How to Use ChatGPT for Your Landscaping Business
ChatGPT seems to be making waves as the next best thing since sliced bread. From instantly writing mobile app codes to mimicking the writing style of Bob Dylan, the internet has found many novel ways to use it. But is it another fashionable online tool or can using ChatGPT for your landscaping business actually save you time? The GoMaterials team decided to take a closer look!
Read the full post below to learn how ChatGPT can help your landscaping business and how it can be important in the long run.
What is ChatGPT and generative AI
Let’s start with the basics. You may be familiar with text or voice-based AI assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, or Microsoft’s Cortana. Most of these programs have a simple goal – accurately predicting your intent in a way another human can. Of course, it’s easier said than done, and simpler AI tools often misunderstand human language usage. Generative AI is a new class of intelligent programs that can ‘generate’ a wide range of content – from written content to audio and even deep fake videos. For example, Open AI, the makers of ChatGPT, have also created DALL-E, a tool that can artificially create life-like photographs. What DALL-E is for photos, ChatGPT can be for any text-based output – from poems to essays or blogs.
How to Get Access to ChatGPT for Landscaping Business
While there was initially a waiting period and invitation-only access for ChatGPT, it’s very easy to sign-up for the AI tool nowadays. You can sign up with your personal or business email in a few simple steps – similar to any free online service like Gmail. Once you have your id and password, you can start using ChatGPT for your landscaping business. For the newer ChatGPT4 version, you may need to join a ‘waitlist’.
Three Ways of Using ChatGPT for Landscaping Business Today
The landscaping industry is facing an ongoing labor shortage in the last few years. Each passing year fewer young people enter the industry, adding pressure on the current workforce. While ChatGPT cannot solve this issue, it can reduce the stress of managing all aspects of your business with a small team. For larger landscaping businesses, it can open up greater efficiencies to save time and overhead costs of research, training, and communications. Here are a few ways your landscaping business can start using ChatGPT immediately:
1. Using ChatGPT for Landscaping Business Administration and Research
Smaller landscaping crews often suffer from the need to achieve everything, everywhere, all at once. Does running installations and rushing back to email quotes while you talk to a new prospective customer sound familiar to you? ChatGPT cannot take away hundreds of calls you normally make every day, but it can help you save those hours of staring at a screen, unsure of how to word an email. Of course, you can always rely on your friendly humans at GoMaterials to do the calling. 🙂
The more well-defined your prompt, the easier it can get to get an email written from ChatGPT. Here is a simple email we generated with a simple prompt.
It’s important to remember that you can also give instructions about how the email should be. The outputs can vary based on your intent. Try out a few different ways until you get the right tone. ChatGPT can also modify the email to add a few snippets. We even got it to write a small joke, although it will not be hosting Saturday Night Live anytime soon!
Pro-tip: ChatGPT does not know your customers and employees as well as you do, so don’t forget to add a few lines to customize your message.
2. Using ChatGPT for Marketing Your Landscape Business
Digital marketing and search engines have changed the game for small and medium landscaping crews. By ranking higher on Google or Bing, you can now reach a wider audience than ever before. At the same time, it can feel like the odds aren’t in your favor, particularly considering the time it takes to write SEO-friendly articles that will help your landscaping business rank higher or to write social media posts about a current topic. As a single business owner, you may even be unsure of the right marketing strategy for your landscaping business.
ChatGPT can be your writer, marketing strategist, and social media manager all rolled into one, as long as you’re willing to spend the time adjusting its input. Here is a simple blog we generated by adding a prompt – ‘write a blog post about why customers shouldn’t get rid of landscaping maintenance contracts during a recession’.
Pro-tip: ChatGPT output can sometimes trigger plagiarism detectors, which can penalize your blog and site rankings. Remember to scan any articles you create using ChatGPT through free plagiarism tools such as Grammarly.
3. Using ChatGPT for Operations and Training
As an industry facing regular employee churn, onboarding new employees and operations team members can sink your productive time. Especially training recruits on plant zone knowledge and substitution guidance can be challenging without an expert arborist on your team. ChatGPT can shorten the learning curve and help new employees pick up the reins faster. It can also be a handy research tool for your operations team when you are in a pinch due to plant shortages and need an alternative.
Pro-tip: ChatGPT cannot replace an arborist’s knowledge of ideal substitutions or the experience of sourcing experts who know on-ground conditions well.
ChatGPT and the Future of Landscape Industry
Technology has an astounding ability to double or triple its capacity every few years. For example, the smartest household computers of the 2000s cannot compete with the computing power of the latest iPhones. In many ways, ChatGPT is still in its earliest stages of development, yet to unlock most of its potential. When it’s ubiquitous, it will change how landscaping businesses manage their supply chain, respond to customer queries, or even build strategies. As a result, landscaping businesses that adopt it earlier than others will have a competitive edge.
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Have you tried using ChatGPT yet? Tell us what you used it for on social media!
