AI Masterclass 1.12

3 AI admin hacks for retail business owners

• ChatGPT can lessen the burden of those repeatable admin jobs like customer queries and writing product descriptions.
• AI-powered customer service can help with everything from customer queries to guiding you on how to reply to online reviews.
• While using AI in retail admin can be a massive timesaver, it’s still up to you to check and validate all ChatGPT responses.

Whether you run a bricks-and-mortar business or a bricks-and-clicks hybrid store, there are numerous repeatable admin tasks that can be made easier with AI. “You can ask it to take on different personas or simulate various roles within your business,” says OpenAI expert Joel Solomons. “It can act as your marketing lead or your customer service lead or help you streamline supply orders. On this side of things, your imagination is really the limit.” 

Here are three useful applications of AI for busy retail business owners. 

1. Updating product descriptions

Uploading descriptions to your website for every product in your inventory is an important task but one that takes time. ChatGPT can help here.  As always, make your prompt specific, including tone of voice, length requirements and any formatting information. You can now make this interaction more collaborative by talking instead of typing. 

“What’s really powerful now is that you don’t have to type, you can use Voice Mode,” says Solomons. “You can speak to it and have a real-time conversation to talk through the scenario, which makes real-time feedback even faster.”

Here’s a prompt you can use to get AI to help with your product descriptions: 

“I sell [insert your types of products]. Based on these product notes and features: [paste notes], write a product description for my website. Make it sound [add details about your tone of voice], optimise for SEO and include key customer benefits. The description should be no more than 100 words.” 

2. Answer customer queries

Online business owners are constantly answering questions from customers: product inquiries, order tracking, refunds and exchanges – the list goes on. AI can help lessen the load by playing a key role in your customer comms. “I would prompt it by setting the scene,” says Solomons. “‘You are my customer service representative’. It will adopt that persona and you can chat back and forth to practise.”

Here’s a prompt to try to get you started:

“Help me write a response to this customer query: [copy and paste question]. The tone should be [describe your brand tone of voice]. Suggest a clear course of action based on [insert any relevant details, such as shipping timelines]."

3. Use AI as a brainstorming tool

Business owners often have limited time and resources so finding a moment to think about how to grow your customer base is challenging. That’s where AI comes in handy as a brainstorming tool. Like with the customer queries example above, you can use AI in social media or marketing strategy for your business. Ask it to take on that specific role, then tailor the responses based on what you need. 

“If an answer is too long, just tell it: ‘Give me a more concise version of that’ or ‘Put that into three dot points instead of a paragraph,’” says Solomons. “You can even tell it to simplify things or ask it to copy a specific format you like.”  

Tailor this prompt for your industry and specific business. 

“Summarise three trends in Australian retail/ecommerce for [insert your industry] and suggest one promotion or campaign idea I could test this month.”

Once you’ve picked an idea you like, refine it, then ask ChatGPT for a step-by-step plan of what you need to do to bring the idea to life.