AI in a small business: 5 tasks you can automate right away

1. Sorting emails and preparing replies

The AI reads incoming emails, recognises what they are about and forwards them to the right person: enquiries to sales, invoices to accounting, complaints to customer service. For common requests a draft reply is ready, which your team only checks and sends.

2. Reading data from documents

Invoices, delivery notes, orders and forms contain the same details again and again. The AI extracts them and transfers them into your systems, even when every document looks different. What used to be typed becomes a quick check.

3. Summarising calls and meetings

A recording or the notes of a customer call become short minutes with decisions and next steps. That saves half an hour after every meeting and makes sure nothing is forgotten. Important: everyone taking part must agree to a recording.

4. Answering common customer questions

An assistant on your website answers questions about opening hours, delivery times, prices or instructions, based on your own documents. When it cannot help, it hands over to a person. Your team gets more time for the requests that really need a human.

5. Drafting quotes and reports

From an enquiry and your templates, the AI prepares a first draft of a quote; from your figures, a readable monthly report. The expert decision stays with you, the routine work does not.

What to watch out for

• Start with a task that comes up often and follows clear rules
• Let a person approve the important steps
• Do not paste confidential data into public chatbots; choose services with clear data protection terms
• Decide where the data is processed: in Switzerland, the EU or on your own server
• After a few weeks, measure how much time is actually saved