Fast, efficient communication is a foundation of business success. That remains as true in 2023 as it ever was.
However, the world of business communications is changing. Fast.
With AI quickly becoming universal, harnessing it to elevate your business' digital communications is a necessity, rather than a luxury, if you want to keep up with the competition.
Here are five handy AI communication tools to adopt to enhance your business communication and stay ahead of the curve.
Automatic Meeting Transcripts and IVR
To start with, there are a few AI functionalities that a modern cloud-based business phone system can offer you that make all the difference in the world.
Foremost among them are automatic meeting transcripts and summaries. Using natural language processing, AI tools can generate a transcript of your meetings in real time. Not only do you no longer have to designate someone to keep the meeting minutes. It also helps team members with auditory impairments.
But the magic doesn't stop there. AI can also generate automatic meeting summaries, quickly condensing the transcript into the most important takeaways and action items.
Another handy AI-based feature of modern business phone systems is Interactive Voice Response (IVR). This allows you to route incoming calls via verbal cues. Callers no longer have to listen to an interminable menu of "Press 1 for ..." before they get to talk to someone. Instead, they can state their business in their own words and are connected instantly. Or, if their query is a routine one, the AI can handle it for you.
Chatbots
Another fantastic AI tool to make your business communications more efficient are Chatbots.
While they can be aggravating if they're implemented poorly, a well-designed, expertly set-up chatbot can help you boost overall customer satisfaction and increase the productivity of your customer support team.
Not only are chatbots available to address customer queries 24/7. They are also capable of handling routine requests, such as giving shipping updates, helping customers navigate their accounts, or scheduling appointments.
Consequently, your human agents are free to deal with more complex issues and handle customer inquiries that require a personal touch.
AI Writing Aides
Next up, AI writing aides can help you find inspiration and level up your written business communication.
Over the past few months, generative AI, especially ChatGPT, has made a giant splash with its impressive capabilities. From blog posts to email outreach copy, Twitter threads to white papers, generative AI can produce a wide range of text types essential to business communications.
Uncritically using any of these outputs would be a mistake, given the tools' issues with hallucination and plagiarism. However, with the right editing efforts, they can form a fantastic and time-saving basis for first and second drafts. You can use them to suggest topics, provide outlines, and summarize ideas.
Plus, there's a wide range of writing assistants out there - from Grammarly to ProWritingAid - that specialize in elevating your writing. They pinpoint grammar and punctuation mistakes, analyze your style, provide phrasing suggestions, help you avoid clichés, and check the readability of your texts.
Used right, these tools can help you become a better, more efficient writer - and streamline your business communications.
Virtual Assistants
Another entry on our list of the best AI communication tools in business are virtual assistants. These are included in several cloud-based communication platforms, such as virtual call centers and some UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) platforms.
Virtual assistants are AIs that handle routine business tasks for you. Scheduling meetings, writing up summaries, sending follow-up emails - they can handle all of those dozens of tiny tasks that typically swallow up significant amounts of your time.
Plus, they're serious communication assets. For instance, when a customer calls your company reps about an issue they're having with one of your products, your virtual assistant can be your wingman. It will pull all the pertinent records from your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and provide cue cards and conversational strategies throughout the call.
AI-Based Communication Analytics
Finally, you can leverage one of AI's greatest strengths to take your business communications to the next level - its capability of analyzing huge amounts of data.
In 2023, business communication is happening across a massive array of channels - voice and video calls, instant messaging, social media, live chat, and email, to name just a few of them. Gathering data on all these channels and analyzing it to detect patterns and find areas that need improvement is more than a single human can handle.
It's exactly what AI is best at, though.
AI-based communication analytics can help you pinpoint friction losses in your workflows, characterize what resonates with your audience, and evaluate the performance of individual team members. These insights will help you develop actionable strategies to improve your processes and increase your overall communication efficiency.
Final Thoughts
AI can be a major asset in business communication. With the weapons above in your arsenal, you'll be able to streamline your communication workflows, boost your productivity, and increase customer satisfaction. It's well worth taking the time and effort to evaluate which tools best suit your business' individual needs and how you can wield them to achieve your communication goals.
