Beata Leyland
Business Owner & Author of this article
AI is a useful tool,and tool can be as good as a person using it
Intrigued ?
As a big fan of optimisation, I do look forward for new opportunities to make our work more creative and less boring.
However, as of January 2026 I see way too many FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) driven marketing campaigns that if you don’t invest now or buy something now you will for sure be left behind but… this what is currently on the market doesn’t deliver what is promised.
What is delivered are aggressive, fear-based campaigns and contracts which you must sign now but most do not even have a trial period. This article will be outdated probably rather fast but my goal here is to show you now.
As a small business myself, I’ve tested what would make my life easier and honestly … at the moment not much as the majority of AI products target big companies. Many small businesses need cheap help, and technology that could shorten your work by a few hours sounds extremely catchy, but this is more a dream-seller (or perhaps hope-seller) not reality.
Let me describe to you one by one popular AI sectors/tools and whom they can help and for whom it will be wasting of resources.
Production
Here’s the part where AI has really a field to show off as the robotics used to construct small elements in IT, cars, tech sectors (but not only) are breath-taking.
If everything you do is handmade, you don’t need AI for production. If you can use AI to lighten your production process you definitely should. Thanks to AI you can increase your production and improve risk mitigation by better control of the production process.
I’ve recently seen a post from one of the companies which I have known for years who implemented AI to optimise waste from production. How cool is that?
Honestly, this part is really something which I am looking for as robots can protect human safety during the production process and optimise business scale.
Warehousing. Inventory Management
If you have a well-organised and thoughtful inventory process, then AI -powered software and robots can be a big help in your daily operations.
Simply remember that before buying you need to know what you want from such a system otherwise what’s supposed to make your life easier will make it harder (mess with naming products, unrecorded exceptions, damaged goods etc.).
Thanks to AI you can increase visibility of stock, better manage your inventory through reports, automate warehousing tasks, and optimize logistics routes.
It’s an area where lot of costs can be saved in smart way.
When we arrive with the change we seek to make,we are causing tension. There’s always tension associated with change. Seth Godin from ” This is Strategy”
Website
If you only test your business idea or you know that your business is only for 2-3 years or simply don’t have money for a website, a convenient shortcut is to create an AI-powered website.
The only problem which I see is that all these websites look very similar and in order to really stand-out you will have to pay incredible amount of money for marketing.
Few months ago, I helped my client with launching a beverage on the U.S. market and all existing competitors have powered-AI websites which looked like clones.
It’s better to search for a web designer /marketing agency in different part of the world instead of putting yourself on difficult spot since day 1.
All owners know that starting is already hard enough so why make it even harder?
AI-BOT Customer Care
A very popular solution is an AI-Bot on the website.
This makes sense having in mind how easy it is to get frustrated by answering the same question all over again, but it depends on business type. Think before buying.
A few weeks ago, I was a part of a conference where a few presenters incl. Mr Shadab HussAIn gave a lecture about AI.
Interesting facts were brought up there based on 2 companies which cut human customer care very fast. Both Klarna and Duolingo which are well-known companies started to have troubles because customer care and satisfaction declined as adopting bots instead of human interactions was rapid and the end-users (humans) simply didn’t like it.
Do you want customer trust to decline?
I think human oversight costs are underestimated
If you run a small travel agency or shoe store, your clients probably come to you because of extraordinary customer service, and you might confuse them. So many companies put customised solutions and a tailored approach, but the first contact is with AI-BOT, which sends a mixed message.
Before buying any tool, I would highly recommend asking for a trial-period. What helps other companies in the same boat might be counterproductive for you.
A cute AI-waiter in a restaurant can serve you food but what if you have questions, allergies or dispute?
Whom would you rather ask?
Marketing
Sending emails, calling people who might buy your product (cold pitch ) is extremely time consuming and searching for shortcuts is a kind of natural tactic to overcome it.
Question is what kind of outcome you want to get?
Do you think that people would like to pick up a call from a random number and having a conversation with AI which is far away from the intelligence of the human?
Have you met anyone who would love to speak with AI instead of a salesperson?
I haven’t. If your goal is to reach out to as many people as possible at all costs such a strategy might work.
In the last few months, I got plenty of customized AI messages from different companies, and ignored all of them.
Why?
Because it is obvious that the text wasn’t written by a human and if someone who advertises a company or product as having a “human approach” and then messages me with a not very well-constructed, quasi-marketing inquiry, it does not convince me.
All sales-friendly tools which I used were … a waste of time as they work like a very simple excel-makro which nobody knows how to use but because of marketing lot of people want to test.
There are tools on the market which help you interact with the audience fast, or analyse your audience what kind of message would work to attract them, and I would rather turn into this direction than AI automatic calls.
Reporting
For sales data, bills, trends, and forecasts, it seems AI might be great and it is a partial truth.
Everyone who has at least once did a report from scratch knows that execution is a part of the process, but main thing is how data are selected, which companies are included as our competitors etc.
If your methodology is clearly defined then you give all tools for AI to work properly, but the key is to simply know what you want otherwise such reports might confusing and misleading not helpful.
An important part will be to understand that your competitors use tools too and if the methodology of reporting will be the same it might skew your view of the market.
Before taking any actions based on reporting is crucial to understand what kind of tools you use and why.
Customer Service
If we think about all the scanning tools and features powered by AI this part works very well.
They are plenty of companies which for a subscription can help you with international duty & tax laws.
The question is when you really import something you would rather call an advisor and expert or an AI-tool which gives you cold data and not hands on advice what to do it.
Tools which can analyse large texts are extremely handy as indeed it’s a huge well-tested shortcut used even by advisors now, but… hands on knowledge is always superior to technology in the real world.
Actually, even now thanks to AI, legal and compliance exposure increased.
If you want to send 500 New Years wishes to different companies via email, AI would be perfect, but if you want to write something to stand out and showcase your creativity and how much you care about your partners then wishes written by you, but sent through AI would be a better solution.
Some regions of the world have already a huge demographic crisis and AI can be a logical solution for some problems.
For me AI must be safe for everybody, and also enable us to use our brain power more as human creativity is absolutely astonishing.
AI is a useful tool, simply every company will use it in different ways depending on the nature of their business and by this article I would like to show you not only what is promoted but also the traps and pitfalls.
The best I can recommend is to have a critical eye on technology, chose wisely how you invest your time and money, ask questions, ask for free trails and don’t get discouraged by few poor-quality AI-powered tools.
Dear AI-Developer
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