AI is opening up new opportunities for businesses to boost customer and employee engagement, streamline processes and extract value from data. However, businesses that do not adopt a responsible and supervised approach to this emerging technology risk the growth this rapidly-evolving technology can deliver.
New Australian research from phone and communication platform Aircall revealed while small to medium businesses were more ready than 12 months ago to implement AI, employees’ general enthusiasm was tempered by concerns over the impact of AI on their roles.
Conducted across 500 employees of small to medium businesses across Australia, the research reveals this sector’s investment in AI is poised to ramp up dramatically over the next 12 months. While 13% of respondents said their business was already investing in AI, a further 25% said their business planned an investment in the next 12 months.
Yet amid concern over the maturity of generative AI and the impact of AI on jobs and business models, employees are concerned about hasty and ill-considered adoption plans. Nearly half (46%) of the employees surveyed expressed concern their business was moving too quickly into AI.
Well over half (58%) believed their employer did not have the proper structure for AI implementation, while an even higher percentage (62%) were concerned about their businesses’ ability to properly integrate AI into their operations.
Creating a healthy framework for the use of AI
“Despite a certain enthusiasm for AI, its use raises legitimate concerns among employees,” said Fred Viet, VP of NA and APAC, Aircall. “At Aircall, we see our role being to accompany our customers and their employees through the transformative impacts of AI and help them create a healthy framework that ensures the responsible and carefully managed use of this technology. Implemented and used correctly, AI enables employees to realise their full working potential.”
Aircall believes the framework should help businesses:
- Set AI objectives and understand what you hope to achieve. This will help you remain focused and ensure the features you end up with will solve your specific challenges.
- Ensure AI integrates with your business’s existing technology stack, including phone, helpdesk and customer relationship management system
- Prioritise training for internal staff to drive increased confidence in using AI effectively and safely
- Embrace experimentation with new features as they are released, and
- Measure and optimise AI to maximise collaboration and drive success
According to the research, only 22% of employees said their businesses had no plans to invest in AI, with the primary reasons cited being budget constraints, understanding the value AI could deliver and the complexity of AI technologies. Of this group, 25% felt their business did not have enough expertise in AI and the same percentage cited a lack of appetite for AI across their organisation.
The Aircall survey revealed just over half (55%) of respondents understood AI in general and its potential benefits for their businesses, showcasing the opportunity for early adopters of AI in this sector.
Driving improved employee experience by automating mundane processes
Four-fifths (81%) of respondents believe AI will deliver value in automating processes, addressing the manual and repetitive tasks viewed as a key challenge by 62% of respondents.
Coaching and upskilling is viewed as another area AI can positively impact, with 62% of respondents believing it can deliver value in this area.
However, employees were cautious about the rigour and quality of AI’s contribution to their professional performance, with 63% of respondents agreeing lack of human input would impact the quality of their work.
Enhancing productivity and paving the way for better work-life balance
“We believe customers should access an AI that gains efficiency and eliminates repetitive tasks with the ultimate goal being to improve the end-user experience,” explained Frank Eagleton, Director of Partnerships APAC, Aircall.. “Starting with tasks such as call transcription can help an organisation adopt AI in a disciplined fashion that eschews a more likely to fail ‘big bang’ approach.”
The research reveals support for transcription and associated activities is a key win for AI at many small to medium businesses. Eighty one percent of respondents agreed phone calls were essential to their work and of that group, nearly three-quarters (71%) believed they could improve the value of calls by transcribing and recording them for future use, such as to uncover insights or for training purposes.
With more than half of respondents spending between one and four hours per week transcribing meeting notes, the benefits of automating and applying intelligence to this task are easily identifiable. More than one quarter (28%) of respondents said AI could save up to 25% of the time they spent listening to calls or rewatching videos, while 40% felt AI could save up to 10% of their time listening to voicemails.
The benefits of AI for small to medium businesses will extend well beyond relieving employees of mundane tasks. While spending less time on administrative tasks is the top benefit respondents hope to unlock with the power of AI (nominated by 45% of respondents), better work-life balance (40%) and better training, onboarding and upskilling (35%) are close behind.
In addition, in the longer term, richer use cases for small to medium businesses are likely to emerge in using AI to maximise the value of data. Seventy percent of respondents believed AI could help uncover business insights and surface data relevant to their businesses.
Aircall developed the Australian findings from its global report, The AI Index: Understanding Small and Medium-Sized Business Sentiment Toward AI, which surveyed more than 3,500 employees at small to medium sized businesses for their views on AI.
Despite being concerned about AI implementation, employees of small to medium businesses in Australia generally have high hopes that AI can deliver value across a range of areas, including process automation, in-depth business insights and data analytics.
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