“If You Had an Extra 10 Hours a Week, What Would You Do?”
If you were suddenly given 10 free hours a week, what’s the first thing you would do?
💡 Poll: What’s your pick?
✔ Grow your business ✔ Spend more time with family ✔ Do Networking ✔ All of the above
Now, here’s the big question: What’s keeping you from getting those 10 hours back?
If you’re stuck answering the same customer questions all day, AI chatbots could handle 85% of them.
If marketing’s a slog, AI can generate social posts, emails, and ads in minutes.
If hiring new staff is a pain, AI can filter CVs, even narrow down a long list of potential employees, before you’ve had a conversation with them.
If inventory management is a struggle, AI can forecast demand and optimize pricing automatically.
AI isn’t some big, scary thing—it is only a shortcut to getting more done. So if you’re an SME looking for help on how to use AI for real, let’s get to it.
1. AI Can Handle Customer Queries (So You Don’t Have To)
If you own a small business, this will come as no surprise — your inbox, WhatsApp and social media DMs are continually bombarded with the same questions:
💬 “What are your prices?” 💬 “Do you deliver?” 💬 “How do I book an appointment?”
It’s not that these aren’t important, but having to answer them — over and over? That’s tedious and frustrating.
Now imagine, if, say, 80% of those questions were taken care of automatically — without hiring additional employees or being glued to your phone. The exact sorts of things AI chatbots can do.
And don’t worry—these aren’t those old-school bots that frustratingly churn out robotic responses to customers. The AI chatbots of today will actually learn from your previous conversations and will sound more natural and helpful.
✅ Example: Actually, 40% of small businesses using generative AI for customer support (a U.S. Chamber of Commerce & Teneo survey) — double the number last year.
How SMEs can use AI in customer service:
To do this you'd have to add an AI chatbot to your website or WhatsApp, enabling it to respond to customer inquiries at any time.
Use AI for email responses—just review and send instead of typing everything manually.
AI call assistants such as Dialpad are designed to answer calls, transcribe conversations, and summarize all of the key points for you.
Best tools: ChatGPT, Tidio, Drift
2. AI Can Write Your Marketing Content (So You Don’t Have To)
Marketing is one of those things that every business requires—but who has time to sit down to write social posts, emails and ads daily?
You know the drill: ✍️ Writing Instagram captions that no one engages with ✍️ Firing off emails that hardly get opened ✍️ Running ads that don’t convert
A survey by SurveyMonkey found that 93% of marketers using AI leverage it to generate content faster. Not just brainstorming ideas, but writing full-fledged blog posts, captions and emails in minutes.
✅ Example: A Ukrainian edtech startup, Headway, also leveraged AI for generating marketing content — and their video ad performance skyrocketed by 40%.
How SMEs can use AI in marketing:
Create blog posts, emails, and captions in a fraction of the time.
Ad Copy (For Google, Facebook & Instagram) — High converting
Send personalized marketing emails to every customer in accordance with their previous interactions.
Best tools: Jasper, Copy.ai, Canva AI
💡 Poll: What’s your biggest marketing headache? ✔ Writing content ✔ Coming up with ideas ✔ Posting consistently
3. AI Can Make Hiring 10x Faster (No More Resume Piles)
Hiring is a full-time job. If you’ve ever had to wade through hundreds of resumes, schedule interviews and chase candidates, the pain is familiar.
But today, AI can help to screen applicants, write job descriptions — even conduct pre-screening interviews on your behalf. That means:
✅ Stop wasting time with unqualified candidates. ✅ Goodbye boring, copy-paste job descriptions. ✅ No more chasing people just to schedule interviews.
Although the AI recruitment sector is dominated by large companies, you can now also get access to this same technology for automating hiring processes for smaller and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), ultimately making recruitment quicker and easier
Best tools: Rezi, Manatal, ChatGPT for job descriptions
4. AI Can Handle Admin Work (So You Can Focus on Growth)
Paperwork, scheduling, invoicing, follow-ups, these are the things that waste your time but don’t grow your business.
What if AI could take care of admin work automagically instead of spending minutes every week?
✅ Example: Grind, a coffee shop, partnered with Google to automate their invoices, marketing content, and customer queries to ensure their team has the time to scale the real business.
How SMEs can use AI for admin work:
AI can automatically schedule meetings (goodbye, back-and-forth emails).
AI creates invoices and even chases up unpaid invoices.
Excel data is analyzed by AI, and easy-to-read reports are generated.
Best tools: Zapier (for workflow automation), QuickBooks AI (for invoicing)
5. AI Can Boost Sales with Personalized Customer Engagement
If you’ve ever opened up a “Recommended for You” email and ended up buying something as a result, you’ve experienced AI-powered personalization.
AI can: ✅ Inspect from what customers purchase and promote similar products. ✅ Send targeted email offers instead of blanket email promotions. ✅ Assist in understanding customer trends to allow forecasting of future sales.
✅ Example: An AI-driven food & beverage firm in Boston called Motif Foodworks generates custom suggestions based on the ethnic background of the specific area.
How SMEs can use AI for sales:
AI recommends products on your website as Amazon does.
AI print and email discounts to reward repeat purchases.
AI reviews customer data to forecast what they’ll purchase next.
Best tools: Klaviyo, Shopify AI, HubSpot AI
💡 Poll: Are you currently personalizing customer interactions now?
✔ Yes, manually ✔ No, but interested
6. AI Can Set the Right Price & Manage Inventory (No Guesswork)
Price setting and inventory management should not be guesswork. The right price can increase your revenue, and the right inventory strategy can help you avoid stockouts and overstocking.
Now, AI can: ✅ Forecast demand trends based on historical sales and market data. ✅ Dynamic price adjustments in comparison with competitors prices. ✅ Notify when stock is low.
✅ Example: Must Have Ideas: This online retailer specializing in cleaning and homeware products launched an AI-driven TV shopping channel on Sky. Their proprietary software, Spark, delivers 24/7 AI-directed programming, automating content scheduling based on stock levels and external factors.
How SMEs can use AI for pricing and inventory:
AI predicts next month’s biggest-selling products.
AI automatically adjusts pricing to remain competitive.
Real-time inventory tracking enabled by AI helps prevent stockouts.
Best tools: QuickBooks Inventory, Inventoro
7. AI Can Generate Reports (Without You Lifting a Finger)
If you are a hater of spreadsheets and reports, this one’s for you.
Rather than sifting through your business data for hours, AI can help SMEs:
✅ Report actionable insights from sales, marketing and finance data ✅ Automatically generate reports (so you don’t have to manually) ✅Even recommend what’s working and what’s not and what should happen next as a result of your data
✅ Example: A biotech startup called Cradle uses AI to analyze protein data for food and drug research, reducing their research time drastically.
Best tools: Google Looker Studio, Tableau AI, Microsoft Power BI
Final Thought: Start Small & Get Big Results
AI is not some science fiction future, it is already in present, aiding SMEs to enhance their productivity to work smarter, not harder.
Choose one AI tool that solves a real need in your business, try it out, and see what happens.
❓ What AI tool are you most excited about trying? Leave a comment or a message if you need help getting started.
👉 SMEs who begin to harness AI NOW are going to have a significant advantage in 2025 and beyond. Will you be one of them?