In this challenging moment of change, where the Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing the world and especially is starting to innovate the retail, DINN! is thinking about the role the physical channel with a strong digital integration has to take inside the customer experience in order to live a concrete pleasant experience for customer and get success for the business.
Starting from the definition of intelligence as “the ability to change, to adapt and to explore the environment activating people’s mental process” we assume that, consequently, the satisfaction of people while moving around the spaces is able to bring successful business results.
During the Marketing Roundtable, organized by Confimprese in December 2019, we have deepened the influence of AI and its impact on customer experience, on business models and whole retail world: Artificial Intelligence is the “engine” through which new results are provided and it could facilitate the creation of new formats, helping to overcome the physical (the place where people live) and digital (where people find more convenience) gap.
It’s important to differentiate AI and Digital, providing a seamless experience between them. So, we have to consider AI as an engine enabler in this retail transformation Era.
More spaces, where customers’ needs are anticipated with a specific offer thanks to a deep reading of each behavior by proposing direct solutions, are expected in the retail world with different applications: we call it “the Intelligent Stores”.
> In store customization through digital interaction
> Out-of store customization to physical experience
> Augmented physical experience
> Deep customer learning
> Easy smart interaction
> Digital engagement
Data collection and their intelligent analysis guide the customer, inside the store, automatically producing highly customized content.
We can find a perfect example applied to the new TMB BANK in Bangkok, designed by DINN!, where visitors can engage in an Avatar Identity that will represent the customers following its financial needs and can collect information about users and can choose how to customize their experience in the physical or digital dimension.
AI flows offer to brands the possibility to implement changes in the whole supply system producing personalized suggestions.
Depending on the information that AI acquires online, the way to expose the product inside the physical store can change: a typical example is the Nike Flagship Store in Chicago where, thanks to consumer data collection in their community, the space can be adapted changing the product display mode following the approval (Likes) obtained online.
SweetGreen in New York is a restaurant that used AI to learn customers’ habits and to personalize menus. To improve their customer experience, avoiding pression and queues during the choice of their meals, they have created an App where customers could order before their arrival with a system also able to propose preferred salads recognizing the user.
We are living a new Era where AI encourages the consumer to live experiences in the simplest way.
ALIBABA HEMA, in Shanghai, by reading the product during the grocery shopping, takes advantage of AI providing to customers information, recipes and suggestions to specific products they like more. In addition, customers, thanks to the smartphone, could access a lot of additional information relating to the products: from the ingredients to the origin, from the allergens to the quality certifications.
SEPHORA & experimental innovation agency WILDBYTES, in Spain, unveil the future of retail by taking personalization to the next level. The mirror uses a smart engine that accurately blends actionable insights on the person (including gender, age, look, and style) using these parameters to offer personalized recommendations for people to power up their look.
In this case, AI systems process personal data to propose customized products to people in order to reduce cognitive efforts. A very important step, in this phase, is to draw a line to satisfy customers while safeguarding their privacy.
Specific examples of deep customer learning, in the beauty market, are:
SK-II’s Future X Smart Store, in Singapore, using AI technology and computer vision, realizes a face recognition to offer beauty products suitable for each type of skin.
Seymour Powell where the artificial intelligence operates on two levels: first, it finds suitable products for each user’s skin type, environment and personal style. Then, it augments that base profile by incorporating data on the user’s recent lifestyle and their schedule for the week ahead.
The use of intelligent systems allows simplifying processes acting in a self-way in order to obtain positive impacts on customer experience.
The voice control is a clear example that helps to simplify the experience of integration: Amazon Echo was planned in this direction, reminding people what to do without any input anticipating the command.
Through the use of AI, with data analysis and suggestions, people increase their ability to manage their financial situation.
For example, with the support of innovative systems able to collect useful data from different banks to read all customers’ behaviors regarding their financial situation, suggesting to them how to spend or save money, always anticipating their needs.
AI can be an important tool for a customer successful experience reminding that we have to start first defining the customer experience promise, then the role of both physical and digital touchpoints, ending by defining how AI can be the perfect enabler partner of the Retail transformation path.
The implications for the Retail are many, let’s focus on the main:
People empowerment: a new way to interact among people, technology and the final customer redefining the different role of Staff inside the stores: AI could offer a support to better manage the customers or, by studying the employees’ actions, provide them more time to dedicate to other activities (while the “machine” solves other operations);
Augmented experience space: the different use of the whole retail environment, by people, with a different interaction human-space-technology in order to be guided and to have a customized service;
Customized customer journey: depending on clients’ needs and customer interaction with the brand, the retail can offer multiple customer journeys depending on the information collected by the brand obtaining full customer satisfaction.
