If you’re anything like me, you love the convenience offered by recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), but you’re also acutely aware of the negative impacts of its use.
The use of ChatGPT in small business is increasing, which is no surprise given that small business owners have to wear many hats. You can’t just delegate your marketing to your CMO while your CFO handles your finances, instead you’re solely responsible for the many varied aspects of your business, so it makes logical sense that the use of ChatGPT in small business has become commonplace for entrepreneurs globally.
Using ChatGPT in small business offers you the ability to discuss, clarify, draft and seek advice on everything from your business plan, through to your privacy policy. Herein lies the challenge: how reliable is AI in performing these functions? How can you be sure that you’re making the most out of ChatGPT as a small business owner?
Well, let’s start with its limitations, in order to help us understand its strengths…
When NOT to use ChatGPT in Small Business:
Although AI is constantly improving, and capable of performing many tasks, here’s where you should avoid using ChatGPT in Small Business
1. Writing your business information or marketing content
I get it, sitting down and writing boilerplate text can be a tedious, soul destroying chore for an entrepreneur. It distracts you from the seemingly more important work piling up on your to-do list, and proves boring for most. While using AI tools like ChatGPT in small business are certainly capable of creating, drafting or writing your business information, it does so using sophisticated machine-learning algorithms, which are based on the existing data that it’s trained on.
In simple terms, what that means is that you’ll get content not aligned to your brand voice, sounds generic, and is often influenced by how you interact with it. Instead of relying on ChatGPT to generate this writing, my recommendation is to instead restrict its role to helping form a brief overview or structure, and perhaps asking it to proof-read and suggest changes.
2. Creating legal documents
Lawyers can charge a lot of money to draft or review legal documents for your business, so it makes sense that many small business owners appreciate the apparent cost savings of relying on AI for this function, but while it may save a few dollars in the short-term, if you end up facing a legal dispute, it can cost you significantly higher amount than that which you originally saved.
Luckily, there are affordable options like Lawpath, which make it cheaper and simpler for small business owners to get their legal documents sorted. In fact, they have even developed their own AI as a more accurate and reliable alternative to ChatGPT in small business.
3. Handling financial planning or accounting
While using ChatGPT in small business can provide some decent advice, it’s not suited for creating detailed financial plans, giving tax advice, or creating accounting reports. It can often make mistakes in generating outputs, which could land you in trouble if you rely on it.
Always use a trusted bookkeeper or accountant for managing your business’ finance.
4. Customer support
The customer is not always right, but neither is ChatGPT – and two wrong’s don’t make a right!
Remember that AI programs aren’t capable of understanding all of the nuances and details of your customer base, business operations, strategies and situations, so while it can be a useful tool for drafting responses, it’s essential that you read it through and adjust before sending it. It’s this lack of understanding that amounts to one of the biggest limitations for the use of ChatGPT in small business.
5. Decision making
Making decisions in small business can be challenging – especially for sole traders. The necessity to make decisions based on facts and data, rather than personal preference and idealisms, can be daunting. It’s no surprise that many entrepreneurs decide to talk things through with trusted friends & family, and some may also choose to consult AI models like ChatGPT.
AI is quite capable of evaluating information, but it is 100% reliant on the information that you choose to give it, and sensitive to the way in which you frame it. This enhances the risk of falling victim to confirmation bias, and having ChatGPT tell you what you want to hear, rather than what you need to hear.
It can be a good idea to reach out to a business advisor for help with making complex decisions, sometimes an outside perspective can be exceptionally helpful.
When you SHOULD use ChatGPT in Small Business:
If you’ve read through the situations to avoid ChatGPT, you’re probably wondering, “how can small businesses use ChatGPT?” – well, here’s some situations worthy of using ChatGPT in small business!
1. Brainstorming
If you need to brainstorm ideas, ChatGPT is an excellent tool. From generating content ideas for your blog or social media profiles, through to brainstorming business or product ideas, AI can be effective in facilitating this process in a conversational manner, helping get your creative juices flowing.
Remember that you still need to be the creative mind here, the idea is to use ChatGPT as a sounding board, rather than an idea machine.
2. Simplifying technical explanations
If there’s a complex business concept, technology or industry jargon you don’t understand, then ChatGPT can help you to break it down into easy to understand terms, even providing analogies to help you better understand.
Perhaps using ChatGPT in small business could even help us understand corporate jargon like this:
3. Improving team productivity
You can use ChatGPT for business by asking it to to help create task lists, meeting agendas and even project outlines. Always be sure to proof-read though, and don’t share any sensitive business information.
4. Proof-reading and feedback
If you have marketing content, emails, or other text that needs proof-reading, ChatGPT can be a great tool to run it through to ensure that not only the spelling and grammar is correct, but that it makes sense, and would answer the readers question.
There’s no doubt this is one of the most useful ways to use ChatGPT in Small Business.
5. Seeking advice (sometimes…)
When you’re operating with a restricted budget, getting expert advice in multiple areas of business can be a challenge, so using ChatGPT in small business as a tool to get some clear advice and recommendations makes sense, as long as it’s done sensibly, and in moderation.
For example, if you’re wanting to improve your DIY website’s SEO and you can’t afford professional marketing services, ChatGPT can provide some general advice, suggest free tools and software that can help you, and if you send it your website URL, can even access your site and provide some specific recommendations. By contrast, you shouldn’t ask it for things like legal or financial advice, even if you’re broke & desperate!
10 Tips to use ChatGPT Effectively in Small Business
Now that we understand when we should and shouldn’t use ChatGPT in small business, it’s time to provide some tips to ensure you’re using it well!
1. Its responses are only as good as the prompt…
When using ChatGPT, the responses it generates are only as good as the prompt you give it. Look at the following comparison for an example.
Note that in Example 1, the prompt is quite generic. As a result, the response generated is also generic. Sure, it’s not bad advice, but it’s not great either… Conversely, the prompt used in Example 2 provides additional information about the type of business and social media platforms used, and also specifies that the AI should recommend ideas relevant to those factors. The result is a better response, more relevant to that business.
2. Use follow-up questions
Asking follow-up questions can help you clarify its responses, probe for more detail and also prompt more relevant responses as the AI learns from the conversation.
When using ChatGPT in Small Business, asking these additional questions is also a good opportunity to give more info about your business, and perhaps ask it to explain how the concept you’re discussing applies in your circumstance.
3. Use step-by-step instructions
If you’re getting ChatGPT to help with complex tasks, ask it to break the process down into individual steps. This can help ensure clarity, and keeps things simple.
4. Avoid vague prompts
Asking broad questions like “tell me some marketing strategies” will usually result in a generic answer. Instead, be sure to specify what types of marketing strategies you’re interested in, or tell it what goals you have and ask for ideas that may help to achieve them.
5. Request examples
A key to successfully using ChatGPT in Small Business is to ask it to give you examples or analogies to help you understand.
Sometimes, it can be helpful to take inspiration from The Office (US version), and ask it to explain complex business concepts and formulas in the context of a lemonade stand, like in this famous scene:
6. Specify the output format
You can specify how you want ChatGPT to format its responses, such as asking it to create a table, write in bullet points or draft an email. For IT tasks it is also capable of outputting code from various coding languages.
7. Adjust your prompt
If the first response isn’t what you were hoping for, try rewording the prompt to include more detail, or ask it to elaborate more on a specific point. It can also be helpful to give it direct feedback about what you did and didn’t like about its response, and the kind of response you were looking for.
You should keep adjusting and be iterative in refining the response until you’re satisfied with its quality.
8. Specify the tone and style
Getting ChatGPT to output responses in your brand voice is attainable, especially if you use custom GPTs (see tip #10). Try providing it some sample writing in your brand voice, ensuring it has the tone and writing style you need, and ask ChatGPT to try to mirror that style in its response.
9. Tell it to ask you questions
ChatGPT has access to a lot of data, but it doesn’t have access to your thoughts, memories, feelings and ideas. By instructing it to ask you questions that help it better understand your requirements you can drastically improve its responses.
An example prompt might look something like this: “I need you to help me brainstorm some content ideas for social media posts for my car detailing business. I’m a sole-trader, using Facebook & Instragram. Before you suggest ideas, ask me 5 relevant questions that will help you to suggest effective and relevant content ideas”
10. Use a custom-GPT
If you’re a plus user of ChatGPT, and you’ve ever wondered “how to train ChatGPT for your business?” – Congratulations, you can create a custom GPT to serve specific purposes, and train it on your own content, information, guidelines, etc. Just be careful not to upload sensitive business or client information when doing so.
For tips on making a custom GPT, check out this handy tutorial from Zapier or watch the embedded tutorial from Kevin Stratvert below:
Summary
In summary, it can be useful to utilise tools like ChatGPT in Small Business, providing it’s done well. By avoiding common mistakes, improving your prompts and training your own custom GPTs, you can successfully use ChatGPT in Small Business!
Just remember not to share sensitive information, business secrets or client data in the process, and not to rely on ChatGPT in Small Business for professional advice.
