Leveraging Chatgpt for Business

Unleashing Small Business Potential: Leveraging ChatGPT for Growth and Efficiency

In today’s ever-changing technology landscape, small, medium and large businesses face a number of challenges when it comes to growth and efficiency. However advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have opened up new possibilities that are worth taking a look at. One such tool that holds immense potential is chatGPT.  It has gotten all the buzz for the past 6 months.  But please note that there are a number of other tools like Google Bard that have hit the market recently and others are coming soon.  There have been remarkable advances in AI over the last few years fueled by more robust and faster compute power coupled with enormous amounts of data found on the internet setting the stage for a number of AI related solutions.    

ChatGPT is a conversational AI Chatbot tool developed by OpenAI and released in 2022. It allows users to enter prompts to ask questions about almost any topic, write articles, draft emails, generate software code, explain code, and more by responding to the prompts, which are questions entered by users.  There is a free version (GPT-3.5) and a paid version (GPT Plus or GPT-4.0). It is worth noting that while the free version is highly capable, it is trained on data up to Sep 2021; does not have any data after 2021.  Early usage has seen it may become unavailable at times if there is high demand.  The chatGPT plus version is meant to have a wider range of knowledge and better problem solving skills but it comes with a fee of approximately $20/month.  It is also worth noting that the paid version limits the number of questions users can ask each day.

How does ChatGPT work

When users enter prompts, ChatGPT attempts to understand what is being requested and generate the best answer based upon the large amounts of data that it was trained on.  Prompts are entered as if the user was having a text or email conversation with another person.  One of the nice things about ChatGPT is that it remembers prior conversations enabling you to return to a conversation and pick up where you left off. 

Common terminology and definition in artificial intelligence 

Before getting into the benefits of using chatGPT, let’s review definitions of some commonly used terms in AI.  Following is a few key terms that are often used when discussing AI technology. 

  1. AI – Artificial Intelligence – a set of technologies with the goal of mimicking intelligent actions that in the past would require human intelligence. This includes things like learning, problem-solving, perception and decision-making.
  2. Machine Learning – a subset of AI that involves developing algorithms and models that enable computers to learn and make predictions without being programmed 
  3. Deep Learning – a subfield of Machine Learning that involves developing artificial neural networks that attempt to function like the human brain and enable computers to learn and make thoughtful decisions by analyzing large amounts of data.
  4. Natural Language Processing (NLP) – focus on interactions between computers and human language.  Algorithms and models that enable computers to understand, interpret, and generate human like responses
  5. Large Language Models (LLM) – machine learning model that is trained on a large amount of data with the goal of understanding words and predicting the next word in a given sequence of words. It does this by learning the underlying structure and patterns in the text data it has been trained on.
  6. Generative AI – A set of AI technologies that can generate new content, such as images, text, music, or even videos, that resemble and are similar to the data they were trained on, by learning the patterns, structures, and statistical properties of a given dataset and then generate new examples that are consistent with that dataset. 

 

What makes ChatGPT so unique and powerful is that it is a combination of all these technologies.  That includes machine learning, deep learning, large language models, and generative AI. 

ChatGPT benefits for business

  1. Generate Summary – ChatGPT can be effective at generating textual summaries, such as drafting up a report based on meeting notes, summarizing an article
  2. Creating Outlines – ChatGPT can suggest outlines based on the subject you provide. This can help focus ideas on a certain topic and increase efficiency.
  3. Generate SEO friendly Keyword for a topic
  4. Brainstorming – Whether you’re trying to think up a new marketing strategy, looking for various iterations on social media posts, or coming up with SEO-friendly titles — or a whole lot more — ChatGPT can help
  5. Generate customer service emails – ChatGPT can also help automate customer service emails. For instance, it can produce messages that alert customers about known system downtime, upcoming business closures or modified hours for holidays. 
  6. Explaining Difficult Concept – Because the tool has ingested huge amounts of data, it can answer almost any question to some degree, with the exception of current event
  7. Generate interview questions – ChatGPT is set to shake up many industries, especially HR and hiring roles
  8. Helping with Web Development – While ChatGPT is not capable of fully replacing web developers and designers, it can help generate simple web pages
Leveraging Chatgpt for Business

A daily walk-through thru the eyes of how ChatGPT may be used in daily activities:

There are so many use cases for persons in different roles of all types of business to use ChatGPT on a daily basis.  It will enable them to save time with routine tasks and work more efficiently.   Below are a few key roles that are found in many businesses and will list a number of tasks with opportunities to be done more efficiently using ChatGPT. 

  1. Customer Service Representative 
  2. Digital Marketing / Sales 
  3. IT Programmer 
  4. Operations Manager   

 

Customer Service Representative

  • Generate emails 
  • Enhance chatbot to better respond to inquiries in a thoughtful manner and free up staff to do other tasks 
  • Generate content for surveys to access customer satisfaction
  • Summarize meeting notes and display key points and make a list of action items

 

Digital Marketing / Sales

  • Generate emails 
  • Research topics 
  • Generating content for social media posts
  • Generate Blog 
  • Generate a Presentation draft for a presentation to leadership team
  • Summarize meeting notes
  • Generate Excel functions for a complex spreadsheet to display effectiveness of marketing campaign
  • Analyze data to identify trends and patterns. This information can be used to make better decisions about the company’s marketing campaigns
  • Generate additional content for website 
  • Conducting market research 
  • Summarize meeting notes and display key points and make a list of action items

 

IT Programmer 

  • Generate emails 
  • Generate Code
  • Explain Code
  • Generate Agile Project Plan draft
  • Develop Draft Communication Plan
  • Generate SQL Queries 
  • Generate Draft of Presentation about Project to Marketing Project
  • Generate Draft of Python and technology for your child’s 5th grade class
  • Generate a list of interview questions for a new programmer that you have to interview 
  • Generate dummy data to test new code that was developed 
  • Generate a learning plan for 
  • Summarize meeting notes and display key points and make a list of action items

 

Operations Manager

  • Summarize long articles on industry topics to show key points
  • Summarize meeting notes and display key points and make a list of action items
  • Generate or Brainstorm ideas for improving business workflow 
  • Generate Draft of Presentation to leadership team on Bottlenecks in the current process 
  • Generate emails 
  • Generate Excel functions for a complex spreadsheet to display opportunities for improvements.  Can also include functions to automatically update spreadsheets triggered by changes in external data.
  • Compile data on current trends and common issues for various departments in the organization
  • Generate draft of referral program 
Leveraging Chatgpt for Business

Tips for effectively using ChatGPT for your business

  1. Fact-check – Not all information is accurate.  Always validate information from other sources.
  2. Proofread – Can make errors. 
  3. Plagiarism – Avoid using chatGPT to generate an entire article.  Some of the information generated could be copyrighted information.  Please act accordingly
  4. Protecting Secrets – Never enter sensitive information.  Cannot guarantee the future usage.  This includes company trademark. 

Tips in writing prompts to get better results in ChatGPT

Prompts are how inquiries are phrased.  In other words, how you word questions when you interact with ChatGPT.  Writing effective prompts for ChatGPT can significantly impact the quality of the responses you receive.  In fact, there is part of the AI family of functions that called Prompt Engineering dedicated to wording prompts in manner to get the most effective results.  Here are some tips to help you craft compelling prompts:

  1. Clearly define the context, topic, or desired outcome of the conversation in your prompt. Avoid ambiguity to ensure ChatGPT understands your intent accurately.
  2. Give ChatGPT relevant background information or context to help it understand the specific scenario or task. This helps set the right context for generating appropriate responses.
  3. Pose clear and specific questions to elicit focused responses from ChatGPT. This helps guide the conversation and prompts ChatGPT to provide the information you’re seeking.
  4. If necessary, provide explicit guidelines or constraints for the conversation. For example, you can specify a particular persona, tone, or style for ChatGPT to adopt in its responses. Please review zero-shot, one-shot or few-shot learning to learn more. 
  5. If you have a complex question or task, consider breaking it down into smaller, more manageable parts. This allows ChatGPT to address each component separately and provide more accurate responses.
  6. Incorporate examples or scenarios to illustrate the context or desired behavior. This helps ChatGPT better understand the expectations and generate more relevant responses.

 

It may take some trial and error to fine-tune your prompts and achieve the desired results. Experimentation, monitoring, and iteration are key to optimizing the quality of responses from ChatGPT. To learn more about prompting, I would recommend the following free course https://learnprompting.org/docs/intro.

 

ChatGPT Pros and Cons

When incorporating chatGPT into your business operations, it is crucial to take into account the pros and cons to know how to devise strategies that address and minimize any limitations or challenges that may arise. Moreover, businesses should stay updated on the latest advancements in the field of AI and adopt best practices to optimize the benefits of AI while mitigating its drawbacks effectively.

Pros

  • Natural Language Understanding: ChatGPT imitates human conversation. The core feature of ChatGPT centers on providing human-like conversation based on user-placed queries or prompts.  It is generally similar to virtual assistant technologies and software applications such as Siri from Apple and Alexa from Amazon.
  • Time-saving – it automates various tasks and helps users get data quickly. For instance, research, writing code, generating written content, summarizing articles. 
  • Great for learning – It can help hone your skills. Aside from asking various questions, you can ask to check your grammar and sentence structure, analyze responses and compare it with your text
  • Improve content quality – Many writers who lack some qualities can perfectly utilize this tool to make their content more impressive and profitable.

Cons

  • Inaccuracies and Ambiguities – it sometimes tends to produce texts that sound plausible or convincing but are incorrect or nonsensical under the surface.  There was a recent case where lawyers used the platform and did not confirm the results and it generated case law that they used to prove their argument that did not exist. 
  • Chat GPT doesn’t satisfy user intent – GPT content usually doesn’t satisfy search intent. This tool is developed to answer users’ queries or provide them with the data they want, not to meet users’ search intent.
  • Limited Knowledge of Recent Events
  • Plagiarism – GPT Plagiarism is another major issue with this tool. In order to stop people from relying on GPT content, many companies have built GPT plagiarism checker tools that analyze the content and find out which sentences are generated by Chat GPT or any other GPT tool. Although their accuracy rate is low, they are still reliable. To avoid this issue, you can use an article rewriter to rephrase the content and remove GPT plagiarism.
  • Ethical Issues and Concerns – Several educational institutions have banned its use. Researchers and creatives have worried about copyright infringement because its outputs are based on human-generated texts.
  • Hallucinations – A response that seems reasonable or correct that is actually incorrect.  It is a response that appears to be made up because it does not seem justified by the training data. 

 

ChatGPT presents a remarkable opportunity for small businesses to unleash their potential by leveraging the power of conversational AI.  By enhancing customer experience, streamlining operations, expanding market reach, and customizing the model to their specific needs, small businesses can achieve growth, efficiency, and a competitive edge.  Embracing ChatGPT as a valuable tool can pave the way for small businesses to thrive in the dynamic and evolving business landscape. 

Remember, as you embark on your ChatGPT journey, it’s important to start small with a specific use case.  Also, consider the ethical use of AI and maintain a human touch in customer interactions. ChatGPT should be seen as a complement to human efforts, enabling small businesses to deliver better experiences while maximizing their growth and efficiency potential.

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Leveraging Chatgpt for Business