The recent whirlwind of new opportunities and use cases fueled by more readily accessible AI can feel like a maelstrom. How do you ensure you’re directing your IT investments into the right initiatives, avoiding low-value or infeasible projects that don’t move the needle on your retail company’s strategic goals?
NVIDIA’s State of AI in Retail and CPG: 2024 Trends report analyzed 30 different AI use cases applicable to retail, while Gartner’s Generative AI Use-Case Comparison for Retail paper from July 2024 looked at 20 common use cases. There’s much common ground—especially around use cases in the contact center.
More than one-third (36%) of retailers surveyed by NVIDIA are currently investing in Conversational AI and NLP for digital channels. And a large majority (86%) want to use AI to enhance customer experiences. According to a Google survey from earlier this year, 59% of retailers are interested in using Generative AI specifically to streamline customer service and 38% want to use it to support employees with better knowledge.
A common current state: Just good enough
While most retailers have automated contact solutions, such as website chatbots or telephone Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs), the quality can vary. They may be able to offer some conversational understanding, business rule automation for funneling customer inquiries, and the ability to answer straightforward questions.
However, solutions that result in the need to repeat information, low containment rates, and the inability to complete common tasks like shipping inquiries or credit card payments without live agent queues don’t inspire loyalty or offer ease. And when customers get a taste of a top-of-the-line IVA experience—with highly accurate understanding, automation that feels human, personalization that anticipates intent, and self-service for more complex issues—retailers with poor experiences stand out even more.
A key issue holding retailers with “good enough” systems back is an over-reliance on containment as the key metric of automation success. When callers hang up or sigh and accept a half-solution that doesn’t really solve their problem, this could be declared “successful” when only looking at containment. Rather, to remain competitive, retailers need to provide more engaging experience that resolve issues with as much customer ease as possible.
Challenges with implementing AI solutions
Retailers shared three main AI implementation concerns in the NVIDIA survey: inadequate technology, hiring AI and data experts, and having sufficient data for good accuracy. These difficulties can be alleviated with the right AI partner. The same survey notes that 52% of all retailers are opting to use a partner to help implement AI. For retailers with annual revenues of more than $500 million, that number jumps to 63%.
While Gen AI has made the advancements in AI feel relatively new, many technology vendors have been exploring and advancing AI solutions for decades. Choosing a partner with deep expertise and a track record of innovation can help retailers address each concern.
Interactions, for example, has been in the Conversational AI and virtual assistant space for two decades and has developed 133 patents and counting. A key tenet of Interactions IVA and success is our hybrid approach to AI, which uses human-augmented understanding and workflow orchestration to seamlessly and invisibly assist the IVA with utterances it can’t understand and tasks that need a human decision.
This leads to a 97% accuracy rate and much quicker time to value, as the AI and ML don’t need to learn from failed calls and chats. Rather, as human agents help the IVA understand confusing intents, unusual phrasing, or heavy accents, the data is fed back into the AI via machine learning and the call continues successfully.
IVA data—with automated transcripts of each interaction with PII redacted and recordings that can be reviewed—can be analyzed to find new intents that can be mapped for self-service automation, as well as deeper problems that can be resolved within the company.
Whenever possible, we meet with clients weekly. Our customer success experts do the homework on client analytics and provide the bigger picture, bringing deeper knowledge of the industry and how other clients have solved problems. Then, we engage with cross-functional teams who know the legacy, the strategy, the technology, and the vision for customer engagement. And, we can be the dissenting voice when it’s needed.
“When you have the right people in the room and they are interested in solving the problem together, creativity starts flowing,” says Casey Thornberry, Senior Director of Account Management for some of our largest retail clients. “You discover solutions that thread the needle of what can be supported with the resources at hand, rather than driving forward infeasible solutions that are invalid in a week.”
Gen AI opportunities for retail contact centers
While businesses across all industries are seeking ways to implement Gen AI solutions, contact centers offer several compelling use cases. Indeed, retailers are bullish on the effect of Gen AI on the customer experience. According to the Google survey, 95% believe Gen AI will have an impact on the customer experience.
While Gen AI is an exciting opportunity, it’s critical to have humans involved in the process to avoid hallucinations and non-contextual results from reaching customers. With this guardrail in mind, retailers can look for GenAI solutions that offer:
- Agent assists with in-the-moment natural-language search that pulls information from company documentation, such as the website, manuals, and knowledge bases.
- Generated conversational prompts to assist agents in live calls, social media responses, and chat and SMS interactions.
- Consistent and near-real time call summarization that agents can quickly review and approve and that provides more trustworthy customer records.
- Natural-language interfaces for analytics for easier-to-interpret insights and suggestions.
- Generated FAQs, help articles, and other customer service copy that can be edited and approved by human reviewers.
The proof is in the pudding
Retailers who are currently using AI, whether in the contact center in operations, merchandising, or other areas, are seeing concrete results. According to the NVIDIA survey, more than half (60%) believe AI has helped increase annual revenue, while 72% say it’s led to a decrease in operational costs. Other benefits include greater operational efficiencies (53%), improved CX (42%), and competitive advantage (32%).
Now is the time for retail leaders—in the contact center and beyond—to step up and lead their companies to strategic uses of AI, like advanced IVAs, that offer an attractive mix of feasibility, quick ROI, and sustainable value through continual improvement and close solution partnerships.
To learn more, see how one of the world’s leading athletic brands uses Interactions IVA to deliver a premium customer experience.
