Many support professionals have found success leveraging artificial intelligence to automate tedious tasks, but the possibilities don’t stop there. Why not use AI for communication and outreach? As an assistant, you likely handle a lot of outreach in your day-to-day that could easily be handed off to AI. You simply have to identify patterns of communication that follow paths of logic and then use those patterns to trigger AI. By automating repetitive communications, you can spend more time on the messages that require your personal touch.
Depending on the software your organization already uses, there are several AI options you can turn to for communication purposes. As mentioned in a previous post, Zapier and Zoho can be used to automate simple processes, including communication. If your company is using a CRM or marketing automation platform like Salesforce, Hubspot, Marketo, or Constant Contact, the tool likely has built-in AI capabilities or at the very least, integration options.
To help you get started, Base has outlined a few specific examples of communications that can be automated:
Auto-Responses and Task Creation
Sometimes when receiving an email, all that is needed is for you to acknowledge the message and create an action item. You can teach AI to recognize this type of situation based on a keyword or phrase. That can trigger an automated response as well as the creation of a task in whatever project management platform you choose.
Need an example? If you’re managing the hiring process for a new role under your executive, you can set up an automated email response to any applicant who emails you his/her resume telling the person that his/her email was received. Simultaneously, a task can be created reminding you to review the application by a certain deadline based on the task creation date.
Nurture Streams
Your executive likely tries to keep in regular contact with specific individuals – business partners, important vendors, top customers, big donors, etc. Artificial intelligence can help you and your executive ensure that key relationships are always top of mind. You can teach AI to send automated messages to specific contacts if there have been gaps in communication. Alternatively, if you’d like to personalize each message, you can teach AI to alert you with a templated email that you can edit before it goes out the door.
Webform Responses
If a contact fills out a form on your website requesting additional information, your response can be fully automated with artificial intelligence. Beyond creating a generic reply, you can teach AI to scan the form for any special requests so that the response is as specific and informative as possible. If your company is tracking web activity and knows which pages of your website the contact has already visited, you can even include information that is related to that contact’s search history.
Artificial intelligence can be an incredibly helpful tool for executive assistants who spend hours handling communications and outreach. Leverage technology to automate mundane tasks and gain time back in your day to focus on more strategic work.
