Using AI and Keeping the Unique Voice of Your Small Business Brand
![]() |
AI can boost speed and ideas, but your brand stays human when you lead with empathy, consistency, and authenticity in every interaction.
It’s a common and valid concern that if you start relying on AI, you will start to lose the human connection with your customers. It doesn’t have to be that way. In a nutshell, while you move forward with your AI initiatives lean in to a human touch. Use AI for speed and ideas, but create templates for customer facing interactions to sound like you — your tone, your values, and your style. AI is an assistant, not a spokesperson. This makes sense, but to pull it off, it is helpful to understand the particular characteristics that identify AI and strategies to keep your brand intact. THE FIVE PITFALLS OF AI Robotic Demeanor This is self-evident if you’ve played around with Chat GPT or any of the generative AI models. Usually the result is a little like a homemade cake, except that it is a perfect square, and has no frosting. It gets the job done, but it’s nothing special. There is no art of conversation. This demeanor is because AI results have to cover all the bases of the query, yet it has to be simple enough to be understood by the general population. Specifically AI answers usually default to the equivalent of a high school senior to a college freshman level. Fortunately this level is adjustable. If a highly technical answer is required AI can respond at a more appropriate level. Use this adjustability to your advantage. Some generative AI solutions allow you to use your own voice to train the AI. You can use this AI to develop response templates which sound more authentic, just like you might train a new sales associate. Getting the right cadence and emphasis while speaking at the right level goes a long way to adding human warmth to your customer interactions.
There will always be customers with special requirements. It might be special packaging, a relationship with a particular person on the inside sales team or a specific delivery cadence. If you have some bad news to deliver, it better be a real person that does it. Have the AI hand off these sensitive matters directly to a person. This personalized response shows your customer that they are special and you recognize that. It also empowers the person handling the issue, since they will know who and how is the best way to solve the issue. Some matters should just be handled directly, without AI. Working with Outdated Data It might seem that keeping information current would be automatic since all information is in a shared cloud. However there are a number of opportunities to have asynchronous activities happening. One simple example is to look at what happens with a product upgrade. Say that the original product α, (Alpha) is going to be upgraded to a new model β, (Beta), so you will have to balance a sequence of events with competing requirements. When will the β product be ready to sell and what is the cost? Can I still buy the α version for a while? If I have been getting a volume discount, will it still apply, and so on? Getting the answers to all of these questions right means that you don’t get stuck with a lot of old product you can’t sell, nobody receives a late shipment, the product dimensions and markings ensure that it fits in the same warehouse receiving procedure. The answer to all of these questions is usually a date, a cost, a lead time and generally attempts to answer the question of how does the β product fit with the existing supply chain? Despite good planning, things happen. If the shipping box is accidentally manufactured to the wrong dimensions for example, things may be delayed a week or so. If prices are higher it might mean the roll out will be slower than planned and inventory builds up. To avoid these issues somebody needs to own and monitor the changeover process. As soon as a change is made to any of the delivery parameters, everything that is affected is now dealing with out of date information until it can be synchronized again. This is a simple example but there are lots of business decisions in which these types of questions could arise: a limited-time offer, reporting real-time inventory from your distributors, a brand new product introduction, dealing with part obsolescence and initiating a last time buy, changes to delivery methods and so on. These issues can be mitigated if the AI only has access to the latest version of information. In some cases you can use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) that limits the AI to handling only verified data from the data base. Inconsistency Throughout the Enterprise If you are not consistent, your tone and message can vary between email, chat, and social media. Customers build trust with suppliers based on consistency in transactions. It establishes a “personality” for your business and makes you more relatable. To ensure this consistency, your AI tools should have access only to a content library that is templated and approved in accordance with your tone and logic rules. The tools should synch across platforms and integrate with your CRM. Lastly, a human editor should read through and listen to all content for final approval before release to the content library. Automating “Everything” Over-automating can create the impression of spiraling around and not heading for a solution. For that reason alone, an easy to find “Talk to a Human” escape button should always be present. It’s fine to have real people in a customer facing situation, where the AI is doing the heavy lifting in the background. Before diving into an entire AI makeover, it is recommended to experiment with using AI to draft emails and support replies to get a feeling for what works. Read the content out loud to make sure it sounds right. You can get feedback from the inside sales team to determine what feels natural and what doesn’t. Make adjustments to tone and logic and think about the role AI should handle based on real feedback from others. Taking a step-wise approach to incorporating AI, and relying on your sales associates and customer feedback will keep you on the right course. Develop a “gold standard” of rules that reflect the personality of your business and incorporate how you want to be perceived and as you add more AI features don’t forget to test them against your standard templates to maintain a consistent voice. Always read through your content before you go live and remember who you are is the reason people wanted to do business with you in the first place. Photo Credit: Small Business Resources welcomes questions from inquiring minds looking to improve their business outcomes using best business practices combined with available technologies. Submit any questions you would like us to explore on your behalf to contact@sbresources.com. Read other technology articles |