Should I use ChatGPT for my business?
ChatGPT is a hot topic at the moment. Businesses are considering whether it could make their lives easier. And skilled content creators are wondering if they’re about to be replaced by a bot. We’ve noticed that savvy business users are weighing up the pros and cons, working out where ChatGPT is the right solution and identifying where a real person will do a better job.
Let’s take a closer look.
What are the advantages of ChatGPT for a UK business?
ChatGPT is a chat bot, meaning it can appear in the bottom right hand corner of a web browser and interact with you. But it can do a lot more than that. It can create content like blogs and newsletters. It can reply to queries, and because it’s a machine, it can do it faster than a human customer service assistant can.
It beats an FAQ page hands down, because it can learn the language of real people. It can respond to whatever question it is asked. If you’ve ever attempted to search an FAQ page for an answer, you’ll have seen this in action and you’ll know what an advantage AI can be.
ChatGPT is fast. People can only work so fast, and ChatGPT might be a solution if work is piling up or there’s a tight deadline.
If cost is a real issue for you, it’s worth remembering that a subscription to ChatGPT or similar is going to be cheaper upfront than paying people to deliver your customer service for you. These are savings you could pass onto your clients and customers – very welcome in these times of rising prices.
What are the disadvantages of ChatGPT for a UK business?
Just because AI can do something, it doesn’t mean it should. There are many human interactions, in person, on the phone and online, that are irreplaceable.
For example, our telephone answering team will tell you how much they infer from the caller’s tone, and how quickly they adapt their service according to how it unfolds. Usually, the interaction is straightforward. But sometimes, a caller is vague when others would be brisk. Sometimes, a caller is upset when there’s nothing obvious to be upset about. When this happens, a compassionate person will break from the conventional “script” and support the caller to get what they need from the call. A chat bot can’t do that. It can only offer the most basic service, the like of which Get Ahead is not prepared to offer.
AI blogging is a service offered by ChatGPT but one which raised a lot of concerns among Get Ahead copywriters. We’ve tried it and we felt it missed the mark.
This is how it works. When you give a title to a blogging bot, it trawls the internet for information on the subject and regurgitates it into five-hundred words of smooth prose. On a superficial level, the results sound plausible. But when you read it properly and ask yourself what the blog might achieve, you might notice that it doesn’t actually do anything. It can’t write in your particular tone of voice, for example. Calls to action pose problems too – how does it know what action you want readers to take next? And there’s no point blogging if everyone else has already said it. Presumably, you wanted to blog because you had something new to say. Unfortunately, the blog bot is incapable of saying anything new: it can only repeat what is already published online.
Looking ahead, AI experts have noticed that machine learning is on track to stagnate unless human beings take responsibility for more online content. ChatGPT learns from what it reads online, but if no new, human-generated information arrives on the internet, the bot can’t develop and provide the service it was created for. You can read more on this here.
Get Ahead and artificial intelligence
At Get Ahead, we’re all about making life easier and winning back time. For that reason, we do use some AI for our own business and to support our clients. In fact, we’ve just saved this file because Microsoft gave us a little reminder!
Many of the systems we set up for our clients involve elements of AI – support we’re happy to provide. We research and set up social media scheduling, project management and finance software to make our clients’ lives easier. We can even help you set up ChatGPT.
But we also know the importance of keeping AI in its place. It’s a good servant but a bad master. AI is great where people aren’t, like working at super-human speed and not getting emotionally involved. However, it’s vital to remember that AI doesn’t work for everything. It can’t fully replace human interaction. ChatGPT can assist with content writing, but the real work has to come from a real person with a message to share. A chat bot can interact on a basic level, but without human backup, it won’t win prizes for customer service.
Set up ChatGPT for your business – outsource to Get Ahead
If you need help setting up AI to support you in your business, we’re here to help. And if you need real people who’ll put their hearts and souls into their work, delivering content and service as unique as your business, we can do that too. Get in touch to find out more.