The best AI tools for small businesses in 2024—and how to make them work for you

It’s been years since ChatGPT launched, and since then many tools have claimed to help people do their work more efficiently.

Many small ecommerce brands have since found that enhancing their existing automation technology with AI can speed up a lot of the processes involved with running a business.

But it can also be overwhelming to sort the hype from the helpful, so we’ve reviewed some of the most popular tools on the market through the ecommerce lens. From customer service bots to content creation assistants, here are some of the most helpful AI tools for small businesses in 2024.

1. Userbot.ai

Fast response time is critical for keeping customers happy, but it’s also tough to live up to when you’re a small business with limited resources. This is where an AI assistant like Userbot.ai can come in handy.

Userbot.ai can address common customer questions—about things like product availability, payment options, or shipping timelines—across chat or voice calls. It’s available 24/7, so your customers can get answers no matter where they are in the world. You can also create custom conversation flows so the bot can give useful, relevant answers before an agent has to hop in.

It’s important to remember that while this tool can help triage customer service requests, it’s not a complete replacement for a live support team. You’ll still need a human team to handle complex customer issues, but AI chatbots are helping to alleviate those teams by handling quick requests that can take up a lot of cumulative time.

2. Descript

Descript is a video editing tool that uses AI to edit video content without a steep learning curve or a lot of time. How? By mapping video to words.

Let’s say you’re launching a new line of gym wear, and you want to create buzz on social media. You make a video to show how the clothing moves during a workout, but it’s 30 minutes long, full of awkward pauses, and you’ve fumbled a few words.

Do you reshoot? No. Upload the video to Descript and use their AI editing assistant.

Descript automatically transcribes the video into words, which map back on to the video content. If you stumble over a line or there’s a long pause, just remove those words in the transcript and Descript will edit the visual output.

Let’s say you’ve also mispronounced or mumbled a word or two (or 20!). Descript can mimic your voice using AI, so all you need to do to correct the audio is to edit the text.

3. ChatGPT

While you may have already experimented with ChatGPT in more ways than one, here’s how it can specifically help ecommerce businesses:

• Brainstorming ideas for your next email newsletter or promotional campaign
• Generating and editing product descriptions at scale
• Writing customer service scripts for common inquiries or support issues
• Writing taglines, ad copy, or CTAs at scale for better A/B testing
• Personalizing follow-up emails or abandoned cart messages
• Consolidating customer survey data into summaries that can inform audience personas

You can also access ChatGPT’s API to:

• Automate customer support: Triage and answer common customer requests about shipping timelines, return policies, and basic product information.
• Automate product description generation: Use the API to scale up content creation for your ecommerce site by generating product descriptions for hundreds of items at once.

4. DALL-E 3

DALL-E 3 is an image generation tool that can help you brainstorm and create some of the visuals you might need for your ecommerce business. While DALL-E can’t replace high-quality product photography, it can still help you visualize your brand identity in more concrete terms and create some of the supplementary images your brand needs.

For example, you can use DALL-E 3 to create eye-catching backgrounds for product pages or fun accents on graphics for seasonal campaigns. You won’t want to rely on it too heavily for social media images—people are still able to spot AI-generated art in their feeds—but it can be a great tool for enhancing human-generated imagery if you want to test multiple options to see what performs.

You may want to use DALL-E 3 for brainstorming more than creation. For example, say you’re redesigning a soda can. With DALL-E 3, you can create dozens of designs in a matter of minutes and use those as inspiration for your actual design.

5. Grammarly

We can’t count how many small business owners we’ve met who are learning how to write copy on the fly. Grammarly can help you get over a steep learning curve with an AI shortcut that matches tone to intent.

For example, if you’re trying to write email marketing copy but it “just doesn’t sound right,” you can lean on Grammarly to fix it. Use AI to instruct Grammarly to “make it more persuasive,” and you may find you can stop agonizing over word choice.

And as your brand grows and develops its own writing tone, you’ll be able to keep your team on the same page with custom style rules that can standardize your writing across your entire business.

6. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform with built-in AI functionality that can help brands launch more effective email,SMS, and mobile push campaigns faster.

Whereas email,SMS, and push automation can help brands send more relevant messages with behavior-triggered flows, Klaviyo AI enhances this by:

• Simplifying customer segments: Klaviyo AI helps ecommerce brands generate complex segments based on simple descriptions. This means you won’t need to go through the traditional steps of setting criteria to create a dynamic segment—you’ll just need to describe the audience you want to reach, and AI will create the segment.
• Creating and testing subject lines at scale: Subject lines are notoriously difficult to get right. Use Klaviyo AI to generate and A/B test subject lines at scale, so you can really find out what works (then replicate that with AI).
• Optimizing website forms: Automatically show the highest-converting form on your website through AI-powered tests that find the best display time for you.
• Creating more automated flows: Similar to Segments AI, use Flows AI to create email, SMS, and mobile push flows by describing what you want them to do and who they should target.
• Gathering insights on customer sentiment: With review sentiment AI, identify emerging customer trends and potential issues before they escalate.
• Writing email and SMS copy: Use AI to write email and SMS campaigns that convert.