Integrating ChatGPT-like Capabilities into Your Business

ChatGPT-like capabilities can make a difference in your business RIGHT NOW.  This is not science fiction, this is science fact and your competitors are reaping the benefits.  Many have felt that AI/ML is an aspirational “someday” goal, but businesses that have invested in targeted efforts are rewarded with real ROI and absolute efficiencies.  This means adopting real-world improvement made possible through commodity AI, data science-oriented initiatives, or even the recently available Open AI service that powers ChatGPT.  Let’s dive in.

#1.  B2B/B2C Sales Quoting Interfaces

How long does it take a sales rep to put together a complex quote for a B2B or B2C sale for a complex request?  What if that ordering experience could translate the request from the customer (via email, chat, bot, etc.) into the unique language of your business?  Think about this as receiving unstructured requests via these interfaces and facilitating structured quotes back.  For a business where speed and accuracy has a measurable difference in the amount and profitability of sales, this makes a huge difference. 

• Imagine you sell custom material that another manufacturer uses to produce windows, but quotes are received in email or even verbally.  What if the time-to-quote accurately could move from hours to minutes? 
• What if your customer who typically needs to call on the phone for custom travel recommendations can do it via a chat-bot?  Especially for a younger-tech-savvy consumer, how would that improve the translation from review into action?
• What if I’m thinking of ordering a high end appliance and I could realistically chat with an intelligent bot that feels human vs. just play in an online shopping interface?  What if that increased conversions by even 10%? 

These are the types of stories that are happening every day with capabilities of Chat GPT-like platforms.  Think about it even from a training perspective… how long does it take you to onboard a new sales rep?  What if that rep could be onboarded in days, not weeks, because they are augmented by an AI-buddy?

Your competitors are doing this.  Are you?

#2. Customer Service Automation

Imagine you show up at a hotel booked on Orbitz and you mistakenly booked the room for a week from now, not today.  How do you resolve the issue?  Working with the front desk person is fruitless as they can’t actually change the booking.  You need to contact Orbitz.  Do you want to sit on hold, moving from phone tree, to phone tree?  Absolutely not.  Instead, they’ve created a great chat experience (which I write about HERE) and make for an intuitive and helpful resolution process.  In contrast, I think most customer service organizations are absolutely terrible and make me never want to do business with a company again.  This is exactly where your company should look at ChatGPT-like interface capabilities.  The benefits of improving customer service through bots in either B2B or B2C scenarios:

• More intuitive and responsive experience
• Lets your customer do something else while waiting
• Higher level of satisfaction if you resolve their issue
• Can be used in conjunction with phone support if used correctly
• Can automate resolution of most requests vs. requiring a human

This is a clear and obvious win, reduces cost, and increases customer retention.  The best bots are built right into the mobile app for the company, so you also increase connection and likely capture additional identity/contact information in the process.

#3. Cart Optimization

When we get intelligent advice we make better orders.  That is the root of chat oriented “helper bots” in the ordering interface.  No, I’m not talking about Clippy… I’m talking about the interface itself embedding the advice necessary when you search for, or complete an order.  Imagine if when you are adding items to a cart (B2C or B2B) that the interface actively adjusts, improves, or suggests what matches your needs.  If you are ordering food for your restaurant from an intelligent interface, it should indicate the optimized purchase for your typical capacity, waste, menu, and efficiency.  That intelligence becomes a competitive advantage for the operation of the business, allowing you to optimize investment in food (most desirable, less desirable) and then redirect investment elsewhere.  Here are a few examples of this:

• Order grouping optimization for efficient shipping
• Product selection based on efficiency and historical waste
• When the best time to buy is vs. the typical cycle (wait until Thursday)
• If you join x program, you receive a benefit with this cart
• Enrollment in auto-shipping based on habits

#4.  Platform Training

How much time do you spend training your employees on core business processes?  What if the platform could train them for you?  Platform wayfinding and training interfaces help an employee to onboard into a process and use AI to remove the learning curve.  The employee spends time on being themselves, engaging, and presenting information.  The AI platform ensures that they can find the right information quickly.  The ways this can help include:

• Onboarding an employee into a tool faster
• Creating the unique combination of human and AI to mitigate learning curve
• Evaluating learning and providing coaching

#5.  Request Management

Where is my order/truck/statement/request, etc?  This is essentially a data question, but often takes a person to track down the answer in a morass of unpredictable and disconnected systems.  In addition to a connected platform providing a stable way to address this question, the advent of AI driven interfaces can help make the experience for the customer intuitive and easy.  Getting the answer to your “where is my…” should be as easy as asking “what will the weather be like tomorrow”, or “when will my pizza be here”.  A few ways this can be used:

• B2B part delivery for an intermediary (think auto shop, dishwasher repair, furnace repair)
• B2B finished good delivery (think window, frames, or roofing)
• B2C order delivery status (anything you’d order, especially complex orders)

Anything that keeps your consumer from needing to call into a phone tree to resolve their question is going to have a better result in retention and recommendation. 

Closing

This is the time where we will see tremendous transformation of businesses creating intuitive and efficient interfaces for consumers and businesses to use to improve customer experience.  If you aren’t doing it, your competitors are.