Small and medium-sized businesses are now tapping into the power of Artificial Intelligence-enabled chatbots to improve operations and marketing, increase sales and build better relationships and internal communication. Although a form of chatbots has been around since the 1960s, Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft's Cortana and Apple's Siri are ushering in a new era of possibilities for how chatbots can be used in business. Here I want to look at some ways chatbots are changing the way we do business and why it's time for all SMEs to consider adopting chatbots. Today's chatbots are powerful personal assistants. They can call an Uber, place a lunch order, make a hotel reservation, order office supplies when you get low and even help manage your calendar.

As new technologies and trends emerge in the marketplace, small and medium-sized companies must look out for ways they too can benefit from improvements and advancements. Startups have demonstrated time and time again in recent years that the company willing to put new technology to use to solve an old problem (Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, etc.) are the companies that will succeed -- no matter how big or small they are when they begin. These technologies mean that work that once might have been too time consuming or expensive for a small company to do becomes quick and relatively inexpensive. Companies that can't afford a dedicated customer service representative can outsource much of that work to a chatbot that can answer simple customer service questions. While a very small business might not be able to employ the latest in robotics in-house, the advent of more automated manufacturing will make manufacturing more affordable and small runs of products more achievable. This will open up production possibilities for many small businesses.