expectations, and to anticipate the next step for your business, this is the leading consumer trend. Predictive models are being used in persona creation, playing a crucial role in forecasting sales, designing products and providing an ideal customer experience.
Aside from identifying and allocating data, AI has also proved its usefulness in generating other new revenue streams in the form of new product design. AI’s most common current use has resulted in improved algorithms providing customers immediacy, efficiency and improved responsiveness. The next step, why enter your own order online if Alexa can do it for you? Even better if Alexa can anticipate your needs and preempt the command. Google’s auto complete seeks to cut time spent responding to our burgeoning emails. How can your product be improved by incorporating AI’s deep learning?
If your business is already using AI in daily transactions and has built a database of customer activity, other businesses in the industry can use that information to help design, deploy, market and sell their products. Positioning your business as a data source that peers and new ventures can use to develop their marketing and sales strategies is a sound proposition for diversifying revenues while generating value for your brand and positioning yourself as a leader in the market.
In our increasingly digital, artificially intelligent world, customers want the same efficiency, responsiveness and immediacy businesses are increasingly reliant upon. Business owners must ask themselves, why are we building, selling, offering this product, and how can AI improve our customer’s experience?
