ChatGPT is the most widely adopted AI tool in UK businesses right now — but most people use only a fraction of what it can do. If you are still using it occasionally to draft an email, you are missing most of the value. Here are 10 practical tasks ChatGPT can handle for your business, with example prompts you can use straight away.
All of these work on the free version of ChatGPT at chat.openai.com. The paid version (ChatGPT Plus, £20/month) gives you access to GPT-4o which is more capable for complex tasks.
1. Writing and Responding to Emails
ChatGPT can draft professional emails from bullet points in seconds. Useful for complaints, proposals, follow-ups, rejections, and any situation where you need to say something diplomatically.
Example prompt: “Write a professional email to a customer who has complained about a delayed delivery. The order was placed on 15 March and has not arrived. We apologise and are offering a 10% discount on their next order. Tone: apologetic but professional.”
2. Writing Job Adverts
A good job advert needs to describe the role clearly, sell the company, and include the right information without being too long. ChatGPT can produce a solid first draft in under a minute.
Example prompt: “Write a job advert for a trade counter assistant at a builders merchant in Birmingham. The role is full-time, Monday to Friday, £26,000 salary. Key duties: serving trade customers, processing orders, handling stock checks. Include a short company intro paragraph — friendly but professional.”
3. Creating an FAQ for Your Website
If your staff answer the same questions repeatedly, an FAQ page saves everyone time. Give ChatGPT the questions and any relevant detail, and it will produce clean, formatted answers you can paste straight onto your site.
Example prompt: “Create an FAQ page for a small electrical wholesale business. Include questions about: minimum order quantities, delivery times, trade account applications, returns policy, and product availability. Keep each answer to 2–3 sentences. Friendly and professional tone.”
4. Drafting Quotes and Proposals
ChatGPT cannot do your pricing, but it can write the covering letter, the scope of works section, and the terms — the parts that take time to write well and that customers actually read.
Example prompt: “Write a covering letter for a project quote for a commercial roofing job at a warehouse in Leeds. The work involves replacing 400m² of flat roofing and will take 10 working days. We are a certified Sika contractor. Tone: confident and reassuring. Include a sentence about our 10-year workmanship guarantee.”
5. Summarising Long Documents
Paste a long contract, supplier terms, or policy document into ChatGPT and ask it to summarise the key points. Saves time and reduces the risk of missing something important buried in legal language.
Example prompt: “Summarise the key points of the following supplier terms and conditions. Highlight anything that could be a risk for a small business buyer, particularly around returns, liability, and payment terms.” [Then paste the document]
6. Writing Social Media Posts
Most business owners know they should post on LinkedIn or Facebook but struggle to find the time or the words. ChatGPT can turn a short brief into a ready-to-post update.
Example prompt: “Write 3 LinkedIn posts for a UK IT support company. Topics: (1) the importance of regular data backups, (2) why you should use a password manager, (3) how remote monitoring saves businesses money. Keep each post under 150 words. Professional but not overly corporate.”
7. Responding to Online Reviews
Responding to Google and Trustpilot reviews — especially negative ones — takes time and careful wording. ChatGPT handles this well, and a good response to a negative review can actually build trust with prospective customers.
Example prompt: “Write a response to this Google review: [paste review]. The customer was unhappy about waiting times. We have since hired extra staff. Acknowledge their frustration, explain what has changed, and invite them to give us another try. Keep it under 80 words.”
8. Writing Staff Policies and Procedures
If you need a social media policy, a remote working policy, a data protection policy, or a disciplinary procedure, ChatGPT can produce a solid working draft that a solicitor or HR adviser can then review and refine. This is much faster than starting from scratch.
Example prompt: “Write a simple remote working policy for a UK small business with 12 employees. Cover: eligibility, equipment responsibility, working hours expectations, data security requirements, and how remote working is approved. Plain English, suitable for a staff handbook.”
9. Training Materials and Onboarding Guides
Onboarding new staff properly reduces turnover and errors. ChatGPT can turn a list of procedures into a structured, readable guide.
Example prompt: “Create an onboarding guide for a new trade counter assistant at a plumbing merchant. Include sections on: how the order processing system works, how to handle trade account customers vs walk-in customers, what to do when a product is out of stock, and how to handle complaints. Step-by-step format, friendly tone.”
10. Meeting Summaries and Action Points
If you record meetings (via Teams, Zoom, or a transcription tool), you can paste the transcript into ChatGPT and ask it to extract the key decisions and action points. If you do not record, you can paste rough notes instead.
Example prompt: “Here are rough notes from our monthly management meeting. Please produce: (1) a brief summary of what was discussed, (2) a bullet list of action points with named owners, (3) any decisions that were made.” [Paste notes]
Tips for Better Results
- Be specific — the more context you give, the better the output. Include the tone, the audience, the length, and any specific details that must be included
- Iterate — if the first response is not quite right, say so. “Make it more concise” or “make it sound less formal” usually works well
- Always fact-check — ChatGPT can confidently state incorrect facts. Any statistics, dates, names, or legal points should be verified before publishing or sending
- Create templates — for tasks you repeat regularly, save a good prompt as a template. The prompt is as valuable as the tool itself
