Survey Finds Small Businesses See Artificial Intelligence as Tool for Growth

Despite the headlines touting artificial intelligence (AI) as human replacement, most small business owners and employees surveyed by Cox Business view the technology as a tool to strengthen and grow their teams.

Cox Business surveyed small business owners and employees to better understand their sentiment toward AI and how they use the technology in the workplace. Among those surveyed, 52% of small business owners said AI enables them to increase or retain employees, while 65% of small business employees said the same.

According to the survey, small business owners are increasing their AI investment to grow customer service, marketing and sales in 2024.

Enhancing the Customer Experience

Both small business owners and employees feel that they have a good grasp on what AI is and are comfortable using the tools within their organization:

• 85% of owners are somewhat to very comfortable using AI tools in their business
• 75% of employees are somewhat to very comfortable using AI tools in their business

Small business owners (53%) report AI had a positive impact on customer experience in 2023 and plan to use AI to support the customer experience in several ways this year:

• 36%: Online order product/service recommendations
• 35%: Online order placement
• 35%: Website live chatbot
• 33%: Customer service calls

AI Investment

One-third of small business owners invested in AI for their company last year and 53% plan to invest in AI even more in 2024.

“The data clearly shows that small- and medium-sized businesses are embracing AI,” said Mark Greatrex, president of Cox Communications. “Leveraging AI to boost productivity and enhance the customer experience empowers entrepreneurs to take their business to the next level and prosper.  With our generative AI practice at RapidScale, we are making it easier to realize the benefits faster.”

Help Wanted

Currently, 75% of small business owners say they are responsible for their company’s AI implementation and operations. Even though more owners and employees say their company did not feel much impact from last year’s IT labor shortage, 42% of owners did see an impact, having experienced decreased revenue. Employees who saw an impact experienced:

• 43%: Added job responsibility
• 40%: Increased stress in the workplace
• 38%: Working longer hours

“For SMBs with limited technology resources, building AI models specific to their business can be intimidating,” said Jeff Breaux, executive vice president of Cox Business. “But the engineers at RapidScale can make Generative AI accessible and guide businesses on the right deployments to improve a variety of use cases. From building the optimal data resources to training the machine learning models, we can make Generative AI achievable for a wider set of businesses looking for a powerful new growth engine.”

For more key survey findings, visit CoxBLUE.com/SmallBizSurvey.