Retailers that are meeting their customers where they are, will be the most successful, according to Zebra Technologies chief technology officer, Tom Bianculli.
“The customer journey varies from a preference perspective. There are some customers seeking a consultative engagement and personal interaction to understand what will lead them to the type of product or experience they’re looking for. There are other customers who prefer a self-service experience through websites and mobile apps, or in-store kiosks,” he told Retailbiz in a recent interview.
“We’re seeing mobile devices being deployed across entire workforces to allow store staff to more effectively communicate with each other both front and back of house, as well as link to the telephony system to connect the customer to the right person on the shop floor.”
As Zebra Technologies rolls out more of these technologies and solutions to assist frontline workers, the company is also seeing an increased uptake of Generative AI and digital companions for a range of use cases.
“For example, a worker can query a Gen AI Large Language Model (LLM) and say, ‘I have a customer returning an item. They have the receipt, but they don’t have the credit card they purchased it with’, and they will instantly get a response as to how they should process that return,” Bianculli said.
“Or a question like, ‘How should I proceed with this markdown?’ and immediately be presented with the right information either through text or voice. Rather than workers simply interacting with one another, these technologies allow store staff to connect directly with an intelligent agent for faster and more efficient answers.”
Looking at labour challenges from a global perspective, business management consultancy firm, Korn Ferry estimates a shortage of about 80 million workers globally by the end of the decade with about $8 trillion of unrealised economic output as a result.
“Will it be to this exact magnitude? Only time will tell, but it’s going to be a challenge for at least the balance of this decade, which is driving our customers to leveraging more automation and Gen AI capabilities that allow us to deploy ‘human centered automation’,” Bianculli said.
“For example, if there’s 20 tasks within a workflow; if you can automate 30% of these tasks – or take six tasks out of the picture – either through Gen AI or physical automation, this leaves 14 tasks that need to be done by a worker, but it’s still simplifying that workflow. We believe this will significantly offset the labour shortage.”
Retailers are also investing in demand planning and demand forecasting, and Bianculli believes AI is the technology answer to the on-demand economy – how can retailers do a better job of predicting what products customers want, before they order a product?
“Retailers can look at historical data or utilise time series forecasting, but now with AI, it adds other factors such as weather, news, social media and local events for more accurate predictions, allowing them to order products in a more anticipatory way.”