It is not often
that the team at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® turns and looks at their
Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson with bewilderment. However, every time he brings
up the topic of AI all heads turn to him and say more? He then nods and says yes there is more and
will be a lot more to come!
If success does leave
clues and it does, it’s AI that will be uncovering those clues for you very
soon.
Recently there was an exclusive CStore Decisions webinar hosted by
editor-in-chief Erin Del Conte, our team thinks it was so full of good insights
we wanted to share it with you. Here it
is:
“AI is among topics in the c-store world
(and the world in general) that are virtually impossible to avoid in common
conversation. Now, convenience retailers are learning how to harness the power
of AI to their benefit.
In an exclusive CStore Decisions webinar hosted by
editor-in-chief Erin Del Conte, industry professionals Derek Gaskins, chief
marketing officer, Yesway; Richard Crone,
CEO, Crone
Consulting LLC; and Scott Smith, director of IT, Parker’s, discussed several topics revolving around the idea of AI.
Gaskins kicked off the webinar by noting
that Yesway — which operates over 420 stores across the U.S. — is currently
using AI mainly by its marketing and merchandising groups for content creation,
personalization within its loyalty program and customer experience management.
He noted that Yesway uses AI for
“measuring the sentiment, harnessing and listening to feedback that we get in
an omnichannel fashion and then responding to it and closing out those
tickets.”
He added that the technology is also used
within merchandising, whether it’s dynamic pricing, management, writing cogent
summaries and making sure jobs have detailed descriptions for the roles and
responsibilities of category managers.
For Parker’s —which operates 78 locations
mainly throughout Georgia and South Carolina — the chain is exploring AI and
computer vision to assist its team in automating daily tasks.
“We think of AI as more of an intern,”
said Smith. “So, the more data you feed it, the
better questions you ask it, the more it learns and evolves. So, we think of it
as a partner in helping us do our daily tasks and we’re really just watching it
to see where it goes.”
Richard Crone offered also his
perspective on the future of AI in c-stores, which provides a different angle
on the technology. To Crone, the true value of AI lies in the data that can be
collected through it.
“AI is about data. Your data, and the
most monetizable of that data is your customer data. The
biggest challenge for c-stores, grocers, petroleum marketers, any retailer, is
harvesting that data, interpreting that data at scale and protecting it and
monetizing it,” he said. “That’s what artificial intelligence does. It allows
you to harvest the data about your customers and use it to personalize and
improve the experience.”
From a retailer’s perspective,
specifically Smith with Parker’s, the most relevant application of AI for the
chain right now is with customer service.
“We find a lot of our customers are
asking questions about a loyalty program, about offers, about things that we’re
doing in our stores, and most of the time they either have to send us an email
(or) give us a phone call,” he mentioned. “So, instead of having someone on our
team answer that call and deal with the customer directly, kind of augmenting
that team member with AI in a chat bot to really answer those questions that
can easily be answered and really just reduce the time that we’re spending doing
manual things like that.”
Gaskins noted that Yesway shares a
similar belief and is cautiously implementing AI to save employees’ time and
make certain processes easier. He also mentioned, however, that his team needs
to be skeptical and keep a close eye on the technology, so as not to damage the
integrity or image of the brand with content that is produced by someone (or
something) that is outside of it.
Crone emphasized that AI could make life
for a c-store retailer much easier, and it can also lead to a more seamless
customer experience. One example of this is Just Walk Out technology, which has
been implemented by companies like Amazon to allow customers to skip the
checkout lane and buy products without the entire checkout process.
“The existential threat to c-stores as
they exist today is the rapid deployment of that technology by your
competitors, because if your goal, given the convenience store mantra, which is
fast, easy, instantaneous convenient shopping for those items at that touch
point, nothing beats Just Walk Out,” said Crone.
Whether AI is being used to simplify
operations, sift through data or increase customer service availability, it is
becoming clearer every day that AI is going to continue to evolve and be used
in different ways across all industries.
Other topics discussed in the webinar
were check-in strategies, how AI can decipher customer intent, AI’s role in
loyalty programs, concerns and challenges for AI integration, theft control and
much more.”
Success does
leave clues. One clue that time and time again continues to resurface is “the
consumer is dynamic not static”. Regular
readers of this blog know that is the common refrain of Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA
based Foodservice Solutions®. Our
Grocerant Guru® can help your
company edify your brand with relevance.
Call 253-759-7869 for more information.
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