This post originally appeared on the Louisiana Technology Park blog.
Digital assistants aren’t just for asking about tomorrow’s weather or what time the game is on. They can help you be more efficient in your work, boosting efficiency and productivity as they take on the load of some of your more routine tasks. Those tasks may be small at this point, but as artificial intelligence improves digital assistants will be able to handle heavier responsibilities.
“Productivity is in the seconds more than the hours” when using digital tools, says Robby Slaughter, productivity expert and principal at AccelaWork. “You have something that’s inefficient and you want to do it faster; it all adds up over time.”
Here are Slaughter’s tips for making the most of digital assistants.
Focus on Routine Administrative Tasks
AI digital assistants are at a point in their development where it makes more sense to offload quick, short tasks than larger ones, Slaughter says. Don’t expect AI tools to write your reports for you (yet); instead use them to make phone calls for you, schedule your appointments, update your calendars and send you reminders, he says.
Siri and Google Assistant are a couple of the best-known AI assistants, but there are more robust options as well, Slaughter says. X.ai is designed for scheduling, while tools like Rev.com, which uses both AI and human intelligence, can transcribe phone calls for you. Other tools provide more specific assistance, such as Refract, which can provide information from customer service phone calls about who talked the most, whether key phrases were used and the inflection of the voices. “AI is getting better at these specific uses, rather than general,” Slaughter says.