The real, actual, proven benefits of Generative AI Assistants - a breakdown.
The term Generative AI is everywhere right now - of that there is no doubt.
Still a lot of businesses we talk to are a bit foggy on the real life applications of Generative AI, (and AI in general)… and how /where the benefits can be realised.
While the generice benefit of 'automating business communications and processes' sounds promising, what does it actually mean for businesses that embrace this groundbreaking technology?
Today we’ll do a deeper dive into the benefits AI can deliver for businesses in any sector.
One thing is for sure; those that do adopt Generative AI technologies stand to gain massive early mover advantages over their competition. Here’s how…
OK so what are the benefits?
It’s somewhat well known that organisations leveraging Conversational AI, AI Assistants, Generative AI (call it what you will) enjoy many benefits:
They save time
They save money
They increase productivity
They increase profits
They improve customer satisfaction
They improve team morale
But how? Let’s dive a bit deeper into each of these benefits, and some high level numbers associated with the benefits…
Save time - a telephone or email enquiry that is manually handled takes an average of 5 minutes to resolve according to standard industry metrics. Imagine a medium sized business that receives 50,000 calls and 25,000 emails annually, all taking 5 minutes to resolve. That’s a total of 375,000 minutes (6250 hours) spent handling customer enquiries. Now consider that at least 60% of these enquiries are repetitive and fairly non complex - ie they could be resolved by AI assistants that automates replies via email, webchat, social media, messaging apps and telephone.
60% of 375,00 means a saving of 225,000 minutes (3750 hours) a year.
To put that into context, people are typically productive in work for around 1200 hours a year. Which means an AI assistant would be like adding 3 new team members - except they don’t need training, they work 24/7/365, they can often converse in any language and they don’t take sick days.
Save money - 3 new team members would cost around £100,000 when you consider hiring and salary costs. Another 35% should be added to these costs to come to the ‘fully loaded’ cost of an employee (sickness and unplanned absence, work equipment, employee pension contributions, staff turnover, holidays, equipment and space). New employees also need training and time to get to full effectiveness.
AI assistants mean businesses can scale without needing to add ‘bums on seats’. Some businesses may look to reduce FTE. With 60% less calls and emails, this can easily be achieved, meaning significant cost savings. Others may look to redeploy resources to more value-added areas of the business.
Increase productivity - Around 26% of our time in work is wasted on manual, repetitive tasks that could be handled by AI assistants. A proportion of that 26% comprises the handling of high volume, low value customer and colleague enquiries. By deploying customer facing and internal AI assistants (internal AI assistants live on channels like MS Teams, Slack and Intranets, and can handle interactions between employees and departments like IT and HR), businesses can significantly reduce the time employees waste on manual, repetitive tasks.
Imagine AI assistants can half the 26% in lost productivity. Now imagine a 1000 person organisation with an average salary of £35,000. Losing 26% in productivity costs that organisation £9.1m every year. Halfing that number with AI assistants would drive £4.55m in productivity gains.
Increase profits - There are 2 ways a business can increase profits; drive revenue or cut costs. AI assistants can help businesses do both by improving operational efficiencies and increasing productivity. Reducing FTE, redeploying resources to more value-add work, or scaling operations without exponentially adding to headcount are all ways businesses can increase profits with AI assistants. More tangibly, AI assistants can easily be used to capture, qualify and nurture leads that come through a businesses website or social channels.
AI assistants can also be used for proactive (everything up to now has been reactive) outreach, notifying customers of relevant promotions and initiatives, and engaging them in automated conversations designed to convert sales. Proactive outreach works particularly well on platforms that use push notifications (think social messaging apps like Whatsapp and Facebook).
Improve customer satisfaction - Unbelievably we spend 43 days of our lives waiting on hold! Slightly more believable but no more acceptable is the fact that we wait 15 hours for a business to reply to our emails. It’s little wonder then (actually it’s still staggering) that $4.7 trillion (that’s trillion, with a ‘t’) is lost every year by businesses whose customers ‘vote with their feet’, moving to a competitor that delivers a better customer experience. More than a third of those customers are even willing to pay more for a reliable service (firms with higher-than-average customer service ratings earn 114% more per employee), and it’s estimated to cost 5x more to attract new customers than retain existing ones.
So you can see how resolving customer issues quickly or providing instant access to products, services and information can be a game changer for your businesses and customers.
Improve team morale - Automating responses to high volume, low value, repetitive interactions gives employees more time to handle higher value work; work that demands specialist knowledge, empathy and emotional intelligence. This kind of work typically has a real impact on customers, and having a positive impact on customers has a positive impact on your teams.
Automating the high volume, low value interactions that erode employees’ time means they're more available for the complex tasks that genuinely need human support. When customers receive that support in a timely manner (i.e. they're not put on hold, passed around departments or asked to repeat their issues multiple times), the employee to customer interaction is less tense and more pleasant for all concerned. This has a huge impact on team morale.
And finally, when employees are able to use AI assistants for faster access to the information they need to do their jobs (IT support, HR policies, company information), they’re more productive, less frustrated, and much more likely to deliver great customer service.
There are more ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ benefits to leveraging AI Assistants, especially those that work with Generative AI technologies (they’re quicker to launch and generate ROI). Businesses often get bamboozled by the art of the possible and the myriad possible applications for this kind of technology.
The trick is to start small (but dream big). Identify the tasks and interactions that erode the most time, take a look at the systems you may need to interact with to automate those tasks/interactions, and trial a clearly defined proof of concept with a baseline (where are you now) and a clear view of ‘what success looks like’. This is a great way of building a data driven business case for further AI roll outs. The added bonus is that you’ll start driving efficiencies almost immediately.
It’s really not as complicated as you might think, and of course we’d be delighted to help you understand more!
“Those that do adopt Generative AI technologies stand to gain massive early mover advantages over their competition”