I recently attended a presentation at the Hillsborough County Entrepreneurial Collaborative Center titled “Leveraging AI for Small Business”. This was a review of how AI Agents can improve productivity, save money and time for your business. (IMO this was another 5-star presentation hosted by the ECC. I’ve attended several.)

An AI agent is an autonomous artificial intelligence program that can perceive its environment, make plans, and use tools independently to achieve a specific goal. Consider the cycle of automated steps you go through when placing an online order. You can achieve similar loop functionality that observes a situation, reasons the next step, and takes action based on your instructions or prompts.

The AI agent allows you to customize a process or series of actions by applying prompts to create an autonomous flow. Creating the agent involves planning, using software tools, executing multi-stage tasks – and testing.

The benefits of using AI agents for your business include:
• Lower operating costs
• Improved efficiency
• Better decision-making with data
• Scalability
• Improved security
• Staying ahead of the competition

There are ready-made conversational assistants that let you build simple custom actions without coding expertise. And there are numerous platforms that offer varying degrees of complexity and cost. Four are discussed below.

The easiest AI agents to use are ready-made, conversational assistants that let you build simple custom actions without coding. According to Google the best options include:

  • ChatGPT (Custom GPTs): Easiest for creating personalized mini-agents with specific instructions and uploaded files.
  • Microsoft Copilot Studio: Great for low-code/no-code guided agent setups.
  • Zapier Central / Zapier Agents: Ideal for connecting AI to apps like Gmail or Google Calendar without code.
  • Claude (Projects): Excellent for document analysis and multi-step reasoning tasks.

10 AI agents small businesses can deploy right now:
According to the Institute of Business AI, the graph below shows a comparison of the best applications for AI agents for small business.

If you need assistance or coaching to create your own AI Agent, we’ll refer you to someone who is highly experienced in this area. 321-698-1550.