AI Assimilation: Resistance is futile…or is it?

by Mike McBride | Aug 29, 2023 | Blog, Business, Chat, Marketing

AI Assimilation: Resistance is futile…or is it?

Mike McBride

The Cowbell Agency

Okay…maybe not resistance but definitely prudence. AI tools like ChatGPT are game-changing because of its ability to generate human-like text and process natural language. While it offers a myriad of benefits that businesses can leverage to create content, companies should not blindly jump into this evolving technology before understanding its limitations and pitfalls.

It is true that using AI-generated content, companies can potentially save time by cutting corners on the content creation processes. But exactly how much time is then invested in proofing, researching and cross-referencing the content to validate what has been extracted from random sources across the web and reimagined by artificial intelligence? And what are the legal and ethical lines being crossed here?These and other AI downsides and challenges need to be considered before allowing yourself to be assimilated. One important consideration with using AI is maintaining your brand voice. It’s important to tailor and customize the AI-generated content for your audience, as it relates to your brand. This way customers still get to experience that personal customized touch, and businesses can still enjoy time-saving content creation.

The following section was created with the help of ChatGpt…but can you tell if the claims are valid or simply pulled from misinformation that is generated daily on the truth-challenged World Wide Web.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses constantly seek innovative ways to stay ahead of the competition and engage their audience effectively.

Let’s consider 3 major benefits of using such technology.

Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity – Creating compelling content requires considerable time and effort. With ChatGPT, businesses can streamline content creation processes, reducing the time spent brainstorming ideas, researching topics, and crafting copy. The AI-generated content can act as a valuable starting point for writers and marketers, enabling them to focus on refining and customizing the output to suit specific brand requirements. This improved efficiency translates into cost savings and higher productivity for businesses.
Quick Idea Generation – Staying creative and continuously generating fresh content ideas is a challenge for any marketing team. ChatGPT becomes a powerful ally in brainstorming sessions, providing an endless source of ideas and concepts. Marketers or business owners looking for ideas can prompt the AI with specific topics or questions to receive unique perspectives and novel angles, sparking inspiration for their content strategies.
Consistent Brand Voice – Maintaining a consistent brand voice across various communication channels is crucial for brand identity and recognition. ChatGPT can be trained to match a company’s specific tone, style, and language preferences. This ensures that the AI-generated content aligns seamlessly with the brand’s image, delivering a consistent experience to the audience, whether it’s a social media post, email newsletter, or website content.

Without a doubt, AI platforms like ChatGpt unlock their creative potential, enhance efficiency, and engage their audience on a deeper level through which companies can streamline content creation processes, personalize interactions, and maintain a consistent brand voice across various channels.

Impressive? While these are some major upsides to utilizing this technology, let’s explore some of the downfalls and challenges that need to be considered.

Lack of Contextual Understanding: ChatGPT processes text based on patterns in the data it was trained on, without a deep understanding of context. This can lead to responses that appear coherent but are factually incorrect or nonsensical in certain situations. Meaning the technology can skim the surface, but cannot go deep in the details which ultimately helps the reader relate specifically to the offering or content.
Bias and Fairness Issues: Language models like ChatGPT can inadvertently perpetuate biases or discriminatory language present in the data used, potentially reinforcing harmful stereotypes and viewpoints.
Inappropriate Content Generation: There is a risk that ChatGPT might generate content that is inappropriate, offensive, or harmful, especially when given certain prompts or when interacting with users who attempt to exploit the model’s weaknesses.
Ethical & Legal Concerns: Users may not be aware that they are interacting with AI, leading to potential deception and manipulation.

Addressing these downsides requires ongoing research, responsible use, and continuous improvements in the technology. As AI technology advances, finding ways to strike a balance between utility and potential risks will remain an important challenge for businesses and society as a whole.

The power of AI is exciting but still in its infancy. So is the eminent regulation and laws that will govern its use. But today, being able to balance AI assistance with human expertise and personal, customized context is essential to maintain authentic brand voice and content.

Topics

Why Chat Rules

by Adam Latham | Apr 7, 2021 | Blog, Business, Chat, Lead Nurturing

Why Chat Rules

Adam Latham
The Cowbell Agency

Why does chat rule? Well, the answer to that question is simple, and it is the same reason why no one over thirty is really considered “cool.”

Ever looked at how the next generation communicates? They’ve got their head in their phones constantly, and they’re chatting.

The generation just before them seemed to live in email. And the divide is getting greater as we become more chat-entrenched. As someone with teenage children or grandchildren if they are more likely to get a response by text than any other form of communication.

Major corporations realized this a long time ago, moving a lot of their customer interaction to chat. And here’s the surprising thing. An automated bot in chat isn’t nearly as annoying as an automated voice system. I don’t know why that is. It just is.

And now, there are finally a whole host of platforms out there that small to midsize companies can implement to both improve their customer relationships and lighten their workload. And the costs are typically less than an expensed lunch a month.

So the question isn’t really “should I be using chat?”, but rather, “what’s the best way to be using chat?”

At Cowbell we’ve looked at a number of easy-to-install plugins for most websites, and here’s what we’ve found.

There are two basic levels: 1) I just want to chat, or 2) I want to actually embrace chat and use it as a competitive advantage.

For those who want to “embrace chat” for all it can deliver, we’ve recently discovered a tool that actually replaces most of your lead nurturing and similar drip campaign platforms. It uses an “omni chat” feature that links your facebook messenger to your website chat. This not only means they can chat to you in an environment they’re familiar with, but they are instantly a lead in your CRM.

You can also configure pre-programmed bots to help your customers quickly get to the information they need without someone on your team having to hold their hand.

Let me make sure we’re completely clear about this. I didn’t mention CRM to scare you away. I’m not talking about having to invest into a holistic software solution for customer relations and lead nurturing. The chat tool itself IS its own CRM.

In other words, once they begin a chat conversation with you, they are converted. They are a lead, and all of their contact information, like name, email address or phone number that they have on Facebook, is now attached to their record in your chat tool.

In the backend, we can develop a whole series of drip campaigns that can run directly through the facebook messenger or through SMS text. In other words you are communicating with your customers in the space they actively communicate throughout their day.

If this sounds too good to be true, it gets even better. Imagine if you will, that you are running an online banner ad campaign and someone is on a mobile device. And, someone then clicks on that ad. What if, instead of going to a landing page, they were launched immediately into a chat session with someone on your team. And, you immediately had all of their contact information and were in your system as a lead. You didn’t have to worry about whether they would find your call-to-action on your landing page. There is no landing page!

In fact, conversions through chat are now as much as 10X greater through landing page or email-based drip campaigns. Why? Because…and some marketing professionals may be afraid to admit this… we have moved past the email-to-landing page-to-contact list paradigm. We are now in the instant mobile chat phase, and those who recognize that first will reap the lion share of benefits.

If you want to learn more about how the different chat platforms work and which one is best for your business needs, contact us at Cowbell, or better yet…why not just chat.