Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Retail Industry

The artificial intelligence is highly poised to disrupt the complete retail industry. The interesting convergence is taking place, one which will have enormous implications in the way retailers are selling their products and services and the way consumers are purchasing them. Artificial intelligence capabilities and applications attempt to solve real-world problems which e-commerce development industry are facing. 

E-Commerce is a bustling segment of the retail industry which represents an estimated $102.7 billion or 8.3% of the total U.S. retail sales by the year 2016. The total retail trade was approximated at 5.9% of the national GDP in the year 2016. As digital transactions have become the standard methods of buying goods and services, which leads to e-commerce firms that are exploring how AI can enhance brand competitiveness and customer loyalty.

According to the reports of Gartner, 85% of the interactions between customers and retailers will happen “without interacting with the human by the year 2020. Artificial intelligence technology in e-commerce is enhancing the complete buy-sell experience for both buyers and sellers. Today, we see AI walking boldly all across the corridors of any organization, any industry, and any business type. 

In addition to using artificial intelligence to effectively personalize customer experiences, the retailers can embrace AI as a method of eliminating the cost, consuming time and content testing. E-commerce is an excellent mechanism for browsing, but it can be daunting to get the customers for stopping deliberate and actually buy something. In fact, it is estimated that upwards of 70% of the online shopping cart is abandoned before the users complete their purchase.

How Ecommerce Retailers Embrace Artificial Intelligence?

The advancements in artificial technology allow retailers to achieve new and existing feats in personalized customer experience which increase profits. Those e-commerce retailers who avoid AI will wind up playing catch up for years. Indeed, the customer's experiences are already enabled with the help of AI that also include suggestion which accurately predicts the customer's preferences, searches which result in items that the consumer will actually have interests in and more- will soon become something that consumers not only demand but expect. 

There are many segments in software that ripe for artificial intelligence investment like digital marketing, e-commerce, data analytics, ERP/CRM, sales force automation, etc. The testing at the hands of marketing and sales professionals involves several numbers of touch points which make it difficult to implement the exact array of changes which is required to achieve the best possible communication.

Artificial intelligence will be able to quickly shed light on the web page layouts and messaging which work best for a number of audiences without the requirements for testing and analyzing. Another aspect that can also embrace the AI technology to help in improving customer experience and grow sales is Evolutionary algorithms (EAs). It creates a group of potential solutions which are tested. 

New groups of potential solutions are then automatically developed and are tested which are based on most of the successful solution from previous groups. Personalli offers technology for retailers which embrace the evolutionary algorithms in order to help e-commerce retailers deliver the best possible experience for shoppers and close more sales. It is based on a machine learning algorithm which helps retailers to deliver highly targeted incentives, and thus gives the customer the experience that will help them to generate more sales.

Top powerful ways to use AI in E-commerce

There are many e-commerce organizations which are already using forms of AI to better understand their customers and generate new leads and also providing an enhanced customer experience. Below are some of the powerful ways that help artificial intelligence technology in e-commerce development services as:

·         Customer-centric search

Amir Konigsberg is the current CEO of Twiggle, a business which enables e-commerce search engine to think the way humans do. To tackle some efficient problems, Twiggle utilizes natural language processing to narrow, contextualize and ultimately improve the search results for online shoppers. They enable the developers to build smarter apps which see the world as you do and thus empower the business to develop customer-centric experience.

·      Retarget potential customers

According to Converse, at least 33% of marketing leads are not followed up by the sales team. This means that pre-qualified potential buyers invested in your product or service, fall through the inevitable cracks. Furthermore, many organizations are overloaded with unmanageable customer data that they do little or nothing with. This is an incredible goldmine of intelligence that could be used to enhance the sales cycle.

·         Efficient sales process

Thankfully, just about all of us moved on from the days of old sales techniques such as picking up trusty yellow pages and partnering potential clients with the help of cold-calling. The customer’s lives are now heavily influenced by a variety of different media from TV adverts to social media. In fact, in the past 12 months, even Snapchat has established itself as a viable sales and marketing tool, opening up new opportunities.

·         Empower store workers

Whilst online retailers have experimented with chatbots, there has also been some consideration of how to replicate the helpful experience in-store. Lowe has introduced the first autonomous robot in the year 2014, called LoweBot. The tall shopping assistant greets the customers at the door, guides them well around the store and sources relevant products information and even assists employees with inventory management.

·         Implement virtual assistant

The advancement of the virtual assistant is rooted in natural language processing and the machine’s ability to interrupt what people are saying in words or text. We all are familiar with Google Home and Apple and now Siri and they have successfully introduced us the idea of talking to a phone, laptop or even home appliances. However, the evolution of many of these virtual assistants has already become a boring commodity for the user, with limited updates in recent years.

Conclusion

Although the term artificial intelligence may imply something negative or dehumanized, AI allows the organization for providing a more personalized experience for their customers. It makes possible for e-commerce retailers to analyze millions of interactions every day and ultimately target offers down to a single customer.