This is the second part of discussing Generative AI in equipment rental. “Defining AI for Equipment Rental Businesses” covered the definitions of, types, and the difference between it and traditional analytics.
Now that we have the definitions under our belt, let’s look at how all of this affects our lives and businesses.
Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I used AI (specifically ChatGPT) to provide information for this article, partly as an experiment and partly to gain insight into specific topics. I found it very helpful in providing coherent information relevant to my prompts. ChatGPT is referenced where I utilize quotes from various questions (prompts).
How do you harness the power of AI to proactively improve the success of your business? Remember that Generative AI is used to produce content, whether in text, audio, video, or picture format. It is surprisingly easy to do. Where are some good places to start?
I went to ChatGPT and asked for the top five uses of Generative AI for mid-sized businesses. Here is its list with my comments:
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Marketing Content Creation — This is to produce drafts (and some finished product) for things like email campaigns, blogs, newsletters, or ad copy.
As always with Gen AI, the more detail you provide, the better the result. Rather than “generate an email to promote small tool rentals”, try “generate an email for homeowners promoting tool rental for their weekend project”.
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Customer Support Automation — Providing generated voice responses to questions that your customers frequently ask when calling.
Your customers receive faster response times, you save on personnel, and the responses will be consistent and probably more accurate. The agent is available 24/7, and not on your payroll. AI can handle after-hours calls by checking equipment availability, taking reservation requests, and scheduling delivery for the next business day.
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Sales Enablement and Outreach — This is for sending emails, proposals, and follow-ups.
Chances are that the documents sent will contain fewer errors (spelling, grammatical, typos), and using AI will free up time for your salespeople to spend with your customers and prospects. Research shows that salespeople spend a significant portion of their time on administrative tasks rather than direct customer interaction. AI can handle many of these routine activities, allowing more time for actual selling.
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Internal Knowledge Management — This is to produce training manuals and generate internal reports.
Your staff will be better trained and more informed, giving your customers a better experience with you.
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Product Design and Prototyping — This can assist in writing computer code or queries, as well as writing descriptions and best uses for your products.
This will speed up development and free the creative minds in your company to be more creative.
Not mentioned in the ChatGPT list, but one that I find very interesting is Sales and Customer Service Coaching. Tools like Sandler Sales’ AI Roleplay Coach can watch a recording of a sales presentation or customer interaction and provide feedback on everything from word choice to voice inflection and body language. Individuals can practice repeatedly, focusing on areas for improvement, until they achieve mastery. A Sales or Service Manager can be included in this coaching, though it is not required.
While specialty tools exist to integrate Generative AI into specific business functions like customer support or code generation, empowering your team often requires nothing more than access to platforms like ChatGPT or Copilot. Many of your more tech-savvy employees are likely already leveraging these tools in their daily work.
How AI Agents Can Transform Operations
For Agentic AI, remember that these are active agents looking for a task to perform. This area of AI is less approachable (meaning that you must pick an AI tool, then ‘train’ it to understand you and your data). But they can provide tremendous benefits once implemented.
No one I have spoken with expects Agentic AI to immediately replace people. They expect it to increase their productivity and improve their performance. In time, you may need to hire fewer people, but in the short term, you want to focus on performing at a higher level.
Again, I asked ChatGPT for the top five uses of Agentic AI for mid-sized businesses.
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Automated Business Process Automation — These agents automate what otherwise is a tedious, manual process.
An AI agent can detect when equipment is returned, automatically capture photos for damage assessment, create a condition report in your rental management system, calculate any damage charges, and email the customer with an explanation, requiring human intervention only if disputes arise. Similar automation can handle vendor invoices by extracting data from maintenance and repair bills, creating documents in your ERP system, filing images, and notifying staff for verification when needed.
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Sales and CRM Automation — Similar to Customer Service Gen AI, these are looking for requests from customers, setting up meetings or phone calls, and updating your CRM system.
This further frees up your salespeople and service personnel to spend more time working with customers and prospects.
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IT and Helpdesk Automation — Handling tasks like resetting passwords, checking systems and services, and escalating detected issues.
For rental equipment operations, this extends to monitoring telematics data from your fleet, automatically alerting your maintenance team when machines show unusual operating patterns, and notifying customers when rented equipment goes outside predetermined geographic boundaries. The technology can also manage COD or Pay in Advance contracts by alerting customers of upcoming payments when equipment isn’t returned.
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Financial Planning and Analysis — Preparing and distributing financial reports, analyzing data to spot trends, and escalating detected issues before they become larger problems.
These agents need to be ‘trained’ on your data, but once that is done, they will save significant time and improve responses to issues as they arise.
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Recruitment and Talent Management — Sourcing candidates, screening resumes, and scheduling interviews.
How effective they are depends on what you tell the agent you want, but they can save considerable time.
Preparing Your Business for AI
You need to get ready for a world where AI is incorporated into every action and decision. The single most important thing you can do for your rental business is to get your data house in order. If you’re still operating with disparate systems, data silos, or have different versions of the “truth,” this is critical.
AI needs clean, structured data. Every large company today is focused on getting its data, data management, and access points in top shape. Can AI tools be trained to jump over the bad-data hurdles, of course, but at what cost?
The next most important step is getting you and your people to adopt AI in their work and personal lives. Do those simple Generative AI tasks like those described above. Ask ChatGPT how you can get started. Use AI to find AI Training seminars or YouTube videos. In short, get yourself and your people educated on the possibilities.
But also, do not jump at every single promise that is presented. Not every product will benefit you. Be smart and open to change, and remember that Gen AI is just information that needs to be factored into your thinking and plans.
View the original article and our Inspiration here
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