Since I have reported in early December last year on the newly-released ChatGPT by OpenAI, huge excitement and a lively debate has developed around this innovative chatbot that creates human-like natural language responses to text-based input.
ChatGPT’s viral adoption and rockstar-like success was so extraordinary that it even surprised its creators at OpenAI, which received billions in new financing from Microsoft lastmonth.
Although many people were intrigued by the capabilities of ChatGPT, others – such as artists, speech writers, journalists, lawyers, teachers, academics and many others – were concerned by the disruptive effect of ChatGPT.
The perceived risk was so high among public and policymakers that OpenAI introduced a tool for detecting text generated by artificial intelligence (AI) late last month. They believe this tool would mitigate the risks that students and employees could rely on artificial intelligence to do their work.
In the short space of time since its release in late November last year, ChatGPT has been tested to the limit and proved itself a decent writer, test taker, study tool, contract scrutiniser and much more. ChatGPT had some remarkable achievements, passing some of the most intense exams, such as university law and multi-state bar exams, business management and final MBA exams, English language, coding and a major medical licensing exam, and many more.
It is, therefore, no wonder that many business executives are seriously considering the use of ChatGPT in business. This is understandable, since Gartner recently reported that customer satisfaction may grow by 25% in organisations that use AI. Many leading businesses are therefore investing in AI due to its ability to automate tasks and also because of its analytical capabilities that provide valuable insights.
The powerful capabilities of ChatGPT makes it very useful in a wide variety of business applications when used as part of a company’s digital transformation. ChatGPT can be used in virtually any industry and in a business of any size. It could be particularly useful in the automating of interactions with customers to improve customer service quality, as well as for content marketing and personalisation.
Personalised marketing
A major challenge for content marketers is to constantly find ideas for new and engaging content that speaks to their target audience and can generate leads. ChatGPT can easily generate compelling marketing content such as articles, product reports, newsletters, blog posts and social media posts using specific parameters according to the needs of the company. It can even generate new content concepts and formulate a list of ideas for podcasts or videos, as well as prepare the entire script for these ideas.
ChatGPT can easily rewrite a marketing piece in a specific tone, make it more detailed or complex, or simplify it. It can also edit pre-written content to ensure it is error-free and adhere to the prescribed tones and guidelines. By automating the writing and editing processes, marketers can produce high-quality content in a fraction of the normal writing time.
Since it has machine learning capability it is able to learn the particular style and tone of a business’s marketing materials in order to generate new content that is consistent with the business’s brand and voice. ChatGPT also has the ability to personalise the content and recommendations based on user data and past behaviour of the specific customer.
However, ChatGPT can overuse certain phrases and provide the same response to multiple users, lacking creativity and a clear brand voice and tone. It therefore could lack personalisation, making it important to ask good questions and to carefully review created text.
In addition to AI and automation, human strategic and creative thinking remain necessary. But without doubt, ChatCPT has the ability to revolutionise the digital marketing industry. It makes the streamlining and scaling of marketing operations possible.
Improved customer experience
More recent advancements in AI have created many new opportunities for businesses to improve their customer experience. Since ChatGPT has the ability to understand and respond to customer requests in a normal conversational manner – almost as well as a human – it can be incorporated into chatbots to enhance the online shopping experience and assist consumers with their questions, thus enhancing their website experience. The improved customer experience could eventually translate into increased customer loyalty.
The wonderful thing is that ChatGPT can handle large volumes of customer requests simultaneously, ensuring reduced response times without additional staff costs. It can also assist with automated aftercare assistance to customers after they have bought a product.
ChatGPT can further gather and analyse customer data to enable the company to improve its products, customer service and the overall customer experience. An improved customer experience could increase customer engagement and loyalty, leading to increased business success.
Enhanced decision-making
Through the analysis of data, ChatGPT can provide valuable insights that would not normally be uncovered through tedious manual methods of data analysis. According to Lindokuhle Magasela from Algorithm Agency, the logical processing power of ChatGPT, combined with experienced data analysis, would enhance the decision-making of organisations and eventually drive growth and increase the bottom line. It would also free up time to enable data scientists to drill deeper into the insights from the data and thus improve performance of the company.
Increased productivity
In a very competitive world, productivity of a business is very important. One of the ways to improve productivity in the age of digital transformation is to introduce automation into the workflow of the organisation. ChatGPT can automate a variety of business tasks that would free up employees’ time to focus on more convoluted and strategic tasks. ChatGPT, for example, can take over several routine tasks such as the generation of regular reports, content creation, drafting of legal contracts, translation of documents, handling of customer complaints, creation of marketing materials, performing of data analysis, and the running of email and social media campaigns.
ChatGPT is excellent with the automation of repetitive tasks in the sales process, such as sending follow-up emails or scheduling meetings. The sales team can use it to generate personalised emails in a fraction of the time of the usual manual process.
Hiring and recruitment
Working through hundreds of applications for an advertised position can be a very tedious task. ChatGPT allows human resource employees to simply copy and paste cover letters and resumés into the AI chatbot and ask it to search for predefined key job criteria. It will then scrutinise the text to determine if candidates have the required relevant experience, thus saving significant time.
Coding
Coding skills have become valuable in business and are used for a variety of tasks. ChatCPT is very helpful in this regard and can create and explain code on request, or even debug a set of code for a developer, as well as build websites. Developers can thus use it to generate code for very specific tasks, such as data validation or error handling.
Compiling research
ChatGPT can assist with the gathering and organising of data from a variety of sources, providing quick access to relevant information. It can thus be used to perform market research by analysing and summarising large amounts of data from surveys and reports. This can save significant costs involved in the hiring of market research companies.
Business software for productivity
With the multi-year, $10 billion (R172bn) recent investment of Microsoft in OpenAI, it is quite possible that ChatGPT capabilities will be integrated into the Bing search engine and also the Microsoft Office Suite. It could easily be possible in future that Microsoft Word would not be used to merely type an essay or article, but to write it by giving it careful instructions. This should free up time and allow employees to be more productive.
Conclusion
ChatGPT is a game-changer in the world of business and can improve almost all aspects of a business, including improving customer service, generating leads, creating marketing content, accelerating appointments, and increasing productivity. What makes it even more valuable in business is its ability to learn from its interactions and adapt in its endeavours to enhance user experience, increase productivity and eventually promote competitiveness.
It is quite possible that the release of ChatGPT by the Californian Company, OpenAI, will be remembered as a turning point in introducing a new wave of artificial intelligence to grow businesses and increase their efficiency.
Professor Louis C H Fourie is an Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape.
BUSINESS REPORT