It's clear that AI is changing the digital landscape and shifting workflows for organizations. But when thinking about what AI can do, many people's immediate first thought is to use AI to answer questions. (For example, "How do I change a tire?" or "When's the best time to go to Italy?")
Question-answering will always be an important use case for AI. But it can be used for so much more — especially given recent advancements of generative AI. It's capable of reasoning and making decisions, as well as building things and accomplishing tasks. As a result, we've seen a recent surge in "copilot" technology, where AI assistants help users accelerate their workflows through simple text prompting.
Github was the trailblazer in this space: in October 2021, they introduced Github Copilot, which can turn natural language prompts into coding suggestions. Since then, we've seen many similar types of "copilots'' and AI assistants. This includes Google's announcement of their own suite of Workspace tools with Duet AI — which helps everyday users write emails, generate new images for a presentation, create project trackers, and more.
All marketers have the opportunity to leverage this generative technology to save time in their organizations. Relying on teams to accomplish every single task is expensive and unrealistic: in many cases, work just doesn't get done because there aren't enough people to handle all the complex digital touchpoints a business needs to manage.
But now, marketers have the opportunity to be scrappier, and get more done with less. Some tasks that have taken brain power and tedious problem-solving can be swiftly taken off your plate by AI-driven workflow tools.
Here are some ways businesses are starting to rely on AI-driven workflow tools to save time and money:
1. Using content generation to create new content. Content generation features can help you leverage existing copy to generate new copy — allowing you to create bios, social posts, blog posts, and much more in seconds. This helps you scale content creation (a must in a digital world where marketers know "content is king.")
Read more about what content generation can do for your business here.
2. Generating page layouts or UX components. With very little prompting, an AI-powered creative assistant is now capable of helping you build attractive and engaging page layouts. You can build beautiful pages faster — and collaborate better with technical members of your organization.
Read more about how we do this at Yext with our creative tool, Studio.
3. Using a conversational setup wizard to build online experiences faster. By giving prompts to an AI-powered "setup wizard," you can "build" a search engine, webpage, or chatbot by simply adding a few personalized inputs. It's a conversational tool that asks you for basic information – i.e. What content do you want to surface; what tone do you want your bot to use — and takes these text instructions into account to build the experience for you. This can be a great asset for non-technical users.
4. Replying to reviews using content generation. LLMs like ChatGPT aren't ready to take over replying to reviews entirely. (For one, LLM technology does not have access to real-time information about your products, services, or specific customer interactions.) Instead, you should use generative AI (content generation) to draw on your business information to create first drafts of review responses.
Curious? Learn more about content generation and scaling your review response here.
5. Requesting auto-generated schedules and timelines based on an individual's availability or project requirements. (For example: software now exists that can propose a timeline of steps with target completion dates for a project – or a calendar-based solution that proposes times and places for coworkers to meet.)
It's challenging to keep up with the number of online experiences customers now expect. From review management, to designing great web pages, to publishing great content, AI is now able to assist.
To keep up with customers expectations without breaking the bank, all businesses should start exploring how they can leverage to save time and streamline workflows.
Learn more about concrete business use cases for AI with our guide.
