Every business is using AI. Almost every business is using AI.
We are using AI to automate tasks, manage communications, hire, and for myriad other purposes.
But for a local business, is overuse of AI a good thing when it comes to managing customer relationships?
We think some use of AI is great. Overuse, not so much.
No one wants to talk to a robot, especially if they are not happy with the service.
Nobody wants to receive a canned response.
For local services, we recommend following these tips when using AI to communicate with customers:
- Build an AI persona and voice that reflects your brand and personality. Do not use the generic AI persona that comes built into every AI product like ChatGPT.
- Provide an easy escalation path to reach a human. If a user is unhappy, make sure they can quickly get through to a real person.
- AI can generally be quite verbose in communication. So make sure the persona you create is consistent with how you would actually communicate with a customer.
- No long canned responses that are just acknowledgements. Instead, be innovative. Even a simple "like" can be enough to let a customer know you have seen their message.
- Don't create more work just because AI is cheap and easy to use. Given how cheap and easy AI has become over the last 3 years, it is very easy to end up using it in ways that actually create more work for you and your customers. Avoid that.
As a small local business, your voice should not sound like a large, soulless corporation. Your customers should feel like they are talking to a real business run by real people.