What is ChatGPT and how is it useful to businesses?

ChatGPT is an AI-based text generation tool. Users input a prompt, and the tool creates text from the question or statement you’ve provided. 

ChatGPT scrapes language data from relevant online sources, such as blogs and newspapers, and collates it in the form of readable text. This makes it particularly useful for businesses that deal with large amounts of written content, such as blog posts, or product newsletters. 

It’s a language learning AI tool, rather than a knowledge tool, meaning that it ‘learns’ language styles from different available data. This entails that sometimes ChatGPT may get some information wrong. Proofreading any information that it provides is a good idea at this point to ensure that it is factually correct. 

Aside from these more obvious uses of ChatGPT, the tool can also be used to help recommend customers’ products, or to provide personalised customer support in the form of chatbots. We’ll explore a few ideas on how to use ChatGPT for business below.

Using ChatGPT to build chatbots

Businesses often use chatbots in order to provide their customers with technical support or other advice. While they might employ someone to respond to each customer individually, they may be able to use chatbots powered by ChatGPT as well as or rather than using a person to respond to each query. 

While businesses still may want to choose the option of speaking to a person, this can potentially save time and money when handling large volumes of customer questions. It’s especially helpful if many customer questions are similar, and only therefore need a generic response to their enquiry.

How to build a chatbot using ChatGPT

Creating a chatbot using ChatGPT is somewhat more complex than simply inputting a prompt. You’ll need to be able to use the ChatGPT API functionality, as well as have some knowledge of Python and coding. Once you have built a chatbot, you can embed it into your website for customers to use.

Using ChatGPT for chatbot speech synthesis

You can make your chatbots more lifelike and engaging with the help of chatbot speech synthesis. This can also make your chatbots more accessible to users who are visually impaired or dyslexic and benefit from having text read out loud to them. You can similarly use speech synthesis to make user instructions more accessible.

Using ChatGPT to analyse customer tone of voice

You can also use ChatGPT to analyse customer tone in their feedback or enquiries. This is useful if you want to gain insight into how satisfied your customers are with a particular service or product. To analyse tone using ChatGPT, just feed in any feedback alongside a prompt such as:

• ‘Analyse tone of [text].’

By analysing this text, ChatGPT can tell you whether the sentiment was negative, whether the customer is likely to return again, their level of trust in your company, how happy they were with your service, and whether the customer is seeking to provide constructive feedback. 

The tool therefore provides a detailed breakdown of a customer’s response. You can use this to better improve your product or service.

Is using customer data compliant with UK GDPR?

It is important to follow UK data privacy regulations and compliance when using customer data for research purposes. According to  Harper James, it’s currently uncertain whether ChatGPT complies with UK GDPR regulations. Businesses therefore benefit from remaining vigilant regarding any future updates from the UK government on this point. 

Using ChatGPT for recruiting

Recruiters can use ChatGPT in order to better phrase job descriptions and job advertisements. They can also use the tool to research keywords in order to attract the right candidates to the job, therefore making advertisements more competitive. 

You can also use ChatGPT prompts in order to create lists of relevant interview questions. This can save valuable time during the earlier stages of the recruitment process. Consider prompts like:

• ‘Create 10 competency interview questions for a customer assistant job’
• ‘Interview questions for a receptionist’
• ‘Behavioural interview questions for a management role’

Even if you include a very specific type of role in the prompt, ChatGPT is able to provide relevant questions and interview structure. It does this by gathering data on the competencies and responsibilities required for the role, as well as any relevant available data on past interview questions. 

With this in mind, however, it’s important to remember that your recruitment process benefits from having a human element. This means that ChatGPT can’t fully replace your human resources or recruitment team. They will likely always have an important role to play in selecting the right candidates or ensuring that job descriptions come across in an exciting, personable way reflecting the culture of your business. 

ChatGPT as an AI personal assistant

You can use ChatGPT to organise information, create lists, and plans for events. In this way, it can work as a form of AI personal assistant. While you may still need to proofread any plans that the tool creates, this can help speed up the process of organising tasks. This is particularly useful for SMB owners who do not necessarily have their own personal assistant and have to organise the majority of these tasks. Generic prompts that can help you organise your business include:

• ‘Create a list based on the following information: [x]’
• ‘Structure a meeting based around [x]’
• ‘Organise the following information by time and date: [x].’

What are some considerations for businesses when using ChatGPT?

As mentioned previously, because ChatGPT is a language generation tool rather than a true search engine or knowledge generation tool, it may provide content that is factually incorrect. While this may change in the future, this means that it is a good idea to proofread any generated text that it provides. 

AI is not a replacement for the human element of your business

AI tools are not a straightforward replacement for human staff, either. Customers will most likely want to deal with a friendly face and will feel more connected to your business if there’s a human on the other end of the line, helping them deal with their enquiries. 

While using AI chatbots may be useful in dealing with generic questions, your customers are more likely to trust your business and return if they feel that there’s always someone there to help. 

ChatGPT is a new tool and is experimental

As ChatGPT and language model AI tools are fairly new in terms of their availability to the public, we don’t know yet how effective they will be over time. Although it is tempting to embrace the technology and use it to speed up your workflows, it may be damaging long-term to your business to replace staff or all of your processes with AI tools. A good way to approach these tools is through trial and error, seeing what works best for your business on an incremental basis. 

ChatGPT is a good tool for businesses looking to save time and money on various different processes. It can be used to write content for websites, job descriptions, organise lists and to build customer service chatbots. This is useful for SMB owners with small teams, who can then delegate more urgent and less repetitive tasks to their employees. However, it’s worth bearing in mind some of the weaknesses of using ChatGPT and similar AI tools, as they may not always provide reliable content.