5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Shake Up Service Business Management

This article about artificial intelligence is by Stephen Hart, CEO of Cardswitcher.

For decades we have been anticipating the advent of the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

No longer will AI conjure up images of a sci-fi film, a futuristic technology far from our grasp. It is becoming a reality and it is growing in influence.

AI technology is designed and developed to carry out tasks that would normally necessitate the intelligence of humans. Machines can learn to reproduce human intelligence, completing jobs quickly, accurately, and objectively.

As with previous industrial revolutions, the structure of business will not remain as it is. Industry 4.0 will and has already begun to transform the processes and systems that guide business conduct.

Businesses are flocking to take advantage of new AI systems in a bid to lower costs and increase productivity. How will it shake up service business management?

1. Restructuring Of Roles

The job market will be reshuffled as AI becomes more prominent.

As AI technology becomes more advanced, it can complete tasks more effectively than a human employee could ever dream of. It makes business sense to cut these human roles entirely, replacing them with AI.

This move away from human employees towards AI endangers employment in a number of industries, like manufacturing, retail, and transportation.

Businesses will have to adapt to a restructuring of roles. Entire career paths will be replaced with AI technology.

There is a fear that the advancement of AI will spell out mass layoffs. Conversely, more extensive use of AI will encourage the growth of other industries, creating more job openings. Sectors involving creative and digital skills will be safe from the takeover of AI. For home services companies, like cleaners and movers, AI will not pose an immediate threat to jobs. For those roles, major advancements in robotics have to take place first. It’s more likely that administration roles will be affected first.

The way businesses will be managed when faced with AI adoption will vary from industry to industry. In those industries faced with human displacement, management will monitor the effectiveness of AI rather than people, and business strategy will be rooted in data reports created by machines. In industries facing a growth in human employment, greater investment in creative skills and a heavier recruitment drive will be necessary to bring unique value to their output.

It’s not all doom and gloom for the job prospects of humans however. I run CardSwitcher, the UK’s first payment processing comparison site, and we’ve recently restructured the digital team to take the growth of AI in the industry into account. We’ve used the increased efficiency afforded by AI to automate these jobs, reskill existing employees and move them to more strategic roles where they’re able to provide more specialized insights.

2. Recruitment Revamp

Lucky for those industries which will have to undertake a major recruitment drive, AI will prove its worth when helping to find the best fit for your company.

AI has the capability to look beyond a resume. They can scan the web for additional information about candidates, providing a well-rounded insight into their personality and aptitude.

Moreover, with potentially hundreds or thousands of applications to trawl through, AI systems can use keywords to quickly filter results, presenting only the most promising applications.

It can carry out the initial steps of the recruitment process, including interview invitations and screening interviews, and dramatically speed up the stages of selection without compromising on the quality of a candidate.

Businesses will find that that identifying the best candidates for job openings will be far more streamlined, helping to create teams that gel together with ease.

3. Trusting Data

No matter how experienced a human employee is with data analytics, they can never match up to the power of AI when processing and analyzing data.

AI will be tasked with number-crunching. Huge quantities of data can be processed and transformed into error-free reports in a jaw-droppingly short period of time.

Sales projections, bookings, inventory counts, budgeting, and employee performance — all can be condensed into concise, accurate, and impartial reports by AI.

Naturally, service business management will be shaped by this. The detailed projections and estimates included in these AI-produced reports will inform future business strategy. Businesses will have stronger foundations on which to create and achieve their business objectives.

Great faith will have to be placed in the reliability of AI to deliver results, but business goals will be guided by machine recommendations.

4. Pricing Strategies

AI has the capability to implement custom pricing strategies that cater better to individual customers whilst still meeting business objectives.

Human management will need to relinquish some control over pricing strategies, placing power in the hands of AI.

AI systems can learn how to autonomously price services at the optimum rate to guarantee a sale. Influenced by buyer persona, contemporary demand, seasonality, and customer behavioural patterns, pricing will be incredibly intuitive.

Flexible AI-guided pricing will ease pressure on business strategists, helping to hit sales targets effortlessly.

5. Customer Interaction

Marketing will become more personalized with the growth of AI, helping to forge stronger connections between brands and customers with minimal effort.

Highly targeted, customized messages can be designed and delivered with the help of AI.

Growing in popularity already is the use of chatbots, an AI technology that mimics a human in a real-time conversation.

Using natural language processing (NLP), the conversational skills of chatbots can become more realistic over time, dealing with customer queries promptly and reliably.

Chatbots are mature enough to detect changes in human emotions, so when customers become irritable or distressed, the interaction can then be transferred to a real human.

Businesses will put greater emphasis on chatbots, reducing the amount of interaction carried out via email. Brand-consumer communication will speed up and become far more accessible, with chatbots available around the clock.

Prepare For The Shake Up

Businesses will always need a human touch to coordinate a company, providing encouragement and structure to the work environment. As mature as AI is, human emotion and empathy cannot be replicated easily or authentically.

In other ways, AI will remold the way service businesses are managed.

More emphasis will be placed on nurturing uniquely human qualities in employees, like people skills, creativity and teamwork.

Great responsibility will be put on to AI to generate accurate business predictions and to identify talent and opportunities for growth, which business managers will have to place trust in.

Welcome to the future.

Want to learn about how service business management software can help you start to automate your service business, helping it grow and become more profitable? Book a free, private demo of Vonigo.