When was the last time you saw an article on AI in your Facebook feed? I bet it was only a couple of days back. Or even today.

AI technology is rising

Artificial intelligence technology is changing the way we live and work. As customers, we don't want to wait for customer support for hours anymore; and we as employees don't want to spend time on repetitive tasks that AI can handle in seconds.

We see a rapid increase in the use of artificial intelligence in every industry, and the world of accounting is not an exception.

Artificial Intelligence in Accounting

The integration of chatbots into accounting software is more common than not. Tasks such as bank reconciliation are automated and the chatbots don’t just collect data, they learn from what they store. AI benefits the industry extensively, with examples including more accurate data entry, lower payroll costs, and less time spent manually logging calculations.

According to the TCS Global Trend Study, 40% of banking and financial services, and 38% of CPG companies have integrated AI into their accounting software systems.

Traditionally, a huge part of accountant work is repetitive, like document handling and analysis. AI solves these labor-intensive and tedious tasks more efficiently than humans. It can handle repetitive accounting tasks 80-90% faster than a human. And with the help of artificial intelligence technologies, accountants can focus on tasks that require more effort and cognitive decision making, thus allowing them to spend their time more proficiently. By exploiting AI, human professionals can focus on strategic analysis and provide better personal consultations for their clients - the things they are best at. 

Artificial intelligence in accounting also increases the quality of work because human errors are significantly reduced. 

AI can process documents by using natural language processing (NLP) to provide inexpensive real-life reporting, an impossible task a decade ago. This allows companies and accountants to proactively make adjustments based on real-life financial trends. 

Every accounting firm deals with clients on a day-to-day basis, processing requests and answering questions. One AI use case is as an effective customer service tool. AI chatbots can reduce your customer service efforts, free up employees’ time and, in doing so, help achieve better ROI.

With artificial intelligence alleviating the more mundane tasks, it’s no wonder that young accountants prefer working in companies that already benefit from AI technologies in their day-to-day operations. Using these technologies you can significantly streamline your hiring process and fill open positions in a company more quickly.

How to choose a chatbot for your company

The first step of implementing an AI to your accounting business could be building a chatbot that solves frequently customer queries automatically and free up your employee's time. But what things should you consider when choosing a chatbot provider?

1. Chatbot Automation Rate for Accounting Industry

It's good to make sure a chatbot provider has a strong track of record for automating customer service tasks. Ensure their chatbot automation rate reaches at least 60%, and that it tends to grow over time.

GetJenny user see their chatbots take care of approximately 40% of all customer queries right from their launch and this number can grow up to 87% over the following months. At a 50% automation rate, GetJenny chatbots have saved a five-person support team one week of work-time per month.

2. Chatbot Ease-of-Use

Not every chatbot is built the same way. Some require an IT team to take care of the project, while others can be built by your customer support agents. At GetJenny, we strongly believe that your support agents are the best people to build and maintain the bot: they already work with your clients, they know frequently asked questions and how to answer them in the best way. That's why customer service agents should be involved in the project from the very beginning. 

The Jenny platform removes the need for IT help when building a chatbot. Our chatbots are built through an easy-to-use interface. Customer service teams can forget about long meetings and discussions with IT to bring in a new bot feature or fix a single bot answer. Service agents are the ones who build the bot from the very beginning, and easily maintain it in real-time. 

The simplicity of Jenny Platform is proven; our solution was rated 10x easier-to-use than the closest competitor.

3. The ROI of Implementing a Chatbot

Using AI in your accounting company might appealing, but have you ever asked yourself what ROI can you achieve with this? How do you calculate the savings of a customer service chatbot project? And when can you see the first results? 

To understand different aspects of the returns on investment available from chatbots, we highly recommend you to spend 40 minutes and watch this webinar recording - How to approach ROI related to chatbots? You'll learn how to estimate ROI for your own chatbot project and how to achieve savings in a short time.

AI and chatbots are transforming the accounting industry by automating the most labor-intensive tasks. Do you want to be a pioneer of this transformation? 

Get a free chatbot consultation with our experts and win over the competition! 

If you would like to learn more about the use of AI and chatbots in industries,  please read our guide on AI and chatbots.

This article was updated on 5 December, 2019 to reflect the advances in customer service chatbot services and technology. Some more information was added that would be relevant to accounting sector to upgrade their customer service with chatbot automation.