(This column originally appeared in the Inquirer)
A recent survey from Goldman Sachs found that about 68% of small-business owners are using AI — specifically generative AI “assistants” — and another 9% plan to begin using it within the next year. Whether it’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Claude, Grok, Perplexity, or other popular platforms, AI can make a significant difference to your business.
Here are six business uses that will help you increase the productivity of both yourself and your team.
Chatbots for your website
There are a number of customer service platforms targeted at small businesses like Talkdesk, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Zoho that enable their customers to easily deploy chatbots on their site that can automatically answer visitors’ questions or pass on the customer to a human agent for further help.
“As these tools become more advanced, they are taking on a bigger role in customer service processes,” said Charanya Kannan, chief product, engineering, and customer officer at Talkdesk. “As today’s economy drives labor and skills shortages that hinder customer experience, it’s more important than ever that companies not only invest in automated tools.”
Reservations for your restaurant
Sydney Grims, who is the director of business development at Fearless Restaurants, a regional restaurant chain with 14 locations including popular spots like White Dog Cafe and Moshulu, uses an AI platform called Slang.ai to take reservations and answer questions 24/7. Staff can now focus on serving their customers without phone calls distracting them.
“This is not to reduce head count,” she said. “We cannot get rid of greeters. Our goal is to provide easy answers to guests quickly. We had over 250 coinciding calls at one restaurant in a week … that’s about a thousand covers we would just lose without this platform.”
Improving communications
AI assistants have become good at transcribing and summarizing online meetings as well as polishing emails, writing memos, and tightening other written communications.
“Writing emails is a lifeline but is often time-consuming when running and scaling a business,” said Kevin McLaughlin, a partner at Philadelphia-based accounting and advisory firm Centri. “We use ChatGPT to assist by quickly drafting emails that capture the right tone and message, which the owner can then personalize in minutes.”
Company policies
I always tell my clients to never allow a single contract, agreement, quote, or bid to leave their office without uploading to their AI assistant for comments. These platforms have become well versed in spotting problems, identifying issues, and suggesting ways to not only improve your corporate documentation but to identify risks and protect you against potential liabilities.
Neha Arnold, CEO of Sedna Consulting Group, a technology consulting firm based in Edison, N.J., agrees. She frequently has her team use an AI assistant to help with corporate documentation by double-checking outputs, and acting as both a creative and analytical assistant. But she’s also careful to not rely on the platform entirely.
“It’s important to understand AI’s limits,” she said. “Recent studies show that AI models can falter with complex reasoning. It’s best used to support — not replace — human insight.”
Marketing materials and blogs
Howard McCabe, founder and creative director of Dream Syndicate, a brand specialist based in Philadelphia, leans heavily on AI to write rough scripts, create graphic styles, come up with content ideas, design and generate voice-overs and custom music.
“When shooting a commercial if we miss a line of copy, or the talent mispronounces something, we can train the AI on the particular actors’ nuances and then the AI can generate a new scene with the talent saying the missing line or correcting the mispronunciation,” he said. “In addition, now we are able to have the talent speak in a different language … so if we produce a commercial in English, we can then very quickly generate that same commercial in a different language.”
Not everyone’s in the content creation business, but with image and video creation platforms like Sora, Google’s Veo, and others, you can publish professional content that can help set your company apart from its competitors.
Market research and competitive analysis
Your AI assistant is a trained adviser who has the entire internet at its immediate disposal and can discuss — just like a human — any business problem, issue, or challenge. I have clients that are leaning into AI assistants for help researching markets, products and competitors, and brainstorming ways to stay ahead.
Arnold said he uses his AI assist to provide critical feedback by prompting questions like “why do you recommend this approach?” or “what are the alternatives?”
Other business owners, like Russ Napolitano, a partner at the Philadelphia marketing agency Xhilarate, uses an AI assistant for client discovery and meeting preparation.
“Before meeting with a prospect or client, we use ChatGPT to conduct quick discovery — researching their industry, identifying potential challenges, and surfacing relevant trends,” he said. “It’s like having a research assistant who can brief us in minutes.”
AI cannot be relied upon 100%. But what adviser can?
Even in its current infancy there are plenty of ways for today’s AI chatbots to help in your professional life.
“We’ve been utilizing AI across our operations for quite some time, and it has truly transformed the way we work,” Arnold said. “Personally, AI has allowed me to save an average of 60–75 minutes every single day, time that I can reinvest directly into accelerating business growth, deepening client relationships, and exploring new opportunities.”
