Introduction
Small and medium businesses both in retail and online spaces are rapidly getting interested in AI agents for their businesses.
However there are 5 main questions
- What are the exact use cases where this can be really helpful for them?
- Whether it’s just another automation or truly autonomous AI agents solving their problem, complementing or leveraging? How to differentiate?
- And how to do that and who will do that for me?
- What is the cost?
- And whether this truly helps or makes sense for their business and/or ROI?
Challenges SMBs face in adopting AI
And corresponding challenges from the supply/market end are
- SMBs are mostly B2C whereas the AI agent development ecosystem is focussed on B2B operations use cases
- A lot of AI agents are either offered as no-code/low-code platforms or agent orchestrators which is still difficult for most of the small and medium businesses
- Most of the AI agents or AI agent development solutions/companies are focussed on technology businesses and enterprise productivity use cases and the cost of the tools are unreachable for these SMBs. Or they build one time solutions for SMBs and leave.
- Finally for SMBs its bloody costly
- Everyone is trying to sell to everyone and no-one really cares unless they either keep making money or start losing money.
For whom this is going to be best useful and a meaningful spend to employ AI agents to manage and/or grow their business?
Let’s understand the basics first.
The decision or classification is based on just 3 parameters in 90% of the cases
- Based on the Revenue (they are currently making and wanted to make)
- Based on the use case/problem to be solved for that business vertical or the function
- Customer Engagement behaviour & timeline.
AI agents for different business sizes
Micro to small businesses in the segment of 50K to 150K USD revenue per year are surely solving more survival problems than growth ones. For these businesses people are the best ones to solve the nature of their problems, figure out stuff and keep changing for better. They are still unaffordable as a team to turn to autopilot mode or process dependent. Everyone is talking about building small teams with AI agents. But what about the change? Who is going to identify opportunities and go through change? Both retail and online, when a business is small and in the learning phase, change is inevitable.
The autopilot mode makes best sense in the growing or saturated phase or functions.
The businesses in retail and online which are already big/sizable enough and running enterprise level operations need enterprise level AI agentic systems to fit into their processes seamlesslessly without. The scale and depth of these enterprise systems per organisation are huge and need a heavy lifting on implementation and maintenance. After speaking to more than 10 companies, it is clear that most of these solutions are not for Micro, Small and Medium Businesses owing to the following reasons
- Cost of implementing and Total Cost of Ownership (Cost of maintenance and change – Learning curve for the teams, vendor dependencies to make even the least changes in workflows, the level of support required) – (Deal values start from 30 lakhs INR (30K to 40K USD) per annum.
- Level of Customisation. These enterprise companies also take a platform approach and charge a premium for implementation which is basically the customisation costs and piloting costs. And Medium to Large enterprises are willing to pay to have a proper system in place customised to their business or vertical.
- Scale of usage (Minimum number of calls – 15,000 per month, Minimum number of users – 50 etc., Minimum number of customer accounts, conversations & so on).
It also doesn’t help these companies to focus on these SMBs because of the low ticket size for the in-progress commoditising AI agents market and the above 3 reasons from the service provider’s perspective.
Which SMBs benefit most from AI agents
So who is suffering without even knowing or realising and how could they benefit from this?
It is clearly retail chain businesses or online businesses that are doing 2 to 20 Cr INR or 200K to 2 Million USD revenue per year and who are looking to grow to the next stages with at least decent growth (marketing and sales) budgets, say at least 10 to 50 lakhs INR or 25K to 100K USD per annum.
They are capable and willing to spend, but most end up in either spending at the less leveraged use case or No ROI. This is a market where the ROIs are yet to be properly identified & measured. Because when these AI agent systems are solving just one or 2 use cases like microservices or SaaS, they leave a big picture behind. They leave behind the opportunity behind the unsuccessful appointments, leads or test cases.
For example, what could have been a better conversation to get an appointment booked, if the appointment is not booked is missing in tons of AI appointment management systems out there. What could have been the better approach to architect or code a particular module is left unanalysed.
Industries leading SMB AI adoption
Some clear power users are small or medium scale
- Real estate companies
- E-commerce
- Health & Wellness providers
- Travel & Tourism
A lot of people are not building for a specific industry/market or function or use case. As said everyone is trying to build and sell to everyone and no-one really cares unless they either keep making money or start losing money. In this kind of market or during these times the solution seekers or buyers need to be extra careful. Because many are building and selling for riding the new wave and not exactly solving the problem.
Key AI use cases for SMBs
For service businesses
- Appointment bookings and management
- Reputation & Review management
- Payment collections for consultations or slot bookings
- 24/7 customer support through chatbots
- Lead scoring
For product businesses
- Personalized Marketing
- Lead scoring
- Data Analysis
- 24/7 customer support through chatbots
Key Parameters & ROI Metrics to Track for AI Agents
Below are some of the parameters based on the above 5 questions for the buyers which they can assess against to implement AI agents/solutions for their businesses.
1. Use case – vertical or functional
- Do you have a problem first? Where is the problem? How intense is the problem? Can a machine solve this better than a human?
- See if this fits your problem first. I don’t want an AI to lose a 10 lakhs INR (20K USD) deal because the AI agent doesn’t build the relationship.
- The goal should be an AI agent should either complement or improve the current human element or system not always or replace straight away.
2. Success Metrics to really understand if its working
- Ratio of metrics without and with AI
- AI Metrics
- Investment to Current Revenue ratio – Ideally this should be less than 3 to 5% per year
3. Customer Engagement behaviour & timeline
- Regularly speak to your customers and understand if it made the relationship with the business easy or harder through surveys and conversations.
- Allow time to grow and improve the new set up along with the customers.
- Don’t hard stop or retrieve things immediately if you are unable to measure.
Don’t worry if it’s AI or automation. End of the day it should solve your problem and most AI agents are 80% software & automation except the LLM API part (since most tools out there are just wrappers and still doing a great job).
Tools for SMB AI transformation
And now here are some of the tools that help SMBs in retail and online
- Grexa
- Bitespeed
- Sentiq
These tools are entering into a new category of products – AI Native CRMs.
Conclusion: How SMBs Can Grow Smarter with AI Agents
For small and medium businesses, AI agents are no longer “future tech” — they’re practical tools that can drive real growth today. Whether it’s handling appointment bookings, qualifying leads, providing 24/7 customer support, or running personalized marketing campaigns, AI agents can free up your team’s time and help you scale without adding extra headcount.
The challenge for most SMBs isn’t whether AI works — it’s finding solutions that fit their size, budget, and growth stage. That’s exactly where Sentiq comes in. Unlike enterprise platforms that are expensive and complex, Sentiq is designed for SMBs in retail, e-commerce, healthcare, and service industries. It helps you deploy AI agents for customer engagement, lead management, and sales support — without the heavy cost or steep learning curve.
If your business is growing and your team is stretched, now is the right time to explore AI agents. Start small, measure impact, and scale as you see results. With the right tool, AI can become one of the most valuable growth levers for SMBs today.
If you’re exploring AI use cases for SMBs and want to see how AI agents can help your business grow, try Sentiq. Start with the most impactful use cases like appointment booking, lead scoring, or customer support — and scale as you grow. With Sentiq, SMBs can unlock the benefits of AI without the enterprise price tag.
FAQs:
The most common AI use cases for SMBs include appointment scheduling, customer support chatbots, review and reputation management, payment collection automation, lead scoring, and personalized marketing campaigns. These use cases save time, reduce costs, and improve customer engagement.
Many SMB-friendly AI tools, like Sentiq, are priced to fit small business budgets. Typically, SMBs can adopt AI agents at a cost of 3–5% of annual revenue, making them much more accessible compared to enterprise AI platforms.
ROI can be measured by tracking improvements in lead-to-customer conversion rates, customer satisfaction scores, appointment success rates, and overall cost savings from automation. SMBs should also monitor customer feedback to ensure AI improves the experience.
Retail, e-commerce, healthcare, wellness, travel, and real estate are leading the way in SMB AI adoption. These industries rely heavily on customer conversations, making AI agents especially impactful in automating and improving engagement.
Sentiq is built specifically for SMBs. It combines affordability, quick setup, and practical AI use cases tailored to small and medium businesses. Unlike enterprise tools, Sentiq focuses on helping SMBs grow faster through better customer engagement and smarter automation.
