How the rise of AI and ChatGPT is changing the sales industry

Leading businesses in different industries have looked into the potential implementation of artificial intelligence into their own industry to increase efficiency and cut cost. Artificial intelligence is an incredible tool that would greatly increase sales and streamline a lot of business processes. And to no surprise, AI has been implemented in the sales industry and with great success.

Many have suggested that the implementation of AI increases customer experience, which in turn gives rise in revenue and turnover rate.

Additionally, according to McKinsey, a fifth of current sales-team functions could be automated. It is suggested Artificial intelligence can be implemented to automate these functions and even create more leads generation.

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What is AI?

Before we dive into the application of AI, we must first know what exactly is Artificial Intelligence since it is a rather ambiguous term. In a paper written by John McCarthy, one of the founders of AI, in 2004, he states that “It (AI) is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an umbrella term for technology that imitates thinking like a human to solve sophisticated tasks (more detailed definitions of AI). AI learns from data provided to them and can perform certain tasks with high accuracy.

As suggested by Harvard Business Review, The sales industry is greatly becoming a leading pioneer of adapting generative AI, a form of deep learning, which is a form of AI that uses neural networks to learn to perform tasks. A well-known generative AI is ChatGPT by OpenAI. The adaptation of using generative AI has brought numerous benefits and has slowly become an irreplaceable tool and assistant to every salesperson.

What is Generative AI?

As mentioned, Generative AI is a deep-learning model that utilizes data to train a model and then be able to perform tasks beyond the training data. IBM defines Generative AI as deep-learning models that process raw data such as the entirety of Wikipedia and then generate outputs based on statistical probability when it is prompted.

Generative AI, at its core, draws from their training data to create new work that is similar but not identical to the trained data. Generative AI refers to deep-learning models that can take raw data such as documents or a website and “learn” to generate statistically probable outputs when prompted. These generative models draw from their training data to create work that is similar but not identical to original data.

One example we can dive into is ChatGPT, which is utilized in the sales industry. ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool (NLP) that uses AI to enable conversations with a chatbot. The language model excels at reading and summarizing information as well as creating content or text based on given instructions such as writing an email in a professional manner. Users can give a prompt or an instruction to ChatGPT and it will be able to provide an answer or information that it has never been taught. It uses the training data and generates outputs that are similar to how it was trained. By providing a more specific and detailed prompt, ChatGPT will be able to perform the requested task with high precision.

How is AI changing the dynamic of the sales industry?

Currently, one of most commonly used models in the sales industry is Large Language Models (LLM), which includes ChatGPT. McKinsey has proven that businesses that invest in AI have greatly increased the revenue by 3 to 15 percent and a sales return on investment by 10 to 20 percent. It is suggested that sales professionals that have utilized AI tools have increased leads and appointments by about 50%, which is a significant amount.

Customer service is a large part of the sales industry and has a lot of intricacies as every customer inquiry is unique and different. By using technology, specifically AI and ChatGPT, businesses can create their own customized AI sales which can utilize LLMs to answer customer inquiries. These powerful tools ensure the information provided is highly accurate and further improve customer experience.

Currently, Gartner predicts that about 70% of customer experiences in the next 3 years will adopt some form of machine learning, which is a subset of Artificial Intelligence. Businesses that want to stay on top would have to consider how to further improve their customer experience using AI.

Businesses can consider buying package solutions that can be further customized based on their own needs. For example, chatalog, an omnichannel CRM system, has implemented ChatGPT into their product. By implementing ChatGPT, it aims to provide businesses with a comprehensive digital marketing solution. chatalog’s ChatGPT allows businesses to upload business documents such as product catalog or certain policies, so that ChatGPT learns from these documents particularly and can only answer based on the documents provided by the businesses. This allows businesses to have a highly accurate, 24/7, customized AI salesperson.

What can AI do for sales? Why use AI in sales?

Gartner predicts that based on the current trend, one out of 10 agent interaction will be automated by 2026 by utilizing AI. The use of AI has several advantages: reducing inconsistency and inaccuracy, highly personalized answers leading to better customer service, reducing cost and dynamic customer targeting and segmentation.

Reducing inconsistency and inaccuracy

One of the main benefits of using AI sales and ChatGPT is its ability to provide highly accurate answers by providing the correct and specific prompt. Businesses can implement ChatGPT and AI into sales, utilizing LLMs to process customer inquiries and reply given trained information. By using ChatGPT, a powerful AI tool, instead of manual reply, this would greatly reduce any chance of human error.

Although ChatGPT is a powerful tool, if the user does not understand the extent of the tool, they can’t utilize it efficiently. For example, ChatGPT requires very specific prompts in order to provide the most accurate information. It also has hallucination where it does not have any information on the question you have asked but will randomly generate a believable reply.

Therefore, it should be noted that businesses should use ChatGPT tools that are fine-tuned based on the context of their company. Through providing sufficient data and appropriate training, companies can then use ChatGPT as their frontline for sales. ChatGPT tools such as chatalog can allow businesses to upload their own documents and ChatGPT AI sales will only answer questions based on the documents provided. Thus, ensuring high accuracy and preventing any case of hallucination as suggested above, effectively reducing any inconsistency and inaccuracy.

Personalization

Personalization is key in the sales industry as supported by McKinsey. The more personalized the customer service, the better the customer experience. This is vital to any business as it would lead to a higher chance of getting leads and increase customer stickiness. Customer stickiness refers to how likely the customer would return and purchase a product or service from the business again. It has been suggested by sources that a better customer experience would lead to an increase in revenue by 84%, customer loyalty by 92% and save cost by 79%.

AI sales come into play as AI combined with company-specific data will ensure customers obtain informative insights. Whenever a customer inquires about a product or service, the AI sales can create a hyper-personalized response in accordance to the specific request of the customer. It also makes tailored suggestions to customers which would increase higher engagement and subsequently conversation rates.

Reduce Cost

Lastly, the use of AI in the sales industry can greatly reduce cost. By creating AI sales, there will be less demand for training new salespeople while having a virtual sales assistant that can function 24/7. Companies that have started using AI in sales also reduced cost by 40 to 60 percent while increasing leads by 50%, showcasing how these AI tools can not only generate new leads and revenue but reduce existing cost.

Dynamic customer targeting and segmentation

Manually creating customer segments is time consuming and often inaccurate. However, by utilizing AI, technology can help identify different customer segmentations and even help you label the customers for future follow-up. AI is able to identify based on looking at each customer at multiple dimensions and traits in order to come up with the most appropriate customer segmentation. Marketing and salespersons can use the customer segmentation provided by AI and further identify sources of income as well as sending promotional messages to correct groups of customers.

chatalog, an Omni-channel customer relationship management (CRM) system, allows businesses to communicate with customers from different social media on one stop. chatalog with its latest ChatGPT functionalities, enable businesses to have a virtual AI salesperson as well as automed customer segmentation. Coupled with broadcasting functions, users can then easily send promotional messages to relevant customer segments from multiple channels such as Facebook, Instagram, WeChat and many more.

chatalog - omni-channel 24/7 AI chatbot solution

chatalog allows businesses to utilize ChatGPT and provide it with their own company website or documents. The ChatGPT will be then used in customer inquiries, allowing customers to ask the AI sales questions about products or any inquiries, the ChatGPT will respond solely based on the information provided by businesses. Thus, ensuring accuracy and providing a hyper-personalized response to every customer.

chatalog also has tailored customer segmentation which would allow AI to label customers based on specific traits. Combined with chatalog’s broadcast function, you will be able to schedule and send the AI-generated message to specific customers chosen via customer labels, allowing merchants to save time and cost, and expand business more effectively.

In additional to the features above, chatalog also allows you to manage multiple communication platforms at one stop, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, IG Direct, etc.

If you want leads generation, automated marketing campaigns, or an advanced customer relationship management system, chatalog has the solution for you. Click here to sign up for a 7-day free trial.

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