Best ways to use ChatGPT for business to improve efficiency

If you’re a business owner, chances are you’ve already explored some AI options to streamline your operations. Even if you haven’t fully committed to using AI yet, the potential for saving time and improving efficiency is undeniable – but knowing where to start can be overwhelming.

So this blog post takes you through some practical examples of how we use AI tools such as ChatGPT for both our and our client’s businesses, avoiding you going down a research rabbit hole. 

Benefits of using AI tools in your business 

Although there are many other AI tools out there for a wide range of things such as Google Bard and Jasper AI, the tool we use the most is ChatGPT. It’s by far the most common and talked about tool, as it comes with countless uses and is very user-friendly. 

ChatGPT is now a regular part of our working day as virtual assistants – for our own business development tasks and also for client work. 

Using AI tools as a business owner helps you with:

• Better productivity: AI tools can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, allowing business owners like yourself to focus on more strategic and money-making activities.
• Cost reduction: By automating processes, AI reduces the need for manual labour and minimises operational costs, leading to significant savings.
• Improved decision-making: AI can analyse large volumes of data to provide insights and predictive analytics, helping business owners make informed and data-driven decisions.

AI has thousands of uses that can significantly enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and strategic capabilities of your business operations. 

Although we can’t cover every single possible prompt, we’ve worked out our top 5 ways our team can use ChatGPT on a daily basis, supporting increased productivity and reduced time. They’re all easy to implement and give you a great introduction to AI. 

1.  Research for a task or project 

For any task that involves research, ChatGPT is always our first port of call. Our team all use it for a range of things, including looking into options for events, suggestions for gifts, and creating content and presentations. 

Although you might need to do some further digging, ChatGPT often gives you a great starting point. Something that previously took hours of initial research can now be done in seconds, being refined quickly and simply with AI’s help.

Example: Using ChatGPT to research hosting a successful event

In the past, we’ve conducted research for a consultancy firm researching hosting an industry event to build their brand awareness. We used ChatGPT to get great ideas for:

• Potential venues, including the locations and pros/cons
• How to make your event memorable 
• Marketing your event to people 

We also asked ChatGPT to consider the budget, breaking it down into different categories for consideration. This initial research allowed us to quickly gauge the client’s thoughts and move forward with the next steps. 

If you’re looking to research hosting an event or another marketing-related activity, prompt ChatGPT with the information you’re looking for and it will collate the information so it’s easily digestible.

2.  Get feedback on your work

Another quick and easy task is asking ChatGPT to give you feedback on something you’ve created. This could be a presentation, a speech, a sales pitch or even just an email you want to ensure has the right tone and makes all the key points.

This is a great way to check your work and to continuously improve, which is particularly helpful if you struggle with spelling and grammar, or writing in a particular style.

Example: Ask ChatGPT for feedback on your writing and to suggest a new alternative

If you have an email that’s been written a little too casually and is littered with errors, you can see how ChatGPT proposes corrections. The answer is ready for you to copy and paste, saving you so much time!

Sometimes, our clients send us something in a note format, so we can use ChatGPT to formulate that into a more professional email quickly. 

3. Analyse and explain key information 

When you have lots of information and you need to quickly grasp the concept, ChatGPT is a great tool. It could be that you’ve received a report you would like summarised, or that you’ve extracted some figures out of your accounting system like to be further analysed. 

You can copy and paste your information into ChatGPT and ask it for the key points or a summary. This also works well when you are working on a new topic and you want to understand a summary of it before you get started. 

Example: Using ChatGPT to summarise a lengthy presentation into key findings

Last year, Holly, the founder of Virtually Priceless, delivered a presentation to an audience of PAs. The script was just over 12 pages long and about 4,000 words. 

Instead of manually going through the recording or script, we uploaded the script document to ChatGPT and it very quickly extracted the key points. This summary can now be used as the basis for a new presentation, to create slides, or even for promotional materials ahead of the conference. 

4.  Turning scribbles into summaries 

Another great example that we’ve seen clients who run workshops using, and one we’ve used ourselves following team working sessions, is taking a photo of post-it notes on the wall, flipchart notes, or even just scrappy scribbles in a notebook, and uploading these into ChatGPT and asking it to summarise the notes.

We’ve been blown away by how well these are interpreted, and it can save hours when you’re pulling together post-event reports or actioning follow-ups with a team.

Example: Uploading notes from a workshop for ChatGPT to summarise 

We’ve used this method to quickly take a photo from our client’s notebook that has a messy list of personal and work tasks. When you upload this photo to ChatGPT, it can quickly summarise the notes and egen separating these tasks into categories. 

Think how much precious time you could save from typing all your scribbled notes up yourself. All you need to do now is copy and paste the result from ChatGPT into your chosen project management tool or word processor.

5.  Creating brand style guides 

A super effective way to use AI is to create style guidelines for your business. Simply copy and paste a few examples of content you’ve written and then ask it to create some style guidelines you can share with team members. This not only reduces time, but it makes sure your content remains consistent. 

Example: Using ChatGPT to create guidelines for our business

This is something we’ve used here at Virtually Priceless and for clients who have multiple team members involved in creating marketing content or communicating with external stakeholders and it’s been invaluable. 

We selected some of our best social posts and ChatGPT breaks the content down into: 

• Language style and tone 
• Structure and formatting 
• Content themes 
• Engagement and interaction 

This supports us (and our clients) to reduce the time spent creating content and ensure everything remains consistent. 

Disclaimer: Using ChatGPT with personal data 

It’s important to highlight that we never share client data with any AI tool without their express permission. We would always recommend you anonymise anything you upload that could potentially identify you or your business. You can manage your data with ChatGPT to ensure you’re not feeding the AI tool anything confidential by mistake. 

Save even more time with virtual assistant support

Now you know some of the best ways to use ChatGPT for business, you can implement them into your own business to save time. But for even more efficiency, you can hire a virtual assistant who utilises AI tools to take even more off your plate so you can focus on growing the business. If you want to partner with a trusted virtual assistant, get in touch to discuss how we can help your business to thrive.