Artificial intelligence is the big buzzword in retail right now. But a lot of retailers aren’t making the most of the opportunities for this innovative tech.

We turned to Ann Conway, Founder of CX strategy studio Amplify Design to find out some of the most overlooked – and potentially lucrative – opportunities for AI in retail.

Ann Conway, Founder, Amplify Design

There are opportunities to use AI at lots of points in the customer journey – from conversational search to AI-generated product recommendations to personalized engagement post-purchase.

But a big area of opportunity that I don’t think people talk about much is using AI to make staff more efficient and effective by automating some of their processes and enhancing what they can do on their own. This is a huge unlock for retailers. 

For example, retailers often have a lot of data in their client books that AI could help to analyse so they know which customers to prioritize in their outreach who are likeliest to engage and buy. This helps staff become way more effective just using the data that has already been collected on people.

A perfect application of AI is managing low-level communication such as following up on a visit or sending a replenishment reminder, even coming up with product recommendations to send to a client. A bot can do that because the retailer has all of your profile data and your past purchases and your sizes and your preferences. We tested this with some sellers and they were really very open to that help. They compared it to having a junior stylist around.

The important thing is to make sure that AI is solving a customer need. Something that I don’t see a lot of people doing is fit tools that help customers make a decision at the point of purchase. Fit is hard and is one of the biggest reasons people abandon their carts or don’t ever convert. There are AI tools that can try items on different body types or can put together outfits and look books to help build confidence in a purchase. 

Conversational search is another area with huge potential. It’s surprising to me that so many retailers rely on this web 1.0 search bar where you search their product catalogue with an item name. Tools that are a bit more human and contextual that you could talk to would be really helpful. Shoppers think of products in the context of how they will use them – and that’s why they’re using Google to search phrases or questions instead of typing in product names on the retailer site.

Why couldn’t you use conversational search the way you use ChatGPT? For example, asking it for some wardrobe ideas for your vacation and going back and forth and getting it to edit the recommendations based on your feedback.

When we tested prototypes of tools like this that allow shoppers to give input to get better recommendations people were thrilled. They felt like the brand was listening to them and felt seen as an unique person in a way that they’re not usually when shopping. That emotional connection had a big lift on the customer experience and generated loyalty to the retailer.