AI for Small Business and Entrepreneurs
Use a chat assistant and a spreadsheet to market your business, answer customers, forecast stock and keep your books in order, at little or no cost and with the risks under control.
Beginner · AI for Business · about 10 hours · 4 modules · certificate on completion
Taught by Akosùa Mensàh, Emrè Yilmazì, AI Learning Companions.
About this course
Small businesses don't need big budgets to benefit from AI. This course shows owners and their teams how to use a chat assistant and a spreadsheet for the jobs that eat up a working week. You'll write a brand voice brief and use it to create posts, product descriptions and customer replies that sound like you and promise only what you offer. You'll build an FAQ and a customer-service assistant, test it until it answers from your policies and hands difficult cases to a person, and learn what to check before putting a chatbot in front of customers. In a spreadsheet, you'll forecast demand with a moving average, measure how wrong the forecast tends to be and turn it into a reorder decision. You'll use AI to help categorise a month's transactions and see why it's a helper, not an accountant. Finally, you'll choose tools that keep costs down and set simple rules for privacy, accuracy and over-reliance. The labs use a sample tea and coffee shop, or your own business, and the course ends with an AI plan for a business of your choice.
What you'll learn
- Create marketing content and customer messages in your brand's voice, with every claim checked
- Build an FAQ and a tested customer-service assistant that knows when to hand over to a person
- Forecast demand for your products in a spreadsheet and work out when, and how much, to reorder
- Use AI to help categorise transactions and summarise your month, without mistaking it for an accountant
- Choose AI tools that fit your budget, and protect your customers' data and your business from AI's mistakes
Skills you'll gain
Marketing content with AI, Customer messages, Customer-service chatbots, Demand forecasting, Reorder points, Bookkeeping with AI, Choosing AI tools, Managing AI risks
Tools
Claude or another chat assistant, Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice Calc
Before you start
None: this course is for owners and staff of small businesses, and people planning to start one. You need a chat assistant such as Claude (a free plan is enough) and a spreadsheet program. Basic spreadsheet skills, such as typing a formula like =SUM(B2:B10), help with the forecasting and bookkeeping labs.
Modules
Marketing content and customer messages
Write a brand voice brief, use it to create content for each channel, draft replies to customers, and keep every claim honest.
- Your brand voice, and content that sounds like you (12 min)
- Customer messages: enquiries, complaints and follow-ups (10 min)
- Honest marketing (10 min)
- Hands-on lab: A brand brief, a week of posts and a customer reply
Customer service with AI
Turn your policies into an FAQ and reply templates, understand what customer-service chatbots can and can't do, and test an assistant hard before customers meet it.
- FAQs and reply templates (10 min)
- Chatbots, and when to hand over to a person (12 min)
- Testing a customer-service assistant (10 min)
- Hands-on lab: Build and test a customer-service assistant
Forecasting stock and demand
Forecast next week's sales with a moving average in a spreadsheet, measure how wrong forecasts tend to be, and turn the forecast into a reorder decision.
- Why forecast, and simple methods that work (10 min)
- Measuring forecast error (10 min)
- From forecast to order: reorder points and safety stock (12 min)
- Hands-on lab: Forecast demand and decide what to reorder
Bookkeeping, tools and risks
Get AI's help with bookkeeping while staying in control of the numbers, choose tools that keep costs down, and set rules for privacy, accuracy and over-reliance.
- Bookkeeping help, not an accountant (12 min)
- Choosing tools and keeping costs down (10 min)
- Risks: privacy, accuracy and over-reliance (12 min)
- Hands-on lab: Categorise a month's transactions and check the totals
Project: An AI plan for a small business
Put AI to work for one small business: your own, one you'd like to start, or the sample tea and coffee shop. Create the business's brand voice brief and a two-week content plan; an FAQ, reply templates and a tested customer-service assistant with clear hand-over rules; a forecast and reorder sheet for at least two products, using real or realistic sales; a monthly bookkeeping summary built with AI's help and checked by you; a list of the tools you'll use with their monthly costs; and one page of AI rules covering privacy, checking and over-reliance. Everything customers will see must be checked, and nothing that identifies real customers may appear.
The products this course names are trademarks of their owners, who haven't made or endorsed it.