Get ready to be catapulted into the future! On the Veronica Edwards show, we're discussing the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of small businesses. Promising to change the face of customer service, marketing, and even staff costs, AI is the new game-changer. Hear directly from our co-host, Ebony Sullivan, COO of Cassie Electric, as she shares her experience with AI and how it's reshaping her business operations.
Ever wondered how AI could supercharge your business? Join us as we walk you through the advantages and potential pitfalls of integrating AI into your marketing efforts. We'll provide you with insights into how AI can make your business more efficient, cost-effective, and data-driven. But it's not all rosy; we'll also touch on the costs and possible biases involved. Drawing from our own experiences as small business owners, we'll underline why this technology is essential for staying competitive in the digital age. Tune in for a journey into the exciting world of AI and businesses.
https://cassyelectric.com/
FB & Twitter: Cassy Electric
IG: CassyElectric
This program is brought to you by:
Balanced Virtually
Be sure to visit BizRadio.US to discover hundreds more engaging conversations, local events and more.
Get ready to be catapulted into the future! On the Veronica Edwards show, we're discussing the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of small businesses. Promising to change the face of customer service, marketing, and even staff costs, AI is the new game-changer. Hear directly from our co-host, Ebony Sullivan, COO of Cassie Electric, as she shares her experience with AI and how it's reshaping her business operations.
Ever wondered how AI could supercharge your business? Join us as we walk you through the advantages and potential pitfalls of integrating AI into your marketing efforts. We'll provide you with insights into how AI can make your business more efficient, cost-effective, and data-driven. But it's not all rosy; we'll also touch on the costs and possible biases involved. Drawing from our own experiences as small business owners, we'll underline why this technology is essential for staying competitive in the digital age. Tune in for a journey into the exciting world of AI and businesses.
https://cassyelectric.com/
FB & Twitter: Cassy Electric
IG: CassyElectric
This program is brought to you by:
Balanced Virtually
Be sure to visit BizRadio.US to discover hundreds more engaging conversations, local events and more.
Welcome to the Veronica Edwards show where we have fun financial conversations that everyone listening can apply to their personal and professional life. I'm your host, veronica Edwards, and I'm so excited to be back here. Season three on biz radio dot US. We are approaching for a thousand downloads. That's the goal before season four and just so thankful for the V team for continuing to support the show. I can't believe it's been three years and one of the new segments that we have season three that we're going to have today is our small biz hot topics with co-hosts and friends of the show. C O O of Cassie Electric, the only minority female owned electrical business in the state of South Carolina, miss Ebony Sullivan. Welcome, ebony.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me Absolutely so you know this is our second segment of small biz hot topics but for those that didn't listen to the one we had last quarter, it's all about, you know, just trying to provide small business owners little tips, things that can help them with their business, especially Ebony, with your background with public speaking and business coaching.
Speaker 1:I always tell Ebony she's everyone's therapist and doctor and cook and all that other fun stuff, so I couldn't think of anybody else that I would want to do this show with. So today's topic is artificial intelligence Ebony. We've been talking about this AI and it's been around for a little while, but we're seeing it really explode more and more, especially in 2023, going into 2024. And this show is going to air right before 2024. So we wanted to give small businesses a kind of a leg up on using AI for their business. So first I want to define it before we jump into how it can help a small business. So artificial intelligence AI is all about you know, machines and softwares doing things for you, as opposed to humans, and in the definition.
Speaker 1:they even say animals. I don't know how much animals are doing for you in your business, but the areas that we're going to discuss today of how this machines and softwares can help your business is one in customer service, secondly with marketing and then, lastly, what we know we get the most bang for our buck is reduction in staff. So, ebony, can you kick us off with the customer experience?
Speaker 2:Yes, I would love to so. As businesses strive to enhance customer services, ai is emerging as a powerful tool for customer service. Chat boxes are becoming increasingly prevalent for their abilities to mimic human like conversations and perform routine tasks. By using chat box, small businesses can deliver prompt and seamless customer service, reducing wait times and cutting staff costs. In addition, chat box can learn from customer interactions, continuously improving their accuracy and effectiveness. Some examples of AI that we can use in customer service will be some things like chat, gpt or Google Bard, which provides a seamless and customizable experience for businesses by using natural language processing. These platforms can recognize and respond to customers inquiries effectively to ensure that customers receive personalized attention, which improves overall satisfaction. So you know?
Speaker 1:I mean I, oh sorry. I mean I just want to jump in real quick, because when you mentioned the chat box I didn't even think about that being AI. But I don't know how many times I've gone on a website and immediately a box comes up and they're like hey, we just want to help you and I know Evanie with your business with Cassie Electric. You guys provide maintenance and warranty. Are you guys utilizing this? Because I was like, oh, it's not as much needed in my business being a service provider, but I am kind of curious if you've utilized this with Cassie Electric.
Speaker 2:So we do not currently use chat boxes, but what we do is we have a software that we use that allows us to use everything in one place, and it also automates a lot of our processes for us. So now I don't have to go in and send reminders to my customers that I'm coming or that we're on our way or that we've finished the job, and when I send the button for the invoices, all of those things have now become very automated through these systems because of artificial intelligence. Right, so they can track you. They can. A lot of people are scared of this. I am a little bit scared.
Speaker 1:Yes, the whole track is, but it's just. But if you got a cell phone, I feel like you're being tracked, like, even if you take the location, all that. I think now that the way technology has just exploded in the last 20 years, yeah, you might as well put a chip in the back of my neck.
Speaker 2:You could find it Pretty much I mean with the beautiful part now, while I'm while I'm scared to own some more business owners out there, it is life changing, it is gang changing.
Speaker 2:I mean there's no more, there's no longer a need for the pushing paper you know, rolling your company anymore, when you can have some automations and have some artificial intelligence incorporated in your day to day so that you can have more efficiency in the work that you do. You can streamline a lot of processes so that you can just set it and forget it, and it frees you up to be more of an owner of the company where you can work for your business rather than in your business. And so I think that having this from a customer service experience while your customers do experience a much better product and service offering because they get to interact with someone pretty instantaneously you have now to really work with your time, because now you freed yourself up from having to sit on that telephone or having to call people back or having to do these things, and so really consider it as a really good tool for you to be able to free you up to work on your business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you hit it right on the head, especially with the timely turnaround for customer service, because we live in an age now where if you're waiting more than 15 seconds, you're like, oh, I'm waiting so long.
Speaker 1:So it is nice when I have ordered something or I've put in a ticket and I immediately get an email saying, hey, we're working on your order or we're working on your ticket. It's something about that communication and, unfortunately, with small business owners, when it's just you doing a lot of things as the owner your marketing, your customer service or all this if you don't have bodies helping you, that's okay now, but you do have to invest, because AI isn't cheap, but it isn't good investment in your business to show that you're professional. I've had people where they won't even work with the company if they didn't get good customer service, even if it's a great product. So that's a big thing. I want those that are listening that provide any type of service. You have to make sure that you're A1 when it comes to your customer service turnaround time, because that's where you can lose people forever. They haven't even got a chance to see your product.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, I was on a call yesterday and I had to hold for about two hours before I actually got a live person on the phone and then, after we went through our call, I said well, how do I follow up with you to make sure that this is actually going to happen? When you say he says well, I would suggest that you download our app and you chat with someone, because you would get a faster, better response time. So I'm like they're telling their training their staff, their training people to now use these automated systems, because if you want quickly, fast-talked customer service, that's the new wave.
Speaker 1:I definitely see it being an account. At working with QuickBooks, that's always the first thing that they say is talk to the person in the chat and then, after the chat, if they weren't able to answer your question, okay, then we'll give you a number. But really, to your point, they're really trying to retrain all of us and even their staff. That, hey, the first impulse is I want to talk to a person. Well, if we can alleviate whatever issues that you're having via chat, it's cheaper, it's easier. I say do it. I'm even noticing now on Zoom, there's like an AI feature.
Speaker 1:So I was in a meeting with someone where they were using their virtual assistant, AI and Zoom to do all the notes capturing all of that. So that just blows my mind.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's so cool though. Can you think about that? That is really cool, exactly.
Speaker 1:Just to the third item, which is how artificial intelligence can help you with marketing. And I'm experiencing that here on Biz Radio because we've implemented AI for when we're saying, hey, the small Biz Chat with Ebony Sullivan's on and it's listening to everything that we're doing right now and it's creating that advertisement. And I want to say I'm paying less than 15 bucks a month for this feature, where in the past I would have to have written this, that someone else is proofing it and double checking it and all of these things. So if you definitely small business owners listening can personalize your marketing. It can help you analyze customer service, data and behaviors, demographics.
Speaker 1:What makes sense is looking at all these, as people have heard, algorithms we're just looking at all this data and processing it so you can have a better idea of who are your customers people that are coming on your side, people that are buying your items. What is it exactly that they're looking for? We're you know how to best target them. So, again, this is things back in the day. It took years of history to get this information and people and man hours, and now you can actually pay for a software that could do that in a sliver of a time.
Speaker 1:Ebony have you again, with you being a small business owner yourself. Have you utilized any of this marketing tools for your business?
Speaker 2:Every day, all day. I mean, if you're a nerd and you're a data collector, you've got to be in on all of this right.
Speaker 2:And the old school times like, just to help people who may not really understand the old school times was research right, like we had to go to this. We had to go look for things, we had to find things. Now, with this new AI technology and as you were talking about algorithms and tracking, this data it's collect, it is your reference, it is your encyclopedia. It has all the information that you need as a business owner to make some real strategic decisions about your business. So it's important that you invest in some portion of this if you are marketing your business to the public, because there's no way you are going to know who your customers are. When are they shopping? What are they looking for?
Speaker 2:It is actually tracking people's behaviors. It's telling you customers are looking at your website between the hours of nine and 11, right. So now you know if you're sending out blog posts, if you're posting things on your social media, if you're doing certain things, you know now when to do it, right. You also it will tell you these people between the ages of 25 and 35 are looking at your stuff. Okay, well, that's great.
Speaker 2:What does that mean for me? That means, now I know my target audience is 25 to 35, right, and now I know my messaging and my words and the things that I say should be targeted to these specific people. And so, again, while I know it's very scary, we use it every day, all day, in our marketing techniques, because now we know where to place our ads, what are the key words that we need to say in there to be able to help people find us. We know who people are that are looking at us, we know when they're shopping for us, and that helps us to make good decisions on how we strategically grow our business.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and, like you said, a lot of the stuff is already out here and most of us already use, like Google suite. Well, they also now have Google Cloud AI and their whole mission is to spread useful AI effectively all over the world. However that might be so, if you're already using Google suite listeners, look into that also, because any platform now software based, I'm sure they're now adding a layer of AI to their systems because they know like this is the way, like this is what we're moving to, which leads us. Lastly, with all of these benefits, the biggest one, I mean we know, is reduction in staff, you know so on the business owners were like, oh, positive.
Speaker 1:But for an employee they're kind of like, okay, this is messing up my job security. So what positives from the owner standpoint do we see with this reduction staffing?
Speaker 2:Oh man, I mean it's, it's effective, it's efficient, is cost effective. You get to have less office space because you don't have to have so many butts and seats. You see a huge reduction in expenses because you're not having to pay for travel or reimbursements and all these other things. And if you hire a virtual assistant they're not really yours, so they're 1099, which means I'm not really responsible for any benefits. I'm not responsible for all of these other things as an employer that I would be normally responsible for if I actually walk somebody in my door and set them at my front desk, right. So the benefit of that is that they're always available to some degree. That's kind of scary too, but that they will always be available, that you have access to them at any place, anytime. So if you're traveling, it doesn't matter, you know. If you have a home based business, it doesn't matter. And if you're running a large corporation, it's a huge cost savings for you to be able to say you know, I don't have to pay for one extra head in the building.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, and one of the terms that I ran across doing research on AI is this hybrid intelligence where even though you know we are using AI, we still need to collaboratively work with AI and humans, you know so for that hybrid intelligence. So, again, we're not replacing all staff, but this is an area where we can enhance it. And, with that being said, there are some cons, some negatives, also to keep in mind with AI because, like anything, nothing is going to be perfect. So, again, there's a cost with this. Some are inexpensive, some are a little bit more expensive, depending on the complexity of your business, but, like I stated, you know I'm using an AI function. It's less than $20 a month. Some might be more than that, but it's definitely something to keep in mind. There is a cost and usually a monthly subscription that comes with using AI.
Speaker 1:And then also, ai is not always fact check, so don't just assume that everything that comes through. If you have an AI virtual assistant and they're putting the information in, sometimes you know everything's based on the internet and if things aren't up to date, there could be some inaccuracies because the information has not been updated. And then, lastly, again, there's always going to be bias and there's no emotions when you're dealing with Robots. You know and dealing with, you know, artificial intelligence. I had somebody before I was receiving out again it was a customer service situation. I'm emailing and the person was just responding back so robotic and so cold and sure enough, it was AI. So I could tell it's. You know, I could tell sometimes where I'm like oh, this doesn't feel like it's a real person. But at the same time, you know there's biases with humans too.
Speaker 1:You know so that you know we have to take the good with the bad, but to me there's a lot more good. When it comes to AI, you know many both are still pretty young business owners. You know, in the last five years we've really focused in Entrepreneurship. But I would have to say this is one of the areas I'm really excited about, because, being a solo for newer, I need to have somebody to bat. In the other, something does happen. So I look at it as a positive that you know I can take a vacation, I can take some time off and To the customer, it appears as if I'm still being responsive. Marketing is still going out automatically and.
Speaker 1:It's completely seamless to the end users.
Speaker 2:I think you said a very good thing. Be that it is something that you have to incorporate with humans. It's not a all a men ends to mean all right, like where you oh, I got a virtual assistant or I have AI and like I don't need people. No, I do that. They do work hand in hand, hand well together.
Speaker 2:I don't know if people remember the big wave of robots.
Speaker 2:You know manufacturing In South Carolina and that was a people's job and then robots came, placed a lot, but it didn't replace all the people, right, and so that's how I look at AI.
Speaker 2:Ai, yes, it replaces some of these very mundane, automated, easy, low hanging fruit items that you can just scrape off your plate and not have to think about, but anything that You'd have personality, you know that's, that's what your business development had on, and you have to build Relationships. You don't want to use AI to do that. Right, you want AI or just very, very low hanging manufacturing type routine things that you can set it and forget it and not think about that anymore. Because AI does not need to be your personality or the face of your business, because then you become very much like you said your brand becomes very I and stale and very robotic, and if you wanted to be A feeling that people feel when they do business with you, then you still have to engage. You still need to be the face, the voice, the present person for your business and allow AI to just handle the low hanging fruit for you.
Speaker 1:That's perfect, perfect way to end it. So again, thank you, miss Sullivan, for coming back on for our second installment of small biz hot topics. Ebony, if you can just plug a little bit about Cassie electric, always do a little intro in the beginning but To segue out, I would love for you to plug again where people can find more information about the service that you guys provide in South Carolina and the greater area.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. We are um Cassie electric, that's c a s s y electric. We are on facebook, instagram. We are on youtube catch some of our tick tock videos. We have our website, wwwcassieelectriccom. You can always reach us by phone 864 735 8882. We are small on 100 woman, minority on business. We serve as residential, commercial and facility maintenance needs for all electrical installs, so we'd love being here on biz radio with you, veronica. Thank you so much again for having me here, um, and thank you, listeners, for indulging us on our business chats.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And yes, I want to thank the listeners for tuning into biz radio dot us. Please come back next week. Same time, same place, 10 am On Wednesdays for the Veronica Edward show. And if you missed the live airings, you can listen to all prior shows at Veronica Edwards dot buzz sprout dot com.