New Study Reveals How Small Businesses Can Benefit Big from GenAI – If They Can Get the Staff to Use It

Small businesses no longer have a binary choice in front of them to use generative AI. The technology can now be found within software packages, to manage small tasks in the background or to be registered directly by employees to take care of busy work.

The spread of GenAI has done little to ease employee fears, according to a new study, “Data Privacy and Productive AI Use,” by Zoho and CRM Essentials. The report surveyed 1,000 US employees working in a variety of industries, company sizes, and job titles to find out how often they used GenAI, its use cases, and, most importantly, how employees felt about sharing personal and company data with GenAI for training purposes. .

The results showed that the fear of GenAI remains among all employees, even if the use of the technology is inevitable or already implemented at the company level. However, by drawing lessons from these results, small businesses can leverage the successful introduction of GenAI within their organization—reducing employee stress and enabling them to focus on the high-quality tasks that are most important to SMBs.

Feelings about GenAI

All employees who were asked on “Data Privacy and Productive AI Use,” not just everyday users, expressed a high level of concern about this technology: 46% said they believe AI is a threat to their work, and 26% said it is a “necessary evil. .” Additionally, 74% of respondents said government legislation is needed to train AI with employee data, and 75% wanted legislation governing IP rights for AI content creation.

However, employees agreed that GenAI provided many benefits, and that trend became more pronounced when data was collected from small businesses with fewer than 100 employees, which comprised 37% of all respondents. First, the use of GenAI is very low among small businesses, as 45% say they do not use GenAI at all, compared to 37% of the general population survey.

Among users, however, a higher percentage, 43%, said that GenAI has increased productivity significantly, compared to 40% of the general population survey. Also, 15% said AI has become “essential” to their work and only 26% are more concerned about data privacy since they started using GenAI.

Data shows that companies of all sizes will benefit greatly from using GenAI once employees better understand how the technology can benefit them. The challenge, then, is for employees to try it themselves, even if they have conditions of not liking it.

Overcoming Doubt

Sales is very important to small businesses, yet many sales teams are often disconnected from business operations, or individual representatives become overwhelmed with administrative tasks and lose sight of bringing in new customers. The situation gets even more complicated when retailers keep their customers and may, understandably, be reluctant to share that data with a larger organization.

Data points to a specific strategy: Small business owners should step back and think about where their company’s data base should reside. For many, a centralized CRM makes a lot of sense, especially when working with remote workers or a team of jack-of-all-trades. When a piece of information is updated within CRM, other employees can receive alerts and be sure that any data they try to access later will be completely up-to-date. This opens up better strategic decisions and an atmosphere of cooperation.

In addition, many CRMs now come with GenAI woven into their fabric. These assistants, like Zoho’s Zia, can handle complex calculations, data analysis and visualizations, next-step recommendations, and automated meeting transcription, leaving sales reps free to conduct research on potential clients or make calls to distressed customers without worrying about falling behind. . They will feel these tangible benefits, when companies can teach them how training GenAI with customer data can improve their output quickly.

This would also be a good time for these companies to emphasize their commitment to data privacy.

Rely on Limitation

Despite the hype, GenAI can’t handle every task under the sun—and, even the ones it can handle tend to make mistakes that only humans can correct.

However, technological imperfections can become a tool to increase adoption. If a small business decided to use GenAI, it could ask its employees to try to break it. Ask them to ask difficult questions, produce impossible results, or perform endlessly complex tasks. Employees will see GenAI fail, sure, but more importantly, they will see GenAI succeed and have a better sense of how failsafe human safety can be incorporated into workflows to avoid mistakes. Once employees see themselves as part of the process, they can begin to explore the benefits of GenAI as an assistant rather than something for their work.

Employees will be able to see the types of tasks that GenAI can handle. According to the survey, 19.9% ​​use it for quick answers to work-related questions; 15.3% create email content; 12.2% video creation; 11.6% summarize long business documents; 11.2% content writing; 8% video editing; and 4.6% for coding. These represent a wide variety of activities that employees may be happy to present.

What’s Next?

The GenAI discussion has gone beyond the technology industry, as evidenced by the fact that all employees surveyed, regardless of industry, company size, or specific role within the organization, remain skeptical about the future of AI—even those who have never used it before. Changing the entire sentiment is a daunting task that no small business should undertake, but by introducing GenAI smartly, these companies will show employees that the ultimate goal is to increase their productivity, not replace them.