Product manager AI tools are the future of your workflow.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can help remove brutally mundane and boring work and create much-needed time to focus on more important, creative, and pressing projects. Used correctly, these two tools can also offer an outlet for skill development or to fill a few gaps in professional expertise (we’re lookin’ at you @code). 

By leveraging some of these programs discussed later in this article, product managers can streamline their workflows, boost their team's performance, and deliver successful products that meet stakeholders' needs. Programs like Collato can also improve communication and collaboration and can help employees find the information they need quickly, helping teams work more efficiently together, too. Our AI-powered Slack integration can also find, summarize, or create content based on your team's product information without leaving the Slack app.

But if you're anything like us here at Collato, you've been bombarded with emails and newsletters about AI-generated pope coats and ChatGPT's rise to stardom. But no need to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of AI plug-ins and programs scattered across the web. Instead, let’s find the most useful and trusted ones to incorporate into your daily workflow. And most importantly, ones that will make your life a little easier. Here are some of our favorites, including AI-powered product management softwares, intelligent automations, and predictive analytics.

Our picks for the best AI tools for product managers:

By leveraging the power of AI, product managers can achieve wonders by improving product outcomes, optimizing workflows, and creating more engaging and fulfilling work experiences for their teams. Here’s how:

🔍 Best AI tools for market research

You can't build a product that people will love without first understanding their needs and wants, which is why market research is the not-so-secret ingredient to successful product management. AI-powered market research tools can help product managers to gain insights into customer preferences, opinions, and behaviors. Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms can also analyze customer feedback from various sources, like social media, forums, and even customer reviews.

Additionally, AI- and ML-powered market research tools can help product managers to monitor the competition and stay up-to-date with the latest trends in their industry, which is becoming increasingly important. Some specific programs for market research may include:

• Mixpanel enables product managers to track user engagement and user behavior patterns–all in real-time. Mixpanel can help product managers make data-driven decisions by showing exactly how users interact with their products.
• Amplitude measures user engagement, retention, and conversion. Amplitude can also provide insights into user behavior by leveraging ML, allowing for the perfect leverage for successful products.
• Qualtrics is perfect for product managers seeking customer feedback. It is a survey software that can analyze data and extract valuable insights that you can later use in other iterations or feature launches.
• IBM Watson can help extract insights from seemingly unstructured data. The use of natural language processing and machine learning enables analyzing customer feedback and social media trends, too.
• Google Trends is a free (🥳!!!) tool that uses ML to analyze search trends to identify search query trends. It even can monitor brand reputation.

👩‍💻 Best AI tools for product development

AI can even optimize the product development process by identifying potential roadblocks and optimizing where you and your team allocate resources. ML algorithms can analyze historical data on product development, such as time to market, development costs, and performance metrics. AI can identify potential bottlenecks and suggest ways to optimize the process based on that data.

Product development can seem like an uphill battle, but using AI can make the process much smoother. Some popular options to consider might be:

• Collato can be leveraged to drive product development by providing a structured approach to organizing user research from diverse sources, including surveys, customer support requests, and user testing. By dropping these files onto the knowledge map and interconnecting them through notes, a comprehensive database of user research can be created, enabling the product team to search for and identify market opportunities. This ensures that user feedback is effectively integrated into product development decisions and that the resulting products are tailored to meet customer needs. And with our Slack integration, your team can access all the information you need, right within the Slack app.

• Autodesk Fusion 360 is an AI-powered product design and manufacturing platform that uses AI and ML to automate and optimize various aspects of the product development process, from generative design to simulation and manufacturing.
• TensorFlow is an open-source AI framework developed by Google. Product managers can use to develop and deploy ML models for tasks such as image recognition, natural language processing, and predictive analytics.
• DataRobot is an AI-powered machine learning platform that can help product managers automate and optimize various tasks related to data analysis, such as data cleaning, feature engineering, model training, and deployment.
• Sisense is an AI-powered business intelligence platform that can help product managers analyze large volumes of data and gain insights into customer behavior, market trends, and product performance.

🌟 Best AI tools for customer support

AI-powered chatbots are becoming increasingly capable (and secure 🤖), especially when it comes to handling routine customer inquiries. By identifying common issues and areas for improvement, product managers can improve the user experience and reduce customer churn. Some programs might include:

• Zendesk is an AI- and ML-powered customer service software that can automate customer interactions through chatbots and self-service options. It also offers NLP tools to help categorize and route customer inquiries.
• Freshdesk provides a suite of customer service software, including AI-powered chatbots and NLP tools for automating customer interactions and routing inquiries.
• Salesforce Service Cloud offers AI-powered chatbots, sentiment analysis tools, and self-service options to help automate customer interactions and improve the customer experience.
• Intercom provides an AI-powered conversational platform that allows businesses to automate customer interactions through chatbots and targeted messaging.
• Helpshift is an AI-powered customer service platform that includes chatbots, sentiment analysis tools, and ML capabilities to help automate customer interactions and improve support efficiency.

📈 Best AI tools for sales forecasting

Sometimes, sales forecasting can feel like a crapshoot. AI can help by accurately analyzing historical sales data and identifying patterns and trends. Machine learning algorithms (increasingly the standard for AI-powered sales forecasting!) can be trained to recognize patterns in sales data, such as seasonality, trends, and outliers. By analyzing these patterns, AI can predict future sales more accurately, allowing product managers to make more informed decisions about inventory, pricing, and marketing. Some of these programs that are popular with product managers include:

• Salesforce Einstein Analytics uses AI and ML to provide accurate sales forecasts and insights. It can analyze sales data and identify patterns and trends to help you and your team make more informed decisions.
• Zoho CRM offers AI-powered sales forecasting tools to help businesses predict future sales trends and identify potential risks. It can even provide insights into sales performance and help businesses optimize their sales strategies, too.
• InsightSquared is an AI-powered sales analytics platform that can help businesses improve their sales forecasting accuracy. It can analyze historical data and identify patterns and trends, providing insights into sales performance and future trends.

😎 Best AI tools for personalization

AI can help product managers to personalize the user experience by analyzing user behavior and preferences. Machine learning algorithms can analyze user data, such as browsing history, search queries, and purchase history, to suggest relevant products, content, and promotions. By providing personalized recommendations, product managers can increase customer engagement and loyalty. Consider using some of these:

• Collato can collect all of your product information in one place. This data, now easily findable, can then be used to create personalized onboarding experiences for new team members. AI can also be used to automatically categorize and tag content within the platform, making it easier for users to find relevant information.

• Dynamic Yield is an AI-powered personalization platform that can help businesses personalize their website and app experiences. By using ML to analyze data, it can provide an overview of customer behavior and provide personal recommendation messaging in real-time.
• Acquia Lift is an AI-powered personalization platform that can help businesses deliver personalized experiences across channels. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze customer behavior and provide personalized recommendations, content, and offers.
• Adobe Target is an AI-powered personalization platform that can help businesses deliver personalized experiences across channels. It, like the others,  uses machine learning algorithms to analyze customer behavior and provide personalized recommendations, messages, and offers.

How can product managers use ChatGPT?

This one deserves its own section. ChatGPT is revolutionizing the game and has quickly become a go-to platform in professional and academic settings. Product managers can use ChatGPT to automate email responses and customer support queries, generate ideas or brainstorming sessions, and provide you with a fresh perspective and new ideas. And if you're looking to conduct market research, ChatGPT can help with that, too, by analyzing customer feedback and providing insights into customer needs and preferences. By harnessing the power of ChatGPT, product managers can make their lives easier and more productive, allowing them to focus on what matters – like delivering great products to their customers. Here are some use cases demonstrating ChatGPT’s power:

• Improve customer support: Integrate it with your company's customer support platform, such as a chatbot or messaging app. Customers can ask questions, report issues, or seek assistance through the chatbot, and ChatGPT can respond with accurate and helpful information. Product managers can use ChatGPT to improve response times, reduce support costs, and enhance customer satisfaction.
• Provide personalized recommendations: ChatGPT can also analyze customer data and provide personalized recommendations for products or services based on customer needs and preferences. For example, customers looking for a new smartphone can ask ChatGPT for recommendations based on their budget, features, and brand preferences.
• Gather customer feedback: It can be used to gather customer feedback through conversational surveys or polls. Product managers can use ChatGPT to ask customers about their satisfaction with a product or service, customer support experience, or preferences for future product features.
• Provide product information: ChatGPT can provide customers with information about products or services. For example, a customer interested in a new software product can ask ChatGPT about its features, pricing, and compatibility with other software.
• Assist with product discovery: The platform can also help customers discover new products or services based on their needs and preferences. For example, a customer interested in a particular type of book can ask ChatGPT for recommendations based on their reading history and preferences.

😴 Tl;dr

Product managers have a vast array of AI software tools at their disposal to help streamline their work, generate new ideas, and improve their decision-making processes. These tools can be a lifesaver, saving you time, effort, and probably a few gray hairs along the way. And just like the world of AI software, the world of product management is always evolving. So, if you want to stay ahead of the game, you need to be up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies. That way, you'll be ready to face whatever the future throws at you, whether it's an army of chatbots or a horde of machine-learning algorithms. Just remember to stay curious, stay open-minded, and stay caffeinated! After all, it's not easy being a product manager, but AI can hopefully lighten the load.