We explain how Customer Experience in Retail has transformed from its chaotic beginnings to the age of Artificial Intelligence.
Black Friday, an iconic event in the retail sector, marks the start of the holiday shopping season and represents a unique opportunity for brands to offer exceptional discounts to consumers without compromising their shopping experience.
In this context, we explain how retail has been improving the Customer Experience from the origins of Black Friday, to the present day with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technologies as an increasingly important element in the industry.
From ancient ledgers to Generative AI
Black Friday has its roots in the United States and was originally used to describe the chaos and traffic that occurred on the day after Thanksgiving due to the large number of customers shopping en masse in the cities. Thus, the term “Black” was related to the change in the accounting books from red numbers (losses) to black numbers (profits).
Since the phenomenon spread beyond the US as an expected event for consumers around the world, retail has been evolving from the traditional in-store experience to the online experience, seeking to take full advantage of technology to personalise offers and improve customer service.
In a recent article from Forrester, Michele Goetz, VP & Principal Analyst, noted that 67% of companies are already incorporating generative AI as a strategy to transform the way retailers interact with customers.
The Great Customer Experience Transformation in Retail
Thus, as Giada Longo, Digital Marketing Specialist at SANDSIV, points out, “in the competitive retail sector, where the shopping experience is essential, technological solutions that take into account the needs and desires of customers play a crucial role in enabling brands to offer a differential experience on this important date“. Some of these key aspects are:
Unified Phygital Experience: VOC solutions such as sandsiv+ are able to unify customer behaviour and feedback data from both online and in-store environments, enabling retailers to identify pain points in the customer journey and take action to ensure a seamless online and offline experience.
Personalisation of Offers with GenAI: By 2024, 60% of workers are expected to use Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to do their jobs. This trend will be no different in the retail sector, making it possible to personalise offers tailored to the needs and preferences of different customer profiles, which is particularly relevant on dates such as Black Friday.
Expansion of AI with Open Source Models: The Forrester article points out that 85% of companies will expand AI with open source models. In this regard, retailers will need to rely on technology providers such as SANDSIV to facilitate this transition towards adopting these open source models to develop successful strategies.
Real-time employee insights: Real-time collaboration is essential to ensure that CX teams, customer managers, sales and marketing teams can manage customer demands in real time and deliver exceptional customer service.
