AI will Change SMBs in 2024: Acceleration & Customer Support

Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series is a collection of contributed articles written by thought leaders in enterprise tech. In this feature, DigitalOcean‘s GM of AI/ML Kanishka Roychoudhury offers commentary on how AI will change SMBs in 2024.

2023 has been the year that AI really became part of the public conversation. It went from a topic of interest mainly among technologists to one our friends and families now talk about at home. 

Major technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta are investing billions of dollars in generative AI and other kinds of AI development. Goldman Sachs forecasts that investments in AI will approach $200 billion globally by 2025. 

What does this momentum — and some hype — mean for small and medium-sized businesses? I believe 2024 is going to be a breakout year for AI adoption in this vital segment of the market. Our team at DigitalOcean recently surveyed SMB leaders and found that despite economic challenges, most of them remain committed to investing in emerging technologies like AI, with 43 percent of respondents currently using AI tools for both personal and business use and 78 percent of those surveyed believe that their use of AI/ML tools will increase compared to 2023.

The way that SMBs adopt these AI tools over the next year will have rippling effects through the U.S. economy. Accounting for 44 percent of economic activity and 64 percent of new jobs in the U.S. each year, according to the Small Business Administration, SMBs are the backbone of the U.S. economy. 

Businesses are still in the early-adoption phase of AI, and that’s especially true for SMBs. In the year ahead, I expect more business leaders of these up-and-coming companies to accelerate their AI implementation as a way to seize new opportunities. Here’s how that is likely to play out. 

• SMBs will gain influence in the industry-wide discussion around AI: Small and medium-sized businesses must have a seat at the table as AI regulation is discussed and implemented. This can’t be a conversation that only happens among large tech companies and enterprise customers. If the voices of SMBs aren’t considered while shaping AI regulation, we risk missing out on the complete economic benefits that widespread AI adoption may bring. 
• More SMBs will look to AI as a business accelerator: According to a recent survey on AI adoption by the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, 48 percent of small businesses have embraced AI tools within the last year. They’ve done that to save time and money, but also to generate revenue in new ways. For this reason, I expect there to be growing proliferation of these solutions in spaces that we haven’t seen previously. For instance, retailers can leverage internal data to build AI models that inform inventory management or personalized customer experiences. We will see similar AI-enabled initiatives in transportation, finance, insurance and real estate. 
• Customer support will be the first AI use case for many SMBs: Customer service is the front line for SMBs and can make or break a company. We will witness substantial adoption of GenAI in customer service, including the integration of chatbots and conversational AI call agents that enhance user experiences while optimizing resource allocation, both of which are top concerns for smaller businesses. GenAI solutions have the potential to drive cost savings by efficiently handling routine tasks, enabling employees to focus on more complex issues and drive business growth.

AI may have started as a big business solution, but AI tools and services are now well within the grasp of SMBs. As SMB leaders embrace the technology and have more say in its direction, they stand to benefit from increased customer engagement and new growth opportunities. That will happen as more SMBs shift from AI talk to AI in action.