Background: For Generative AI to move beyond the hype cycle, this still-evolving technology must solve industry-specific pain points. Organizations are exploring using Generative AI to automate tasks, generate new ideas, improve decision-making, and personalize the customer experience. As Generative AI adoption spreads, the highest value will be in solving industry-specific business problems.
Towards that end, Amy Eschliman, Managing Director of Retail Solutions Strategy at Google Cloud, posted a blog on how Google Cloud addresses some of the retail industry challenges. With retailers struggling with margin pressure from multiple factors, generative AI uniquely increases productivity, allowing retailers to focus on improving the customer experience. With e-commerce becoming a preferred method of shopping, most retailers with an omnichannel presence need a personalized experience to differentiate themselves from competitors. This short blog post will discuss the top two retail use cases that Google Cloud addresses, followed by a summary.
Google shared the Gen AI benchmarking study results in the blog post highlighting respondent priorities (See Figure 1 above), clearly showing customer service automation and conversational commerce as the top two use cases for the retail industry. These use cases match labor-intensive tasks that fall in the high-expense category for the retail sector.
Customer Service Automation: Some modern applications are built on a business model that does not support individual customer interactions with an actual customer representative. For example, the Bird ride-sharing app responds to any communication via the app with an automated system. Customers with real problems to resolve are frustrated when such a system cannot resolve issues quickly.
Trained with customer-specific data, a Gen AI application can improve the success of customer communications with a positive experience and resolution to queries. One customer success example that shows how Google Cloud is helping retail customers is the Wendy’s pilot implemented at fast-food take-out windows. The benefits of such automation can make a real difference in the bottom line of a fast-food vendor like Wendy’s.
Conversational Commerce: Smartphones have become a dominant device among consumers, and retailers must adapt to new customer expectations for convenience in interactions. Maintaining context and continuity in a customer purchase journey, from browsing a catalog late in the evening to placing an order the following day through a chat application like WhatsApp, is becoming an essential feature. Retail organizations are exploring how generative AI can be used to improve conversational commerce and develop virtual assistants that can help customers find what they need and make personalized recommendations. These virtual assistants could reduce search abandonment and improve the overall customer experience.
In the blog post, Google referred to Estee Lauder using generative AI technologies to create personalized experiences when interacting with customers. Generative AI combined with a consolidated data lake can provide significant cross-selling opportunities across Estee Lauder’s 20+ brands.
Summary:
The future of Generative AI success will be determined by the ability to identify and solve unique industry challenges in a cost-effective method with realizable ROI (Return On Investment). Estee Lauder and Wendy’s examples illustrate that Google Cloud has shown its expertise in generative AI to build and implement retail-specific use cases successfully.
The future of Generative AI success by vendors will be determined by the ability to identify and solve unique industry challenges. Furthermore, multiple customers in the same industry segment can quickly reuse these use cases without high investments. The latest cloud offerings from Google for the retail industry that leverage Generative AI show Google’s investment in this industry and will provide an impetus for its global retail clients to refine or build new solutions to improve customer experience and stickiness. Using real customer examples to articulate the business value of Generative AI will give Google Cloud a leg up in winning business in the retail segment.
Ram Viswanathan, Consultant and ex-IBM Fellow contributed to this blog post.