Recent AI advancements have the power to reshape the way the industry operates. Retailers embracing Generative AI can stay ahead of the curve and compete in this ever-changing competitive landscape — enabling them to lead with a customer-first approach while operating with more efficiency.
Square’s Future of Commerce report noted that 91% of U.S. retailers plan to use technology and automation for their critical behind-the-scenes work, like inventory, orders, payroll and invoicing — as well as for more customer-focused needs like communications, marketing, loyalty and checkout. While automated messaging tools have dominated the AI conversation lately, retailers should consider the gamut of generative AI applications that can benefit their businesses today to continue working smarter, instead of harder.
- Maximizing time through optimized product descriptions.
Besides counting SKUs one by one, writing product descriptions is among the most manual and time-intensive backend tasks for a retail business. Not only do online sellers need to sufficiently describe an item to enable a purchase, but they also need to ensure their description won’t be flagged as copyrighted from another site selling a similar item.
With AI, retailers can easily generate full-sentence product descriptions when they are creating items in their inventory. A fashion retailer, for example, will want to quickly list its new season’s assortment on its digital channels in order to market and promote these products to customers. Instead of waiting on a retail worker to write ideal search engine-optimized titles and features of the item by hand, AI-assisted titles and descriptions would save an enormous amount of time and effort — enabling businesses to start selling as soon as they have available inventory.
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- Creating a seamless inventory management journey.
When the pandemic hit, retail supply chain disruptions prompted interest in transformation. AI increasingly offers businesses valuable insights into buying behaviors, such as seasonal products trending up or down, and in some places extending further to fully automate operational tasks. From managing warehouses to creating purchase orders, alerting when high sales velocity might create unexpectedly low inventory or using low velocity to suggest discounting, retailers can future-proof their operations by leaning on automation technology.
Consumers are also driving the march to automation, asking retailers for automated features to make their shopping journeys more seamless. According to Square’s Future of Commerce report, 44% of consumers want to use automation to help find product information or inventory — an important trend worth paying attention to.
- Providing 24/7 customer service.
Retailers know how crucial it is to have an easily accessible customer service line and are increasingly adopting a hybrid approach. This can mean using conversational AI across SMS and email on top of a real-life representative, so that common customer concerns can be expedited while more complex matters are routed for more customized handling.
For service-based retailers, such as beauty salons and wellness spas, automation can streamline bookings and appointment reminders as well as handle confirmations, cancellations and rebookings. For product-based businesses, AI can troubleshoot issues by handling customer correspondences around orders and invoices, and can even provide suggested actions in the form of one-click interactions, such as a prompt to send an invoice or payment link. Conversational AI enables sellers to always be on, even after hours — enabling sellers to expand their operations by automating this part of their business. All in all, automation can save sellers time by expediting requests while offering the 24/7 support customers want and need from the businesses they frequently visit or shop with.
- Maintaining a cost-efficient marketing toolkit.
Investment in marketing and advertising can be extremely costly, so expect to see more AI advancements in this area, such as full or partial automation of high-quality, personalized emails and social management. On the creative front, AI capabilities today extend into virtual photoshoots, product catalogs and even generating realistic models — reducing the amount of time required to produce a polished catalog or website and enabling anyone to produce compelling photos of their products.
With more streamlined marketing, businesses can maximize staff availability and impact for other critical tasks, especially during key shopping periods like the holidays. In particular, small- to medium-sized businesses can benefit greatly from this type of application as they usually cite marketing as a challenge to acquiring new customers. This can be attributed to lack of capital needed to keep up with consistent marketing activities.
What’s Next?
Consumers are already calling for more modernization from businesses, with more than one in five stating it would make them more likely to shop with a retailer — indicating the need for retailers to add some form of generative AI into their product mix.
For many businesses that have embraced automation in their operations, there’s evidence that they’ve performed at a higher level of efficiency and are able to stay steps ahead of their competition.
“Automation really helps the everyday operations, especially when we are training new employees. There are wholesale services online that I work with, where as soon as I purchase an item, the inventory comes in with photos. In the greenhouse, where we often will have new employees who do not know every plant, it has been our savior in many circumstances just to be able to have our employees see the photograph of the plant and be able to recognize it in that way,” said Maggie Adams, Owner of Magpie & Thorn.
When determining what generative AI application to start out with, consider what solution would give the most time back to your staff so they can focus on strategizing what will move the needle for your business’ bottom line.
Roshan Jhunja is the General Manager of Retail at Square. His vision is to empower retailers of all sizes to thrive by leveraging world-class design and Square’s unique platform approach. He oversees all aspects of this business vertical including the experience of retailers that run their businesses on Square’s software and hardware. Prior to 2016, Jhunja held a variety of leadership roles in quantitative finance and investment banking in the NYC area. In his free time he enjoys motorcycling, playing guitar and karaoke with his two children.
