Microsoft uses artificial intelligence to inject new skills into retail

Ahead of NRF 2024: The Big Show in Retail, Microsoft has unveiled a new set of generative AI and data solutions designed to help retailers span the entire shopper journey. These solutions include enabling personalized shopping experiences, empowering store associates, unlocking and unifying retail data, and helping brands reach their audiences more effectively. These innovative features will bring greater competitive advantage to the retail industry.

By using new Copilot templates on Azure OpenAI Service, retailers can build personalized shopping experiences and support store operations. In addition, retail data solutions are introduced in Microsoft Fabric, and new Copilot (digital assistant) capabilities are introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. At the same time, the Microsoft retail media platform also launched the Retail Media Creative Studio. These new features and tools give retailers more options to infuse the Copilot experience throughout the shopping journey.

Global retailers have been facing a variety of challenges, ranging from high store employee turnover rates, to changes in consumer shopping habits, to the growth of siled data that does not realize value. To address these challenges, retailers are actively undertaking digital transformation. In the age of AI, they can accelerate innovation with data-backed generative AI solutions to increase customer engagement and satisfaction, unlock personalized shopping experiences, and improve store associate performance and productivity. According to a study commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by IDC, retail organizations achieved a positive return on their AI investments within 14 months, with an average return of $3.45. Therefore, artificial intelligence is a very promising investment area for retailers to help them maintain a competitive advantage in the digital era.

Using Artificial Intelligence to Create Memorable and Personalized Customer Experiences

According to survey data, consumers have an increasing demand for personalized interactions, and shoppers with personalized experiences Shoppers without a personalized experience are twice as likely to add items to their shopping cart. However, in a traditional online shopping environment, the tools that allow shoppers to discover products, provide tailored recommendations, and fulfill their shopping needs can be limited, resulting in a less than ideal shopping experience. To address this issue, Microsoft Retail Cloud now offers a preview template called Copilot designed to help retailers build personalized shopping experiences. This pre-built option leverages a retailer’s existing systems and data and is embedded into a digital platform, such as a website or app, making it easier for shoppers to find and buy the products they want. By providing a better personalized shopping experience, retailers can achieve higher purchase rates and customer satisfaction, thereby increasing the success of their business.

Customers can now benefit from the convenience of online shopping and the personalized experience provided by a personal shopper, just like they would when shopping in a brick-and-mortar store. Copilot templates leverage technology from the GPT-4 service on Azure OpenAI to query and view products through natural language, allowing customers to express their needs in a more intuitive way. The technology is also context-aware, providing the information shoppers need and producing real-time responses similar to store associates. This personalized shopping experience will bring higher customer satisfaction and shopping convenience.

Shelley Bransten, vice president of Worldwide Retail, Consumer Products and Gaming at Microsoft, said generative artificial intelligence has the potential to become a key differentiator for retailers, providing customers with unique and memorable shopping experiences while demonstrating their brand identity. . She pointed out that the new Microsoft Cloud Retail Copilot template, designed to enable personalized shopping through Azure OpenAI services, is just one way to help retailers build Copilot experiences. Microsoft is committed to democratizing the concierge experience in the shopping process through Copilot templates, helping retailers create more personalized experiences and reduce time to value.

Empowering store associates with artificial intelligence tools to improve productivity, job satisfaction and customer experience

In retail, store associates are critical to a retailer’s success, but the industry is currently facing facing the challenge of labor shortage. While technology can have a transformative impact on retail workers, incorporating technology into store associates’ jobs is often a challenge. Microsoft's Work Trends Index found that 60% of retail frontline employees are excited about the new opportunities digital tools bring to the retail industry, but 34% believe they do not have the right digital tools or technology to complete their jobs effectively. Therefore, in order to enable store staff to better apply digital tools, retailers need to provide more intelligent digital tools to help store staff complete their work more efficiently and improve the retailer's competitiveness.

Microsoft is putting generative artificial intelligence into the hands of store associates and managers, unlocking their potential to increase productivity, job satisfaction, and ultimately improve the customer shopping experience. Microsoft Retail Cloud now offers a preview of Copilot templates on the Azure OpenAI service to help retailers build solutions that support store operations, giving store employees and managers access to information in workflows. By using the technology on a retailer's mobile device, tablet or PC, store associates and managers can use natural language and leverage artificial intelligence to obtain information about store procedures, product catalogs, HR policies and benefits in an efficient and rapid manner. The answer. They can also create and assign tasks via voice to save time and quickly access customer and product information to help them provide high-quality in-store customer service.

Apps built using Copilot templates can help store leaders understand common employee and customer issues, providing insights that help them take meaningful action, such as updating training, processes or guidelines.

Microsoft Experience Centers, which have physical stores in New York, Sydney and London, offer shoppers the opportunity to experience Microsoft products and make retail purchases, and will be the first retail stores to implement an AI assistant pilot template for store employees One of the businessmen. This technology will provide their store associates with valuable insights to further enhance the shopper experience as they browse products, watch demos and learn about Microsoft technology.

Unlock insights by unifying retail data and applying artificial intelligence

The retail industry generates 40 petabytes of data every hour. In terms of volume, this is equivalent to 8 million two-hour movies, which would take about 1,500 years to watch. What’s even more surprising is that because the data remains siled, most retailers can only leverage a fraction of it, providing incomplete insights for themselves and their customers. To gain actionable insights from their data to fully leverage AI requires seamless integration and standardization of data across disparate systems and applications.

Microsoft announces preview of new retail data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, an end-to-end unified analytics platform that brings together all the data and analytics tools organizations need to unlock the potential of data and prepare for the era of artificial intelligence Foundation.

Microsoft Fabric provides retailers with:

A data model that allows them to plan, build and design data solutions. This retail industry data model can be used for data governance, reporting, business intelligence, and advanced analytics.

A data connector to import their e-commerce data from Sitecore OrderCloud (preview) into Microsoft Fabric in real time. Within this unified interface, retailers can access insights and tools to proactively improve customer satisfaction and business operations, from the storefront to every touchpoint.

Analytical templates that provide actionable, data-driven recommendations to help retailers improve product upsell and shelf optimization.

With retail data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, organizations can accelerate the implementation of retail-specific data models while unifying and transforming their data into tools that help enhance customer engagement and shopper experiences. Predictive insights.

Across industries, Microsoft has built unique assets to verticalize the Microsoft Cloud and enable ecosystems. Through the Microsoft Cloud, retailers can take a customized approach and bring the Copilot experience into the user's shopping journey. Built on trust and Microsoft's Responsible AI principles, retailers can securely unlock their ability to deliver meaningful shopping experiences and empower every employee to deliver exceptional service and turn customers into loyal fans.

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