Emilia Gette serves as a marketing associate at Workast, specializing in crafting innovative strategies to engage with the audience. With a focus on creativity and attention to detail, she contributes to driving impactful results across various marketing channels.
Every business wants to know what its potential clients want. But, whether you sell shoes or shoebill postcards, there is one thing you need to know: the global consumers have spoken, and they want transparency.
While being transparent about how you make your products and what you make them with has always been crucial for client trust, now one more component has been added to the equation: the use of AI.
A recent report has shown that over 80% of global consumers believe that AI-created or derived 'things', including images, videos, and texts, should be clearly labelled. This shows that transparency in AI use matters to the majority of consumers.
With the use of AI becoming so prevalent, transparency will become a key player in taking your share of the market. For small businesses, this can be the tipping point between going under and survival. But why does a small business need to use AI?
For a small business, almost nothing is more difficult than surviving the first year of operations. It has always been a fierce battle for small entrepreneurs to survive in industries dominated by big corporations.
The bigger companies have always had a bigger share of the market thanks to their deeper pockets. This always meant they could hire bigger teams and invest in more advanced technology.
With small companies having fewer resources and manpower, competing against them was nearly impossible. After all, they could not invest more in marketing or scale their business. However, with the introduction of AI, small businesses can get more done using AI.
Automation is becoming an indispensable part of small businesses.
By automating repetitive tasks, AI can reduce operational costs, requiring fewer people to be hired. The use of chatbots, automating follow-ups, and making recommendations more personalized, all these can enhance customer engagement.
AI predictive analytics has taken the guessing out of decision-making for small entrepreneurs, making demand and pricing forecasts more effective and accurate. It can also make marketing more optimized with options like AI email campaigns and social media management.
Using automation throughout their business operations can give small businesses the competitive advantage they need to not just survive but thrive. More importantly, their competitors are also integrating AI into their operations, and this can mean that not using it can make them fall behind.
Using automation can make microbusinesses more efficient, their marketing more effective, decision-making more accurate, and enhance customer experience, while cutting down operational costs.
Most businesses have a certain amount of information on their customers and their target clientele.
Every time a business interacts with a potential customer, it collects data, and the amount of data it has on you only increases when you buy something from them and have continual communication.
AI systems often collect and work with this data, which includes but isn't limited to, purchase histories, personal details and chat transcripts.
Every business promises data privacy and security, and customers expect the information to be kept private and handled responsibly. Even a small data breach or misuse can destroy that trust forever.
We all feel it, that uncanny feeling that something is pattern-based and not human. Imagine reading an advertisement tagline and thinking "this feels off," and while it was not possible to prove it before, now they can easily run the text on an AI content detector and prove that it’s automated.
This loss of human touch in branding and advertisement, in customer service, and even in the making of the product or service, can trigger algorithm aversion in your clients.
Over-reliance on AI, especially in communication channels like chatbots or automated responses, triggers this feeling of synthetic dissonance, which creates a gap between the business and its audience.
This is particularly bad for small businesses, since they function better within the local community, relying a lot on word-of-mouth. If a small business feels impersonal, it can lead to loss of clientele.
The imperfection of AI is a fact. Most LLMs always display a line that says "it can make mistakes," and that is done to ensure that we don't take everything generated by AI as fact. They can easily reflect bias that got integrated into the system based on the pattern it found in the data.
Automation can generate false responses and make fake claims. Mistakes in product descriptions, pricing, or recommendations can make customers lose confidence in the business.
Customers appreciate honesty. If you use an AI chatbot, label it clearly. Do not present it as a human representative. A simple statement such as, “We use AI to provide faster responses. If you prefer to speak with a team member, we are available,” reinforces respect and openness.
AI should handle repetitive or simple tasks, freeing staff to focus on meaningful interactions. For example, a chatbot can manage order tracking, while a team member handles complaints or personalized advice. This balance maintains efficiency without sacrificing relationships.
Choose AI providers that emphasize responsible development and compliance. Internally, establish clear guidelines on acceptable use. If a tool produces unreliable results, pause its use until improvements are made.
AI should never be just for show. Do not adopt AI simply to appear innovative. Use it where it creates measurable improvements, such as faster support, more accurate forecasts, or proactive updates about delays.
Even when using AI for efficiency and scaling, you must ensure to uphold customer trust. As long as you put in the effort to choose the right tools, use them properly, stay transparent, and keep client feedback in mind, you can make sure that your audience continues to keep faith in your business.
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