Personal experience
Many entrepreneurs today speak of artificial intelligence as a panacea for all business problems. But what does this buzzword really mean? How to use AI in business? Let’s get away from marketing jargon and talk about the real experiences of implementing AI in business.
I am Dmitry Alentyev, founder and CEO of the IT company Scrile. Today I would like to share my experience of implementing AI in my business. This might be useful for entrepreneurs who want to keep up with the times and are just considering exploring AI.
One of Scrile’s development focuses is on AI-powered business solutions. We create virtual assistants, develop chatbots for support departments, and engage in the development of message generators. As a modern IT company, we utilize AI not only in our products but also integrate it into our business processes.
Our company has been in existence for over 20 years and we help businesses realize their ideas and increase their revenue several times over. For example, our client, starting with a mere $10 subscription plan with Scrile Connect, quickly became a technological backbone for million-dollar startups, eventually catching the attention of PLBY Group Inc, the owner of Playboy and was acquired for $30 million.
Our AI adoption journey began with the development of our own AI service. Unlike ChatGPT, which relies on a huge amount of unlabeled data, our proprietary solution is built specifically for our needs. This allows us to seamlessly integrate AI into both our products and internal operations.
Given the sensitive nature of some of our projects, especially those involving adult content, we needed an AI-based solution capable of handling such nuanced communication. ChatGPT and its derivatives have limitations in this regard, while our own service provides greater flexibility and data security. By creating a private enterprise AI service, we not only protected sensitive company information, but also reduced the operational costs associated with using third-party AI solutions. Given our large data volumes, the cost savings are significant.
AI applications in business
We use it extensively in four of our departments: Sales, Marketing, Development and HR.
Sales department utilizes an AI-based Sales Assistant. We will delve deeper into its capabilities later. This tool enables our sales managers to handle customer inquiries with significantly greater speed and efficiency.
Our Marketing department also leverages AI in its operations. By providing AI with facts and well-described context, we enable it to develop and implement effective marketing strategies. This significantly enhances our team’s efficiency. Given human limitations, we may overlook certain aspects or fail to consider all possibilities. AI, on the other hand, expands our perspective and offers innovative ideas that we might not have thought of. The ideal approach is to combine our existing knowledge with AI-generated insights to create exceptional strategies, plans, and content. Additionally, we utilize AI for translation tasks, as it consistently outperforms publicly available translation tools.
AI is not only a product of developers but also a tool they use. While AI is not yet capable of writing fully functional code, it can be an assistant and help with tasks such as code formatting, variable naming, and code refactoring.
We have already successfully implemented AI within our company, but we are not resting on our laurels. Building upon our WebVideo product, we have developed an AI-powered solution for generating video conference summaries that capture the meeting’s key points. Imagine a long meeting where many topics are being discussed at the same time. It can be difficult to retain all critical details. Our summary feature solves this problem by storing and making available key aspects of the meeting for later use.
As a CEO, I understand the critical importance of monitoring all business processes. This is why we have implemented an AI solution in our HR department. It allows me to track sales meetings with clients, assess how effectively our managers address customer pain points and inquiries, and gain insights into overall customer needs. Additionally, I can monitor team dynamics, identifying team leaders, measuring individual contributions during video conferences, and assessing the overall team atmosphere for any signs of psychological pressure. Furthermore, I can analyze meeting efficiency by measuring the amount of small talk and determining if the team reached a consensus and how long specific topics were discussed.
“One manager is now able to handle four sales channels”
Helping Sales Managers
The integration of AI has had the most significant impact on our sales department, increasing its efficiency severalfold.
Sales Managers face a multitude of challenges:
Firstly, there is a large volume of inquiries. Not all leads are potential clients. Some are curious, some are gathering information as competitors, and others are hoping for a 99% discount on product development. It is necessary to respond to everyone, if only because a simple internet surfer could, at some point, tell a potential customer about your product. Such a task is time-consuming and significantly reduces the time available to process other requests.
Secondly, there is the issue of template responses. While it is convenient to have pre-built responses integrated into the CRM, over time the number of templates can become overwhelming, leading to confusion among managers. As a result, managers either waste time searching for a suitable template or, if they cannot find one, have to compose a response themselves.
Of course, burnout is inevitable for any specialist in any position. A heavy workload, repetitive responses to the same customer questions, and sifting through countless inquiries about development all contribute to burnout.
The most detrimental aspect for any business is the loss of leads. With a high volume of inquiries, a manager may overlook a truly interested client. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as becoming overwhelmed by the number of leads, feeling fatigued, or simply providing an inadequate response.
And of course, there is the perennial issue of staffing shortages. A deficiency of skilled employees has always been a problem. Even if you do find a competent specialist, they will need to take vacations, may fall ill, or request time off. As a result, you could find yourself temporarily without a manager due to something as simple as getting caught in the rain.
AI in CRM system
The implementation of AI into our CRM system was aimed at addressing the aforementioned challenges. I realized that my team was overwhelmed by the influx of inquiries, and the managers were experiencing burnout. As a software development company, we recognized an opportunity to significantly simplify the sales process while maintaining, and even improving, its efficiency.
A bad salesman is one who does not use their own stuff, right? 🙂
Our development team started building an AI extension at the request of the sales department. It took us less than two weeks to create a fully-fledged product with all the necessary polish. The program didn’t require any further development and completely solved the department’s problems.
What has changed? Firstly, the processing time for dozens of requests has been halved. Yes, we measured it!
We were particularly impressed by the increased efficiency of individual employees. One manager is now able to handle four sales channels, thanks not only to their professional skills but also to the optimization of the workflow made possible by AI.
Moreover, it is important to note the increase in the quality of query processing. AI is more attentive than any human. In communication with potential clients, they may ask a lot of questions, clarify certain details that can get lost in the flow of messages.
A manager may miss them, but artificial intelligence will not. In addition, the work of a sales manager is very stressful. AI can transform a response from an irritated and angry manager into a calmer and more loyal one. Thankfully, AI does not have emotions. At least not yet 🙂
As a result of these improvements, our sales team is more efficient than ever. One person can now manage four sales channels without compromising quality or experiencing burnout.
Furthermore, the implementation of AI has led to an increase in customer focus. While the sales department primarily communicates with customers in English, they occasionally receive inquiries in Spanish, German, and other languages. Thanks to our AI, managers can immediately understand incoming requests in any language and generate a response without wasting time on translating incoming and outgoing messages.
“Integrating AI into your business today”
Currently, artificial intelligence is rapidly improving, but it is still in the process of development. Therefore, my first piece of advice for CEOs looking to integrate AI into their businesses is not to rely on AI entirely. It’s crucial to keep a close eye on the AI and constantly monitor its performance. Additionally, it is advisable to have an independent specialist oversee its work, rather than the person whose work is being integrated with AI.
In addition, I recommend integrating AI into your business today! Waiting for the perfect moment can put you at a competitive disadvantage. While AI is still far from perfect, it’s important to start exploring its potential now. If you have already implemented AI, then don’t stop and make sure to follow the trends, improve it, and try new features! The future is machine learning!
One final thing, if you are an IT company also considering integrating AI in your customer experience, I recommend you start with an internal implementation. This will provide a safer environment to correct any issues in your own processes before implementing it with clients.
“AI has the potential to fully automate customer support within the next few years”
From our development perspective, I often think about the role of AI in our work. While AI is not yet capable of writing complete codebases, I anticipate that in the next few years, it will be able to generate specific code segments. However, the overarching program architecture and the ability to think critically about the problem will continue to be the developer’s domain.
Besides, our products utilize virtual models. I envision a future where these models become highly trainable, enabling us to generate a digital counterpart of an individual based on their digital consumption patterns — the books they read, the music they listen to, the movies they watch. Of course, this would be done with strict adherence to privacy policies and only with the individual’s explicit consent.
Additionally, I think in the future, creators on our platforms can produce fully AI-generated art. Currently, they can create images, but in the next five years it will be possible to create videos with AI.
Furthermore, considering our business processes, I believe that AI has the potential to fully automate customer support within the next few years. While human oversight is still required for AI operations at present, as it develops, it will be able to handle a significant portion of sales managers’ tasks. This will lead to a substantial reduction in operational costs and provide a competitive advantage. This further emphasizes the importance of integrating AI into your business processes today!
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