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Artificial intelligence (AI) is deeply ingrained in the core of most business operations. It's now become the standard. Your competitors are using it, and you should too.
Here’s the problem—there are thousands of AI tools to choose from. How do you find the right tools that can address your unique needs? We’re here to help you answer that question.
The Importance of AI in Business
Businesses that leverage AI are already seeing lower operational costs, improved productivity, and sustainable scaling options. You don’t want to miss out on these benefits.
But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. To fully understand the importance of AI in business, we need to learn the historical context, current trends, and future outlook.
Historical Context
AI used to only exist in niche applications and academic research. With each iteration of AI models like Open AI’s GPT, it’s become a cornerstone of modern business strategies.
The shift started in the early 2010s with the boom of Big Data and more powerful processors. Then, data companies started developing deep learning algorithms.
That’s when we got the first iterations of the conversational AIs we have now. We got image and speech recognition, natural language processing (NLP), and autonomous machine learning.
Current Trends
Today, we’re using advanced versions of NLP and large language models (LMMs) to boost core operational workflows in all departments. Sales, marketing, and even customer support use AI.
As Forbes reported, AI has the potential to boost profitability an average of 38% by 2035 and lead to an economic boost of $14T across 16 industries in 12 economies by 2035. And we’re already witnessing real-world results. Harley Davidson (yes, the motorcycle company) saw a massive 2,930% increase in leads generated per dollar spent.
Companies like Netflix are also saving up to $1 billion annually by using their AI-powered recommendation engine to reduce customer churn rates.
Future Outlook
AI development is ramping up fast. The latest trend, as of this writing, is the incredible potential of AI Agents. An artificial intelligence (AI) agent is a software program capable of interacting with its environment, gathering data, and utilizing that information to autonomously carry out tasks to achieve specific goals.
Silicon Valley investors are bullish on it, and Mark Zuckerberg recently announced Meta’s Llama 3.1 update, which includes state-of-the-art capabilities in general knowledge, steerability, math, tool use, and multilingual translation. Zuckerberg envisions a future where there will be hundreds of millions or even billions of different AI agents in various sectors.
Agential AI means having different AI models working together to accomplish complex tasks. For example, one agent could handle ticket receipt and triage, the other could handle initial responses for common issues, and the next one could escalate the problem to a human agent.
Using AI agents was found to be more cost-effective and had better performance even when using older models like GPT3.5. The performance for AI agents was comparable and even better than a single AI model like ChatGPT-4.
Now that we’ve got a good grasp of the importance of AI tools, let’s take a look at six of the best AI tools for all your business needs.
AI Tools for Marketing
Marketing is where you can combine creativity with data to create content that resonates with your audience at scale. Here are our top picks for AI tools for marketing you need to try:
Jasper
Jasper isn't just another GPT wrapper—it's like having a marketing pro on your team, churning out quality, search-engine-optimized content in a snap.
With Jasper, you can automate the entire content marketing process from idea to execution. Need copy for social media product updates for the next month? Jasper can do that in minutes. Tired of explaining instructions and prompts to ChatGPT? We are too. Jasper can keep track of all your instructions, prompts, and style guides.
Every output is aligned to your needs and your data. That means you get to scale content velocity at low costs while still maintaining your brand identity.
Jasper is built for marketing, and as such, you get access to an AI document editor trained exclusively in marketing best practices. Moreover, you can configure Jasper so that each output adheres to your brand’s unique voice, tone, and style. Additionally, features like Jasper Chat and AI Image Suite make it the perfect all-in-one platform for your marketing needs.
HubSpot
HubSpot has integrated AI into its toolkit for a holistic marketing experience. It’s got features for predictive lead scoring, automated email marketing, and customer segmentation.
Imagine being able to pinpoint your most promising leads, effortlessly send personalized emails at the perfect time, and tailor your messaging to different customer groups.
HubSpot AI provides various AI-powered tools seamlessly integrated into the customer platform to boost productivity. These features leverage artificial intelligence and your CRM data to streamline marketing, sales, and service workflows, enabling you to deliver personalized customer experiences at scale.
Breeze is HubSpot's umbrella term for its new suite of AI-powered tools that enhance business operations. It includes Breeze Copilot, a personal assistant that helps with different tasks, Breeze Agents, AI-powered experts designed to automate workflows, and Breeze Intelligence, a data enrichment tool.
AI Tools for Customer Service
Customer support is crucial for reducing churn and building brand loyalty. The better the CS, the higher the potential average lifetime value of your customers.
Zendesk
Using Zendesk is like having a 24/7 customer staff that keeps your customers happy. It's got AI-powered tools for automated ticketing, chatbots, and in-depth customer insights. Zendesk automatically sorts and prioritizes customer inquiries. Teams get to focus on the most urgent issues. Chatbots can answer questions and give contextually relevant feedback.
Zendesk AI allows you to manage high demand with AI agents and resolve interactions with ease. You can also boost productivity with a proactive agent copilot built into the workflows. Zendesk empowers you to streamline workflows, reduce agent workload, and increase operational efficiency with complete visibility.
With Zendesk's analytics, you get valuable insights into customer behavior and see how your customer service team is performing. Take Zendesk themselves, for example. They use their AI-powered bots to handle a whopping 80% of customer interactions, freeing up their human agents to tackle more complex issues.
Intercom
Think of Intercom as a personal AI assistant for every member of your customer support team. You get AI chatbots, contextually relevant, personalized messaging, and support automation.
Intercom also lets your customer support team create no-code automation workflows. For example, you can instruct a chatbot to auto-reply to prospects. But, if they feel like the issue hasn’t been resolved, the chatbot can automatically escalate the issue to a human agent.
What makes Intercom’s AI different is that Fin AI Agent delivers human-quality service. First, it learns everything about your company and product, using your knowledge to generate accurate answers. Next, Fin speaks in your tone of voice and follows your policies and procedures to deliver the best possible customer experience. It also personalizes its service for every customer, adjusting quickly to serve their unique needs.
Based on the AI-generated insights you get, you can monitor and improve quality and performance across your entire support organization.
AI Tools for Data Analysis
AI tools are incredible at making sense of large volumes of data. They can analyze data to accurately forecast sales, give personalized recommendations, and find emerging trends.
Tableau
If you’re dealing with large volumes of complex data, Tableau is a no-brainer. It’s got predictive analytics, interactive dashboards, and business intelligence tools. However, Tableau isn’t a tool for businesses that don’t have a dedicated analytics department. Configuring it might be too complicated for non-tech-savvy users.
But once set up, you can build and scale data architectures that meet your exact needs. For example, Verizon used Tableau to create 1500 self-serving dashboards for operations, product development, and marketing teams, which resulted in 43% reduced support call volumes.
Tableau Agent is an AI assistant that allows you to turn data into insights, generate comprehensive descriptions for data sources, workbooks, and tables, and create calculations and visualizations using conversational prompts. Another AI feature is Tableau Pulse, which surfaces automated analytics in plain language, proactively anticipates user questions, and even suggests questions they might not have thought otherwise.
IBM Watson
IBM Watson is an AI-powered data analytics platform that helps businesses uncover insights, automate complex processes, and make informed decisions.
Unlike traditional AI systems that function within set limits, IBM Watson AI features cognitive abilities that allow it to comprehend natural language, understand context, and independently derive insights.
From predictive analytics and personalization of customer insights to driving innovation and product development, optimizing supply chain operations, and risk management, IBM Watson signifies a revolutionary advancement in artificial intelligence, going beyond the capabilities of human cognition.
With Watson, you can analyze structured and unstructured data, build and deploy machine learning models, and create interactive dashboards to visualize your findings. Your analytics team can quickly identify trends, spot anomalies, and get a deeper understanding of your core operations.
The Wimbledon tennis tournament even used Watson to analyze player data to create real-time highlights and statistics for fans, resulting in increased engagement and immersive viewing.
Key takeaways
Businesses that leverage AI in their core operations already reduce operational costs, automate manual tasks, and improve sales at scale. You don’t want to miss out. To recap, here are the tools we recommend:
- Jasper.ai - the ultimate content creation tool for marketers, automating the entire process from idea generation to execution, delivering high-quality, SEO-optimized content while maintaining brand identity and adhering to marketing best practices
- Hubspot - offers predictive lead scoring, automated email marketing, and customer segmentation to enhance productivity and deliver personalized experiences at scale through its Breeze suite of AI-powered features
- Zendesk - best choice for businesses looking to enhance customer satisfaction with a 24/7 support solution that utilizes AI-powered tools for automated ticketing, chatbots, and actionable insights, allowing teams to focus on urgent issues while improving operational efficiency and productivity
- Intercom - stands out as the best choice for customer support teams by offering a personal AI assistant that combines chatbots, personalized messaging, and no-code automation workflows, ensuring high-quality, contextually relevant service while adapting to each customer's unique needs.
- Tableau - an ideal choice for businesses with large volumes of complex data, offering powerful predictive analytics, interactive dashboards, and advanced business intelligence tools that, once set up, empower users to build scalable data architectures and derive actionable insights
- IBM Watson - empowers businesses to extract valuable insights, automate complex processes, and enhance decision-making through its cognitive capabilities, enabling the analysis of both structured and unstructured data for improved operational efficiency and innovation
If you need an AI tool for your business’s content marketing, look no further than Jasper.ai. Try it out free today and start scaling high-quality, brand-aligned content.
