Your 4-Step Action Plan to Implement AI

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AI can transform your business, freeing up resources and helping your sales and support teams concentrate on building relationships and delivering value, rather than spending hours on admin tasks. 

It’s easy to see the appeal of Artificial Intelligence, but implementing AI within your business can seem like a huge undertaking, especially if your resources are already stretched. That’s why we’ve created a helpful action plan for integrating AI into the heart of your business. 

Walk Through Aircall’s AI Action Plan

Picking AI technology that suits your needs is only a small part of a journey that includes research, integration, education, and optimization—and it’s a journey that will potentially impact everyone at your company. 

While it’s a large challenge, however, having a comprehensive AI action plan can help you to maximize impact, navigate challenges, and start delivering value right away.

To put some of the benefits in perspective, according to respondents of Aircall’s AI Index Report, just 4.2 hours out of the workweek are currently spent on meaningful customer interactions. And 63% recognize that having enough time to nurture meaningful customer relationships—which are key to improving business metrics like revenue and customer satisfaction—is a challenge. 

AI can save a significant amount of time on day-to-day tasks, enabling teams to focus on building meaningful customer relationships that provide real value

to your business—not only in terms of better customer service but also in driving sustainable, efficient growth. 

But on your journey to using AI, there’s a lot to consider. Our templates can help you eliminate risk, ensuring your business meets its objectives.   

Step One: Do Your Research

The foundations for a successful AI implementation strategy are built around research, and it’s critical to allocate enough time for this stage to identify and answer the questions that will shape your AI strategy. 

What are the challenges you’re looking to solve with AI? What are the must-have features that will transform your business? What features are nice to have? These are all questions you should ask yourself. 

It’s also important to try different options at this stage. It’s an opportunity to put different AI-supported tools to the test and see how they can support your business and whether they meet your expectations. 

We recommend trying three to five different AI-supported tools to identify the pain points they can solve. Measure their benefits, drawbacks, and usability and from there, it should be clear which tool will work best for your business.  

Step Two: Implement Your AI Tool of Choice

Once you’ve selected an AI tool that fits your business needs, you’re ready for step two: implementation. It’s important to set time aside during this phase to consider your objectives.

Set five core objectives that you want to achieve with your company’s AI integration. Agree on benchmarks and highlight the results you want to achieve. This is also a good time to highlight five desirable objectives you want AI to help with too.

It’s important during this phase to avoid falling into traps, so take the time to consider five things that you want to avoid with your AI integration. Once again, agree on benchmarks and highlight the areas you’re specifically looking to avoid. This could include things like implementation moving too fast for teams, setting objectives that don’t align with your software subscription, or scheduling your implementation during a busy time for product launches or team vacation. 

Implementing any new technology can bring up new challenges, so consider your existing company infrastructure and highlight any potential conflicts that may need to be solved during the implementation phase. 

It’s also worth considering exactly how your tech stack will work alongside any AI-based additions—can you adopt integrations to keep new user interfaces to a minimum, for example, or will your teams need to adopt an entirely new way of working? 

Step Three: Outline Your Education and Training Plan

In many ways, researching and implementing the AI tools that best suit your requirements is the easy part. According to Aircall’s AI Index Report, education is actually the biggest barrier of all when it comes to implementing AI, with 63% of SMBs highlighting a lack of understanding of what AI can do. 

As such, your company needs a robust plan in place when it comes to education and training. It’s important to understand how your employees feel about AI and how it will impact their roles within the company, so use this phase as an opportunity to discover the biggest problem areas facing your successful AI implementation. 

Do your support and sales team members understand how AI can positively impact their roles? Do they recognize the areas where it can save time and help them to focus on different business objectives? Do they have any specific worries or concerns? Are there areas where they think your new AI integration is falling short or being under-utilized?

This will help when it comes to devising training solutions, tackling the biggest problem areas head-on, and taking full advantage of your new AI integration to make your sales and support teams more efficient. 

Step Four: Measure and Optimize 

You’ve gone through the hard work of researching and implementing your AI integration, along with ensuring your employees know how to get the best out of it, but it’s important not to rest on your laurels. 

A robust AI strategy isn’t just about integrating the technology into your business—you need to ensure that AI is working for you and meeting your business objectives long-term.

Think back to the objectives you made in the previous phases, as it’s time to reflect on where your integration has succeeded, along with the areas that remain ripe for improvement. Use our templates to measure sentiment and check in on results. Identify three to five core areas that need improvement—whether existing or new ones. 

And, most importantly, carry on the process long-term. Set a date for another internal AI implementation review. As technology evolves, it's important to ensure your employees aren’t left behind. This way, you’ll continue to drive productivity and performance from your AI implementation. 

Interested in getting your AI action plan underway? Download our 4-Step AI Action Plan today to get started! 

Published on September 6, 2023.