According to Forbes Advisor – about 97% of business owners believe ChatGBT will help their business. Whilst 46% believe AI will help create internal communications. Others believe AI will help them manage customer relationships. This goes along the notion that A.I is here to stay. The most important question then is, what is Artificial Intelligence and what is its role in Businesses?

Artficial Intelligence is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. Artificial intelligence technology enables computers and machines to simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities. Here is a fact about this technology it is evolving progressively and its adoption is being widely accepted across the globe, so we choose not to invest in the technology at own peril.

For businesses A.I is a technology that plays an important role. Just like other technologies before it, it is meant to make it easier to do business, improving casestudies across industries. There are two interesting touch point in which a business can be affected by A.I that is customer experiences and business processes.

😃 Inhance Customer Experience

Businesses primarily aim to solve problems for their customers. The better a business is at solving problems the better rated it is among similar businesses and other businesses. Over the years, technology has help businesses achieve this goal o providing solutions to customers, by inhancing the customer journey. Al is no different. Its evident enough that during this time sept 2024 – it is truly the next big thing, with companies investing heavily in Al and consumers tracking the developments closely. We have witnessed various uses of At that prove to be supporting the notion of enhancing customer experience. Good example are chatbots and virtual assistants, which have helped respond to customer questions which by doing so has greatly reduced responce times. A great deal is also shown in multilingual locations such as Africa with Al powered language translation. The technology has brigaded the gap helping businessed engage a varied customer base.

🤝Inhance business processes/operations/productivity

There are two options businesses can consider to make money, either to charge high prices or lower the cost of production. Al as a technology if employed well it can help reduce the cost of production by enhancing the business productivity that is doing more with less effort.After all that is what good technology does, it simplifies work. We have witnessed businesses adopting varies Al based technologies in their operation. A good example to note is the use of Al to help employees write be it emails, presentation documents and even research. This has its roots in large language models such as Google’s Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Chat gbt. The idea excits business leaders as it creates time for other items on the to do list other than writing. Another great deal is in software development were we have witnessed developers getting help from Al to create code for their projects. food for thought if Al can write code can it program another Al?

To close, sophisticated businesses can apply A.I to both touch points, to enhance customer experience and to enhance business opearations. Strategically implemented this could be a good way to gain a competitive advantage over competition in the digital space.

AI can truely be fascinating, as African leaders we hope to benefit immensely from the use of the technology but before anything else we have to be true to ourselves. AI is a technology wave coming from the developed world, markets with different set of rules, customer behaviours and overally; problems. We have to be wise enough and invest into AI with a clear strategy and plan of action that will suit our situation perfectly. not to impliment every AI innovation that comes our way,. We speak defferently, we learn differently hence we should adobt differently, that could be the key to success in a AI driven global economy.