The Impact of ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence on Marketing and Customer Service

Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT3, the conversational chatbot developed by OpenAI, already totaled 304 million visits in December. Why this tidal wave, when there were already many applications using artificial intelligence (AI), such as 'Beatoven' to create royalty-free music, 'Flair' to generate photo shoots of your products or 'Looka' a to imagine brand names and logos and many more?

It is that with ChatGPT, the possibilities are so numerous that they affect all populations. Based on cognitive technologies, ChatGPT is able to write marketing catchphrases, university dissertations or journalistic articles, to code, to explain complex notions in a simple way, to summarize or translate texts, to write poems in alexandrines , etc.

Easy to use, free, it revealed to everyone the progress made in the field of artificial intelligence. And this is certainly only the beginning. Advances in data processing and computation make it possible to process ever larger volumes of data, thus feeding AI algorithms in a significant way. Progress in AI is therefore not linear, but exponential.

The current version of ChatGPT is constantly being improved by its creators and thanks to user feedback. A paid plan - ChatGPT Plus - was officially launched on February 2, 2023, giving the right to unlimited answers, continuous availability, as well as APIs allowing the development of own tools in-house. This pro version, offered at $20 per month, is also fine-tuned for specific use cases such as customer service, e-commerce and financial services.

Also, ChatGPT4 was just launched in 2023 and insiders predict it will be noticeably more powerful than the current version.

Powerful tools that will impact the functioning of the world of work

Artificial intelligence as a new assistant

The world of work is constantly evolving, adapting to technological revolutions as well as to societal changes. ChatGPT will be no exception.

In New York, the tech-marketing agency Codeword has “hired” two AIs, which have given themselves a name and a face thanks to the Dall-E 2 image generator. work on graphic designs, conduct research and produce editorial content. Codeword will use these "AI interns" to support its writing and design teams, and in return, the interns will share their experiences on the company's blog and on social media. "It's an opportunity to streamline internal processes by eliminating necessary, but mind-numbing and time-consuming tasks - or at least hand them over to unemotional interns who can't get bored," says Terrence Doyle, Editor-in-Chief. from Codeword.
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Of course, human work is necessary to verify and improve the results proposed by the AIs, but the preliminary work is thus carried out with a saving of time, and free of charge.

ChatGPT's skills will change the daily lives of different professions: translators, writers, advertisers, lawyers, programmers, customer service managers, analysts, etc. The transformation is likely to take place gradually and it should mainly concern the work carried out by entry-level positions.

It should be understood that ChatGPT is not real intelligence in the human sense of the word. It is an extraordinarily powerful prediction machine, but one that lacks critical thinking and sensitivity. The previous generation of machines were trained to perform programmed actions and were therefore perfectly predictable. This new generation implements internal “reasoning” and is based on prediction laws: it has the particularity of being fallible. The alliance of AI with human intelligence is therefore essential.

A revolution of existing IT tools, led by Microsoft

Already an OpenAI investor since 2019, Microsoft announced on January 23, 2023 that it had entered into a multi-year multi-billion dollar partnership with the company. Its objective is to integrate AI into Microsoft tools such as its Bing search engine or the Microsoft 365 suite: automatic emails in Outlook, meeting minutes in Word, chatbot integrated into Teams, complex use of Excel, etc.

The competition is in full swing: new AI tools for the general public will see the light of day, but also products dedicated to B2B. Several startups have launched similar models: Anthropic, founded by OpenAI alumni, Mid journey and Stability, an open source project supported by Amazon. Google also announced the launch of its own conversational tool: Bard.

A revolution in the various services of the company

Customer service and support

According to a study by Gartner, companies want to use the potential of ChatGPT primarily for customer service and support. Currently, only 1.6% of support interactions are automated using AI. Being able to set up smart virtual support that can respond to customer requests 24/7 with unwavering goodwill in all languages is seen as a priority for the majority of companies surveyed, in order to achieve their organizational goals.

And the new field of possibilities is indeed extraordinary. If it becomes possible to feed the machine with company data (complete company database, history of purchases and communications with customers, product sheets, various tutorials), it will be possible to have conversational agents capable of referencing various documents instantly, providing advisors with a summary of past interactions and suggesting customized automatic responses, etc.

It is already possible to install and configure a ChatGPT chatbot on its site using the OpenAI API. ChatGPT will strengthen customer engagement, thus being able to find answers to their questions directly on their site, without having to open a search engine in parallel. And this corresponds to the expectations of new generations who prefer written communications to calls.

Marketing: towards a revolution in the online advertising sector?

Marketing functions will also be deeply impacted, whether internal teams or marketing agencies. Indeed, the current version of ChatGPT can already be used to generate and optimize personalized content for the web and social networks, to do SEO (keywords, backlinks, content, site and voice search optimization), 'AB testing, analysis of web traffic and user behavior as well as customer feedback, etc. Used well, ChatGPT should allow more time to be spent on creation and strategy.

But the impact may turn out to be much greater in the medium term. Indeed, used as a search engine, ChatGPT offers a single answer to its user, instead of having to scan many more or less well referenced links. By improving, it is likely that AI will profoundly change our use of search engines. However, Google's business model is built on the incentive to click on links, ideally ads (Google Ads represented $208 billion in revenue in 2021). It is possible that digital marketing will have to evolve to adapt to new algorithms including artificial intelligence dedicated to this field.

Tools for all sectors of activity: DSI, human resources, audit, etc.

Help the IT engineers of the DSI to connect APIs or to program small applications, write sharp job descriptions in a few minutes for the HR department, scan and analyze data to meet audit obligations, organize team agendas commercial: the possibilities of using artificial intelligence within the company are already multiple.

How to react to ChatGPT?

Preparing for the generalization of tools based on AI APIs

What ChatGPT and all other AI-based tools reveal is that data is the lifeblood of a business. Skills in this sector will become essential and the possession of quality content will help make the difference. Startups like Draft & Goal have already developed tools to detect, with some leeway, whether content was created by ChatGPT. OpenAI itself is working on a way to tag texts generated by ChatGPT.

Performing an audit of your company's data, preparing and cleaning it in order to have a sound knowledge base to exploit is essential to be able to fully exploit this new generation of tools.

The reflections of the decision-makers must also include reflections on the ethical and legal questions (GDPR, ownership of the data used and produced, etc.) which will probably impact the legislation and the methods of use of these new tools.

Learn about the possible uses of these tools

To study the potential impact of ChatGPT on their business model, decision makers should take an interest in the subject and carry out tests within their company.

At first, it may be interesting to list the tasks performed by the different teams on a daily basis in order to try to carry out some of them with ChatGPT and see if it is possible to improve productivity. Many feedbacks are available online, as well as ideas for prompts.

A computer watch can also make it possible to be kept informed of new tools created daily. It is already possible to add ChatGPT answers to its search engine, to write a question and receive the corresponding SQL query or to find help to make a decision.

The arrival of new AI-based tools like ChatGPT is a reality that must be taken into account, otherwise it will be overtaken by its competitors. Rather than considering it as a threat, it is possible to ask the question upside down: what are the tasks that it is desirable to delegate to AI?

For example, doctors and nurses spend between 40 and 60% of their working hours on administrative tasks. If the use of artificial intelligence allows caregivers to spend up to twice as much time with their patients, it is a real improvement.

It's up to each of us to turn ChatGPT and AI into an opportunity, keeping the human at the heart of the model. The best way to do this is, as said above, to test the different ways of using it, by learning its strengths and weaknesses and by putting it at the service of positive transformations.

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