you may have seen it before viral video Percentage of Wendy’s drive-thru customers in the U.S. who order fast food from the company’s generated AI bots Wendy’s FreshAI.
Most of the time, very human transactions are being interrupted. a cry of surprise How fast, accurate, and polite the system is.
This and similar systems are in their early stages, and some are still in their infancy; heavily dependent on human assistanceretailers are investing in Investing huge amounts of money in AI Replace human workers.
Why the rush to automate? It may seem like it’s all about cutting wages, but direct replacement of humans with AI is what it is. happening in many roles.
But there’s another force driving it Tsunami of restructuring In retail. At stake is the hidden lifeblood of 21st century business: data.
superhuman data collector
Retail employees typically don’t feed much data back into the business. Instead, the flow of data shapes them personally and develops what we perceive as experience and expertise.This is how companies traditionally try to retain employees For a long time.
Retail AI botData collection, on the other hand, is fully automated. Because the bot is part of a company’s broader computer system, the details of every customer interaction can be piped directly into a database. If data collection includes the complete “stimulus” presented to each customer: the initial greeting, the volume of your voice, your tone, your pace, your responses to the customer’s questions, and, of course, the dollar and cent results. there is.
@terrenceconcannon I drive thru is lively. Am I in the future? @Wendy’s #Intamp only #Tampass buzzer sound #Tampa
Depending on the company ethical positionAI bots can also be designed as follows. Collect not only customer words but also various “metafacts”: male or female, young or old, thin or obese, short or tall, tattooed or not.
In fact, there is no reason why video and audio recordings have become so common. all Interactions cannot be recorded later Breakdown and analysis by AI.
By using bots instead of humans, all the data that was once stored on employees (who own the data as their expertise and may command more money) is now available to businesses. You will be able to put them directly into your electronic vault.
But what makes the business case for AI bots even more compelling is if the AI bot completes the loop and use You can not only collect data, but also collect data.
Dynamic “touchpoint” creator
Retailers aretouch point” – key moments of contact that can influence customer perceptions and decisions.
Historically, human employees have been selected or trained to provide effective touchpoints.For example, teenagers in colorful uniforms Fast food restaurant staff dispatch It gives a certain image and atmosphere.And that Scripts and prompts providedThings like “So do you want fries?” come straight out of the manual.
But human employees can’t really do that. Model millions of past customer interactionsor weigh in with the customer standing in front of you.
Retail bots can:. You can complete real-time “data loops.”
What does that mean? Using gigabytes of historical data, retail bots can profile current customers, adjust their behavior accordingly, interact with customers, and feed back data designed to improve performance next time. And next time he might be two seconds later with a similar customer at the same store on the other side of the country.
Companies are striving to become an equation that AI can solve.
All these data loops are closed at the expense of human work. Fully digitalized The ideal for today’s business.
why? Because any business that runs on data flowing in a smooth loop is essentially an equation. And if business is the equation, then (you guessed it) modern AI can be used to constantly tweak retail bots and pull other levers to maximize revenue.
AI answers the essential question: “How can I make more money?” May be very fine-grained. For example, based on data from a retail bot, an AI might someday even suggest a 300ms pause before asking an overweight customer with brown eyes, “Do you have anything else?” (and test and implement). And profits may increase for reasons no one understands.
This will remain Customer in a strange place.
Data loops make businesses so agile that customers not only know that their minds are being read; is expected. Do you think that’s outlandish? If you’ve been glued to algorithmic pioneers and full-equation businesses like Google, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, and TikTok for any length of time, you probably already know how well this works.
Retailers want to leverage AI to get in on the action.
In fact, Wendy’s recently had to crack down on reports that it was considering going Uber-style due to the huge success of its AI drive-thru data.dynamic pricing”.
So which retail jobs will be taken over by AI first?
There’s no simple answer to this complex questions. However, we can offer some guiding principles.
AI thrives on data. If your job involves a lot of data and that data isn’t currently being collected (people who work a lot of traffic, like drive-thru employees), or if that data informs how you deliver your service. If you don’t (also drive-thru employees) and anyone working with complex products) – be careful. You are blocking the data loop and may be targeted.
On the other hand, if you’re not in a sinkhole of too much data and a lot of data as a touchpoint doesn’t make much of a difference, you’re probably safe for a while. You can just relax and wait to become a victim of periodic wage-saving AI restructuring.
This article is republished from conversation Under Creative Commons License.read Original work.