Despite what many people say, the high street is not dead – it’s simply transforming. However, as Martin Linstrom, managing director, UK & Ireland, IPsoft explains, we now live in a digital world where consumers can find whatever they want online and it is simply not necessary for people to travel to brick-and-mortar shops anymore.

This has obviously had a hugely detrimental effect to retailer’s bottom line; and one only needs to glance at the news to see a slew of well-known chains heading into administration with sad regularity.

But just because more and more people are going online for their shopping doesn’t meant there isn’t a space for a good in-store experience. A recent survey found that 88% of retailers that have improved the shopper experience in their physical stores have seen an increase in turnover as a direct result – so there’s still a real need for knowledgeable professionals who can offer advice, share information, and help to steer the transaction along to completion.

So, something needs to change. Brick-and-mortar retailers must shore up their bottom line and seize upon any potential sale by cutting inefficiencies wherever possible. This is where cutting-edge technology such as AI can step in.

But why should brick-and-mortar retailers, arguably the hardest hit by the increasingly connected and digital consumers, utilise AI?

By incorporating AI into brick-and-mortar experiences, you’re utilising the best of both worlds. Not only are you arming customers with access to a wealth of knowledge, you’re augmenting your staff with a reliable, always-on digital colleague who can provide whatever information is required in real time and make sure the customer’s journey from initial fact finding, to making the purchase, is as seamless as possible. With that in mind, here are four ways AI can improve the in-store shopping experience:

Instant information

We’ve all been in the situation where you’ve been wondering around a shop, desperately hoping to find a free customer service representative to ask a simple question about an item – just to get frustrated and abandon the purchase. A lack of staff on the shop floor has a real impact to the customer experience and, therefore, how many transactions make it to completion. It’s quite simple, the longer someone has to wait, the more likely it is that they’ll give up and walk away from the purchase.

But by utilising a conversational AI in an app or in-store kiosk, retailers can avoid this problem. A potential customer merely needs to speak or type a query into an app or kiosk to get an immediate answer. An AI knows everything that needs to be known about the company – be it product dimensions or a companywide inventory. When you compare that with imperfect human memory, you can see how there’s no real competition; and an AI can provide accurate information at the touch of a button.

Remembering your customers

One of the easiest ways for any service provider to improve the customer experience is to remember the customer. However, when a customer interacts with an employee, that interaction is usually forgotten by the employee soon after. Unless the experience was particularly interesting and memorable, or the customer frequents the store, it’s likely no one will remember the details of that particular transaction – but an AI never forgets.

If a customer asks a digital AI assistant a specific question, inquiries about a specific product, or provides feedback about preferences – it all gets logged in the AI’s memory and remains there until the customer returns; and the AI can pick up where it left off and use this information to continue the relationship. It’s touches like this that provide customers with the continuity and frictionless customer journey they crave.

Smoother transactions

The easiest way to upset a customer is to make them wait. According to recent research, the limit that most customers are willing to wait is 6 minutes 46 seconds. This frustration becomes magnified once a customer gets to the counter, asks a question, and is told to patiently wait while the associate attempts to find an answer (much to the chagrin of the people queuing up behind them).

Waiting in queues is no longer a necessary evil, when everyone has more processing power in their pocket than Apollo 11 needed to get to the moon. So, why do we still need to spend so much time standing around?

This is another way AI can help. By equipping customers with mobile applications and in-store kiosks, which can answer any questions, guide the whole customer journey, and utilise cutting-edge ‘just walk out technology’ – the entire shopping process can be made frictionless.  

Bring it home

With the help of AI, retailers can make the entire customer journey as smooth as possible. This is vital in the battle against big online retailers such as Amazon and ASOS. By providing powerful and knowledge-based customer experiences, AI can help bring shoppers back to a store again and again.