Suresh Menon, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Software Solutions at Zebra Technologies.
Retailers continue to tackle a highly challenging macroeconomic environment. The days of reactionary responses, such as raising or slashing prices on consumer goods to break even or move excess inventory for long-term success, are gone. Retailers must work in new, better ways, as the economy—along with shoppers and trends—will always change.
The trick is effectively planning for change, uncertainties and unknowns—and being positioned to thrive regardless of shifting tides. Technology—specifically artificial intelligence (AI)—can help retailers focus on four retail basics constant to success. The change lies in how you approach these four areas of retail by properly leveraging AI.
Cultivating Stellar Customer Service
If you’re not competing in customer service in retail, then you’re failing. Retailers must continually find new ways to deliver the service level that keeps customers coming back. AI algorithms know how to get the job done, providing effective and efficient customer service in several scenarios.
For example, AI can assist 24/7/365 to answer customers’ basic questions with virtual assistants, virtual stylists or makeup artists for fashion and cosmetic retailers. And if AI can’t help with more complex questions, or a customer prefers a human interaction, AI can route customer inquiries to the right person, so it enables you to always be there for your customers.
AI’s automated decision making also supports retail teams, simplifying workforce scheduling and task management. For example, workforce scheduling tools, which have AI roots, rely on well-trained AI that analyzes your needs and does what’s best for your business.
Once it understands the current business demand levels and employee needs, AI automatically generates schedules that ensure enough workers will be available to meet forecasted customer demand. You’ll have the right amount of associates on the floor to serve customers. AI can also tell associates what they need to do. It looks at both visuals and data based on signals, generating associate tasks such as “restocking shelf X with Y” or “helping customer in aisle Y with Z.”
AI delivers stellar customer satisfaction by using advanced analytics to forecast consumer demand for products, incorporating seasonality, promotions and other variables into a stable, accurate forecast that allows agility when needed. Retailers’ inventory is stocked with the right merchandise, in the right amount, at the right time for customers.
Consider the best ways you can enhance your customer experience and explore how AI can bring those enhancements to life. From answering basic questions to routing advanced inquiries to generating workers’ schedules and tasks to forecasting demand, AI can help you elevate your customer service.
Detecting And Preventing Fraud
The National Retail Federation estimates that shrink is a $100 billion retail issue. And while loss prevention is all the buzz, loss detection is its positive, profitable precursor. The sources of total retail loss (TRL) are many, ranging from theft, fraud, shrink, payroll leaks and more. As the methods of fraud become more sophisticated, so must the detection methods.
AI is a powerful fraud detective. It can uncover when, where and how loss is occurring, allowing retailers to take low-risk and high-value steps to stem business losses—before they happen. When it comes to the retail shelf, if you have better information about what’s missing, you have a better chance of triggering actions to restock those items, thus avoiding the double hit of losing the cost of goods sold (COGS) on the missing item and revenue on the next sale.
AI-powered predictive analytics detects anomalies and where losses are happening in real time, analyzes the data, prescribes how to correct the issue and then confirms execution. This allows you to uncover losses beyond the point-of-sale (POS) and removes the dated, painstaking search method to identify losses by combing through data, dashboards and reports.
Harness the power of AI to catch—or even prevent—losses early, correct them and prevent future losses by adding predictive and prescriptive analytics to your existing technology platform.
Optimizing Inventory Management
Given the tumult in retail and the supply chain for the last several years, traditional techniques used to manage inventory have proven woefully insufficient. Using AI demand planning and machine learning, retailers can better manage inventory, even staying ahead of its curves.
Demand intelligence drives inventory decisions by anticipating demand, planning accordingly and executing to meet those demands. For example, retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies enabled with demand forecasting solutions have the ability to analyze the relevant “who, what, where, when and why” variables at a granular level, down to the weather or world events.
AI is critical to inventory management as it uncovers patterns and trends more precisely than humans so retailers can optimize inventory, minimize waste, help ensure customers get what they want and pivot to meet emerging needs.
Use AI to track market dynamics to help you understand which and how many SKUs to produce during a certain period to meet your customer demand.
Powering Personalization
A personal touch has always been important to retail. Today, it’s provided in new, AI-generated ways. Machine learning algorithms analyze customer data, including shopping behavior, browsing and purchase history—even social media interactions—and use those insights to help retailers personalize service down to an individual level.
Most retailers offer some level of personalization ranging from messaging and product recommendations to rewards, discounts and incentives that will likely resonate with individual customers. Reward programs also rely on AI to track visits and analyze and predict purchases.
It all adds up to more personal engagement with customers, which translates into more loyalty and a better customer experience. According to Zebra’s Global Shopper Study, 76% of consumers expect retailers to use the latest technology. AI is a powerful tool for solving real business problems now.
One of AI’s key powers is to help retailers stay ahead of the currents of change the future promises to bring. When choosing a trusted partner to help you leverage AI in your operations, select a vendor who is committed to the responsible AI principles of accountability, ethical purpose and transparency to help ensure you have a safe, effective solution.
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