How can AI Help Retailers Improve Customer Engagement & Conversions?

• By James Wilson
• 19-04-2022
• Artificial Intelligence

Would you go to a retail store with thousands of products in which you have thousands of products to choose from but no sales assistant to guide you?

No one would. Customer behavior has evolved. Gone are the days when people mindlessly strolled in retail stores, spending hours buying just one pack of cigarettes. These days, they don't want to waste any time. Instead, they want to purchase products and get on with their lives quickly.

That's why sales assistants play a crucial role in retail stores. They guide customers through the purchasing journey and ensure customers leave satisfied.

But these days, AI has also started playing a pivotal role in the retail business. Successfully navigating customers throughout the buying process has ensured they remain engaged throughout the entire process.

5 Best Ways in which AI is Enhancing Customer Engagement and Driving Conversions

1. AI Leverages Predictive Analytics to Make Informed Business Decisions
Running out of supplies is not new in the retail world. During the COVID pandemic, we even saw trivial things like hand sanitizers and masks running out of stock. Hence, it is essential to ensure you never run out of stock.

AI can help you better manage your inventory by predicting when you're running out of stock, which items are not selling well, or when the supply is low. Equipped with these insights, you can better plan your business moves and maximize your profits.

Even AI-powered technologies like digital twins can simulate your retail business in a virtual environment and offer accurate insights to improve forecasting, demand planning, and store operations.

2. AI can Help You Go Truly Queueless & Contactless
Standing in long queues was something I often hated during retail shopping. I just wanted that one day I would walk into a store, put items in my cart, and quickly check out without having to stand in the self-checkout line for scanning products.

Thankfully, with AI, it has become possible to go queueless and contactless in retail stores. Amazon Go Stores are an excellent example of such queueless and contactless stores.

These Amazon Go stores have sensors placed throughout the store. Any item you pick and place in your cart would transmit information to their Amazon Go app. You don't even have to worry about getting billed. You'll be automatically charged from the customer credit card information stored in the Amazon Go app.

As a result, the following two wonderful things happen with these Amazon Go Stores:

Retail shopping becomes a seamless experience with no need to stand in long queues.
You can be assured that your credit/debit card remains safe from potential frauds and scams.

3. AI can Help You Take Personalization to a Whole New Level
Personalization is the key to success in the retail business. You're already a winner if you can offer your customers a customized experience that makes them feel at home.

AI is helping retailers take personalization to an entirely different standard by assisting them in gathering and analyzing behavioral data in real-time. It also lets retailers deliver targeted experiences both in-store and online.

You no longer have to show different products and hope they buy from you. Instead, AI can help you recommend products based on their past purchasing behavior on your website.

For example, if a person likes reading novels, AI can help you understand which genre novels you've purchased in the last few months and recommend your next book based on that. This way, you can ensure you don't recommend a sappy romance novel when they love reading thrillers because they'll barely buy it.

The above example is just the tip of the iceberg on how AI can help you achieve personalization. As you dig deep, you will realize the sky's the limit to how much you can influence the customer journey with it.

4. AI can Help You a Better Customer Service
You're mistaken if you think your work ends when the customer lands in your store and buys from you. The real work starts from that.

As a retailer, you've to make these customers buy from you and ensure they visit your store again and again. It is possible only if you offer them excellent customer service. Here's how AI can help you do that:

AI is responsible for powering chatbots, virtual assistants, and virtual call centers. Retailers can apply it to understand and interpret human communication. This way, you can better serve each query - whether it's about finding products via voice search in eCommerce or answering product-related questions. AI can also help you effectively manage customer complaints by transferring and analyzing data for speech analytics and sentiment analysis.

In a Nutshell: AI is No Longer a Choice, It Has Become a Necessity
In a hyper-competitive world, it has become necessary for retailers to carefully gauge customers' preferences and offer them a personalized experience. Without AI, offering such an experience is impossible. Running a retail business without leveraging the power of AI is like shooting an arrow in the dark and hoping for a bully eye. If you want to exceed your customers' expectations and offer them an experience they never forget, you must harness the power of AI.