> HOW CAN AI WORK FOR YOU? According to a 2022 report by
McKinsey Global Surveys, an average of 32 percent of business owners saw overall costs decrease thanks to AI adoption, and 63 percent reported an increase in revenue. A 2022 report by Yell estimates businesses could save about 40 hours per week by adopting AI to automate tasks such as responding to customer service inquiries, financial reporting, and marketing.
“Keeping it simple and starting with
one AI, like ChatGPT, which you can use for creating content ideas for blogs, web- sites, and social media channels, is one of the most successful and straightfor- ward applications of AI at the moment,” says Nahim. “Florists may receive useful insights and generate interesting and relevant content for their audience by asking AI specific questions, such as flower color trends for a specific month.”
A 2022 report by Yell estimates businesses could save about 40 hours per week by adopting AI to automate tasks such as responding to customer service inquiries, financial reporting, and marketing.
Case in point: Sam Bowles wanted
to create an email blast to encourage Mother’s Day orders. The general manager and creative director of Allen’s Flowers and Plants in San Diego, California, tasked ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, with composing a poem. Bowles provided a one-sentence prompt: “Write a ‘Roses Are Red’ style poem about ordering early for Mother’s Day.” Within seconds, ChatGPT provided a 16-line poem. Bowles tweaked two lines he didn’t quite like, and his job was done. “I spent less than five minutes on
it,” he says. “And I never would have sat down and attempted to come up with something like that from scratch.” On a larger scale, 1-800-FLOWERS.
COM created a message com- poser, MomVerse, for Mother’s Day. MomVerse, which was powered by ChatGPT, enabled website visitors to create customized poems or songs for their loved ones without needing a per- sonal ChatGPT account.
AI for Content Creation Sahid Nahim, founder of the marketing agency New Bloom Solutions, says busi- ness owners should identify their pain points and consider whether AI can help alleviate those issues. For many, those pain points are not having the time or the skill set for online content creation, a must-have in an increasingly digital environment.
36 The following are ways business
owners can leverage AI such as ChatGPT to generate content: ■
Blog posts. With AI, businesses can provide prompts such as word count, topic, and keywords, and generate a unique post within seconds. Mellano & Company, a grower and distributor based in California, uses Jasper to write blog posts. Michelle Castellano Keeler, AAF, says using AI has saved their social media manager many hours. Rather than creating blogs from scratch, she only has to edit as needed and add the company’s voice.
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Product descriptions. Cameron Pappas, AAF, of Norton’s Florist in Birmingham, Alabama, primarily uses ChatGPT to write product descriptions for the company website. He instructs the AI to act as a creative director and tasks it with composing a five-sentence description using the flowers and vase he provides. “In the end, it saves me time and also gives me confidence,” says Pappas. “I don’t believe the product description I’m going to write is going to be as powerful or as good at selling a product as the AI is.”
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Social media posts. Pappas has also used AI to write engaging posts for the shop’s social media platforms. By providing prompts such as character count, preferred
FLORAL MANAGEMENT | July/August 2023 |
WWW.SAFNOW.ORG ■
platform, and topic, ChatGPT can create unique posts that also include hashtags and emojis.
Emails. “I have a customer service associate for whom English is a second language,” says Bowles. “Using ChatGPT as a starting point in drafting responses to customers via email has helped give her more confidence.” He says the AI-generated emails are professional, using the tone and language expected from customer service representatives.
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Job postings. Bowles says he dreads writing job postings because he finds them tedious. When he had an opening earlier this year, he provided ChatGPT with the job requirements and tasked it with composing the posting instead. “I probably spent about 10 minutes in total, including inputting to ChatGPT and editing/tweaking,” says Bowles.
Customer Service and Strategy Applications AI isn’t just about content creation. It can address other business needs, such as answering on-demand customer questions through website chatbots. Some businesses have shied away from customer service chatbots because early iterations were not very effective, leav- ing both business owners and customers frustrated. Alex Frost, founder and CEO of QuickFlora, a cloud-based ERP sys- tem, and HyperVend, which develops and supplies companies selling per- ishable products with automated retail solutions, says website chatbots deserve another chance. “The newer ones are extremely
detailed in their responses,” he says. “A lot of people can’t tell the difference between the AI and the human.” Some chatbot AI comes with a hefty
price tag, however. Frost says businesses may pay upwards of $100 per month for quality software. While some may balk at the cost, Frost encourages business owners to consider the cost of employ- ing someone to field those questions or consider the lost revenue if no one is available to answer them. “What we know for a fact is that
live chat increases conversion rates dramatically, but no one can sit there for
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