Retailers are in the business of making money, so first and foremost they need to think about tackling real problems. There's a lot of hype around AI possibilities.  Retailers should take advantage of this hype, but not get distracted from key priorities.  There’s two ways to think about AI: making products easier to use, and net-new AI features for your business.  On focusing on real issues, we’re excited to see Salesforce’s CoPilot making it easier for retailers to use the products they rely on daily, like Service case summaries and the ability to elegantly shorten resolution times on costly service calls.  We’re equally excited to see net-new AI product features being tested and moved out of conception and into reality.

Speed is a critical factor when optimizing the customer experience.  When a shopper feels “known” and the experience is personalized, they can get their needs met quickly, complete their order, and move on to the next task of the day.  So how do we optimize speed?  Automation is essential. Explicitly add items to the cart that we expect the shopper will accept, like past purchases and private label.  Employ dietary edits as a filter across your experience to remove the lag of manual product edits. 

Power the shopping journey with fresh shoppable recipe content to boost cart size and site visits. Leverage AI for product matching to land a perfect cart with minimal out-of-stocks.  Finally, bring the need for speed in-store with shoppable recipes that instantly list ingredients and location within the store. 

Practical AI for Retailers