June 25, 2024
iStock.com/bgwalker
How Will GenAI Empower Target’s Retail Associates?
Target announced plans to distribute a new GenAI-powered chatbot tool to all its associates across its nearly 2,000 U.S. stores by August to help with daily tasks, coaching, and customer assistance.
Called Store Companion, the chatbot will become available as an app on store team members’ handheld devices. The chatbot promises to provide immediate answers to their questions about processes and procedures. Target wrote in a press release, “For example, team members can input prompts like ‘How do I sign a guest up for a Target Circle Card?’ and ‘How do I restart the cash register in the event of a power outage?’ and receive instructions and resources in seconds.”
The tool will also serve as a “store process expert and coach,” helping onboard new and seasonal in-store staff.
To develop the tool, Target used frequently asked questions and process documents from its store teams across the U.S., with the project progressing from the initial testing phase to the planned rollout in only six months. Currently piloting at about 400 stores, the tool’s functionality is being further shaped by associate feedback.
“We’re hearing great feedback from our team about the new app,” said Jake Seaquist, store director at one of the pilot stores in Champlin, Minnesota. “Streamlining day-to-day tasks goes a long way with our team members and adds up to more time spent with guests and a better guest experience across the store.”
With this announcement, Target has become the first major U.S. retailer to share that it’s bringing the technology to all its store staff.
Many other retailers have talked up GenAI investments, including Walmart and Canadian Tire, to help corporate staffers improve productivity and elevate search and discovery for online consumers. However, the technology also promises to help store associates with many tasks.
Salesforce’s just-released fifth edition “Connected Shoppers Report” found that an estimated 32% of store associates use a mobile device for their job, a share expected to grow to 41% in three years.
An accompanying survey of 1,125 retail industry decision-makers found the top five use cases for mobile devices were to help shoppers sign up for a loyalty program, 51%; provide customer service, also 51%; point of sale, 41%; store operations and execution, 39%; and creating and managing appointments, also 39%. Coming in lower among use cases were clienteling, 35%; store fulfillment, 34%; training, 26%; and endless aisle, 22%.
Zebra’s 16th Annual Global Shopper Study found that 86% of associates feel that the latest technology at their disposal enhances the customer experience — and three-quarters of shoppers agree. Of the associates surveyed, 85% felt artificial intelligence would help them be more productive. The top five pain points among associates working in-store sales and customer service were found to be:
- Little time to help customers because they are doing lower-value tasks
- Inadequate tools to provide personalized customer service
- Customer finds price and product information on their smartphone faster than associates
- Customer needs a price check
- Customer needs information
BrainTrust
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Where do you see GenAI technologies particularly helping in-store associates?
Do you see a big opportunity for GenAI to help speed up customer service and deepen shopper engagement?
Where may GenAI fall short of its promise to make associates’ jobs easier and improve associate productivity?
Poll
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Target’s AI tool seems more about training, guidance and answering associate questions than anything too radical. It’s basically an automated training manual. I think this makes a lot of sense as it will allow staff to learn on the job, understand best practice, and should give people more confidence. I like the fact the AI has been trained using real questions and answers and process documentation, so it will hopefully bring real and practical benefits to team members.
Does one need AI for an automated training manual?
I guess it makes finding the answers to questions easier and faster
It will make searching and finding answers much easier, using plain language instead of having to know all the acronyms and inside baseball. I created a chatbot for my website and my email and it helps people find things in a much easier fashion. Same outcome here.
For me, one of the early benefits of Generative AI was (and remains) its ability to reduce the amount of time spent on mundane tasks like ideation (including Google’ing) and gathering/compiling data or information. This “savings” is invaluable because it allows people to spend more time on more productive, value creating activities.
It sounds like AI is doing the same for Target Associates by providing them with easy access to information thus optimizing the customer engagement experience resulting in a combined benefit for both the customer (faster, more effective help) and the associate (empowered, higher confidence, possibly greater productivity). It sounds like a textbook example of how to leverage AI.
The challenge with productivity is probably not one of productivity but of measurement because the productivity of the knowledge worker is more difficult to measure than that of the widget producer.
How do I restart the cash register? sign someone up for a card? Really? I thought AI was supposed to augment (basic) training, not replace it.
Indeed. What you don’t want is for people to just rely on AI for answers rather than learning these things themselves.
Unfortunately, that’s where we’re headed.
It’s somewhat worrying!
Hmmm? It seems that associates should already know ‘How do I sign a guest up for a Target Circle Card?’ and ‘How do I restart the cash register in the event of a power outage?’
This assumes they were trained properly. Sadly with all the cuts in expenses and turnover, people forget the value of training or don’t have time.
The big win is Target’s GenAI tool will flatten the learning curve faster for new hires. This collaborative tool will help store teams in time for back to school and the holiday season.
This new tool sounds like an evolution of the knowledge bases, decision trees, and chatbots that have become common among customer service and support teams.
If AI makes it easier for staff to get the information they need in a format that feels natural, it has the potential to improve the customer experience, employee satisfaction, and could lower costs.
As internal tools like these are tested and refined, they also have potential for rollout as customer-facing applications.
I think this is a smart initiative. In a perfect world sales people receive adequate training and they stay at their jobs, but in reality neither happens on a regular basis. Using AI for daily tasks or as a way to assist salespeople in speeding up service shows Target understands the value of human customer service and is trying to improve it rather than replacing it with a bot
Instead of more gadgets, how about putting a sign-up button on the POS screen at checkout, where most people are likely being asked, “Are you a member of our loyalty program? If not, would you like to sign up?” AI is a great tool, but this sounds like one step up from “In which aisle is this product located?”
GenAI probably will do very little to speed up customer service, at least not instantly, but since GenAI will serve the purpose of training employees, it might enable employees to help customers, indirectly, ongoing. In other words, if GenAI makes employees smarter, more informed, and more able, customers will receive benefit. – Db
Cashiers already have a tough time giving change without the register telling them what to do. And if you are a cashier who doesn’t know how to restart the register, you didn’t receive proper training.
Now we have the Target version of Google to help associates find quick answers. Don’t get me wrong, I think quick answers are great sometimes, but I also think we are training generations of people who are not able to function without technology.
Machines can’t teach customer interaction, and one-on-one training is hard. But it is far more important than handing someone a device and saying, “Look it up.” Front line associates deserve better.
Are training generations of people who are not able to function without technology? Having we given up on personal competency?
An on-the-floor training device disguised as AI and customer service is brilliant.
Through repetitive questions, even the most challenged colleague will become a more valuable asset.
Kudos to Target for taking their existing documentation and throwing it all into a large language model (LLM) for use by GenAI. It’s a step in the right direction, but hopefully they realize that it’s step one of many. It will help associates get to information faster, in support of or unfortunately in place of adequate training. However it won’t fully address the top two of five pain points noted by in-store associates:
- Little time to help customers because they are doing lower-value tasks
- Inadequate tools to provide personalized customer service
They can answer questions faster, but this doesn’t replace leading class store management and customer experience.
GenAI will empower employees to be more productive and efficient. Using natural language, employees will be able to ask questions and get the answers they need to support customers with pricing and inventory questions. And that’s just the beginning. This is a powerful tool that benefits Target, its employees, and its customers. That’s a trifecta!
This is a great demonstration of the ability of AI to provide accurate and consistent responses. It’s also a, “be careful what you wish for” moment for associates. With these tasks effectively addressed by AI, fewer associates will be required. If associates are just there to pass along information easily discovered by giving shoppers access, associates become and extra step not a value add.
While still in its early stages, Generative AI will have tremendous impact across industries. Companies are using the technology to aid in real time decision making, process efficiencies and the interpretation of big data, streamlining operations/back-end and even front facing customer service (like call centers and ecom). Training is definately a way to leverage the intelligence but with caution. AI should not replace human engagement as empathy and interpretation are still worthy of physical interface. Large fastfood chains have eliminated the AI drive thru service and many retailers are reconsidering or rescinding self check out. While not completely related, the message is the same–keep people actively involved in AI assisted roles, not replaced.
There are many benefits to be derived from implementing GenAi in retail, and not just at Target.. Training of the store associate is one major benefit. Empowering an associate to be customer responsive by being able to get answers about product is destined to have a dual positive impact: making the associate feel more useful and expanding the quality of customer service.
I’m not sure this is actually a proper use of AI as much as it sounds like searching through a database of FAQs. There is a lot of buzz around AI, but in some cases it is unnecessary. Although the gen AI will provide some unique responses, if Target wants to have consistency across all associates then this likely isn’t the way to go. This also shouldn’t take the place of actual training as a shortcut. Shouldn’t all associates be trained on promoting the red card before they hit the salesfloor?
The GenAI capabilities that Target is providing their store associates are just the beginning of a significant shift in store operations. These innovations have the power to enhance the customer-facing professionals’ roles. What Target is providing in its initial rollout is a digitized version of its onboarding materials. However, as companies such as Target embark on their business transformation journeys and assess their GenAI capability investments, it’s crucial to recognize the vast potential of these innovations.
- Transformative Impacts: GenAI capabilities can revolutionize business strategies by enhancing operations, go-to-market approaches, and workplace culture
- Economic Benefits: Organizations are experiencing significant cost savings and revenue growth, with a projected ROI of up to 457%
- Operational Efficiency: GenAI capabilities are driving operational transformations, leading to a potential decrease in operational expenses by up to 0.7%
- Cultural Revolution: GenAI capabilities are helping to reshape the employee experience, fostering a more satisfied and productive workforce
What Target is implementing is the crawl stage of the innovation process. They are putting generative AI capabilities directly in the hands of their associates, unlocking their potential and, most importantly, helping to enhance the customer experience. One of the most significant challenges retailers experience today is unifying data from disparate systems to gain valuable insights and drive operational execution strategies. With the support of the Azure-supported GenAI capabilities, retailers will have the ability to drive personalization at scale.
The most valuable technology solution may not be the one with the most lines of code, or with an ingeniously trained model. This is a simple straightforward NLL based solution that offers Retailers a way to improve the ability of their customer facing associates, in an era when turnover is high, and the number of people willing to work retail jobs is diminished.
GenAI technologies such as Target’s Store Companion will expedite tasks like training, operational queries, and daily routines for in-store associates. This can notably accelerate customer service and enhance engagement by freeing up time for personalized interactions. Still, AI technologies struggle in situations that require human intuition for managing complex issues. Ultimately, the effectiveness of GenAI hinges on integration with existing systems and continuous updates to maintain relevance and enhance productivity, without compromising on service quality.
GenAI technologies like Target’s Store Companion empower in-store associates by providing instant access to information, facilitating training through virtual coaching, enhancing customer service with personalized assistance, optimizing operational efficiency, and fostering a more confident and engaged workforce.
GenAI tools are set to redefine the retail experience by leveraging AI’s transformative capabilities. This technology may fall short in areas requiring nuanced human judgment or empathy, such as handling complex customer complaints or situations requiring delicate interpersonal skills. It might also struggle with non-standard scenarios or tasks that require creative problem-solving beyond predefined algorithms.
The retail industry often faces high employee turnover, with many seeing it as a temporary job. GenAI can help new employees find answers for themselves and customers more easily, especially given the inadequate training new starters get due to time/cost constraints.
However, this is just the beginning for GenAI at the store level. There’s other use cases that can be automated to reduce the number of manual routine tasks carried out on the store level.
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Target’s AI tool seems more about training, guidance and answering associate questions than anything too radical. It’s basically an automated training manual. I think this makes a lot of sense as it will allow staff to learn on the job, understand best practice, and should give people more confidence. I like the fact the AI has been trained using real questions and answers and process documentation, so it will hopefully bring real and practical benefits to team members.
Does one need AI for an automated training manual?
I guess it makes finding the answers to questions easier and faster
It will make searching and finding answers much easier, using plain language instead of having to know all the acronyms and inside baseball. I created a chatbot for my website and my email and it helps people find things in a much easier fashion. Same outcome here.
For me, one of the early benefits of Generative AI was (and remains) its ability to reduce the amount of time spent on mundane tasks like ideation (including Google’ing) and gathering/compiling data or information. This “savings” is invaluable because it allows people to spend more time on more productive, value creating activities.
It sounds like AI is doing the same for Target Associates by providing them with easy access to information thus optimizing the customer engagement experience resulting in a combined benefit for both the customer (faster, more effective help) and the associate (empowered, higher confidence, possibly greater productivity). It sounds like a textbook example of how to leverage AI.
The challenge with productivity is probably not one of productivity but of measurement because the productivity of the knowledge worker is more difficult to measure than that of the widget producer.
How do I restart the cash register? sign someone up for a card? Really? I thought AI was supposed to augment (basic) training, not replace it.
Indeed. What you don’t want is for people to just rely on AI for answers rather than learning these things themselves.
Unfortunately, that’s where we’re headed.
It’s somewhat worrying!
Hmmm? It seems that associates should already know ‘How do I sign a guest up for a Target Circle Card?’ and ‘How do I restart the cash register in the event of a power outage?’
This assumes they were trained properly. Sadly with all the cuts in expenses and turnover, people forget the value of training or don’t have time.
The big win is Target’s GenAI tool will flatten the learning curve faster for new hires. This collaborative tool will help store teams in time for back to school and the holiday season.
This new tool sounds like an evolution of the knowledge bases, decision trees, and chatbots that have become common among customer service and support teams.
If AI makes it easier for staff to get the information they need in a format that feels natural, it has the potential to improve the customer experience, employee satisfaction, and could lower costs.
As internal tools like these are tested and refined, they also have potential for rollout as customer-facing applications.
I think this is a smart initiative. In a perfect world sales people receive adequate training and they stay at their jobs, but in reality neither happens on a regular basis. Using AI for daily tasks or as a way to assist salespeople in speeding up service shows Target understands the value of human customer service and is trying to improve it rather than replacing it with a bot
Instead of more gadgets, how about putting a sign-up button on the POS screen at checkout, where most people are likely being asked, “Are you a member of our loyalty program? If not, would you like to sign up?” AI is a great tool, but this sounds like one step up from “In which aisle is this product located?”
GenAI probably will do very little to speed up customer service, at least not instantly, but since GenAI will serve the purpose of training employees, it might enable employees to help customers, indirectly, ongoing. In other words, if GenAI makes employees smarter, more informed, and more able, customers will receive benefit. – Db
Cashiers already have a tough time giving change without the register telling them what to do. And if you are a cashier who doesn’t know how to restart the register, you didn’t receive proper training.
Now we have the Target version of Google to help associates find quick answers. Don’t get me wrong, I think quick answers are great sometimes, but I also think we are training generations of people who are not able to function without technology.
Machines can’t teach customer interaction, and one-on-one training is hard. But it is far more important than handing someone a device and saying, “Look it up.” Front line associates deserve better.
Are training generations of people who are not able to function without technology? Having we given up on personal competency?
An on-the-floor training device disguised as AI and customer service is brilliant.
Through repetitive questions, even the most challenged colleague will become a more valuable asset.
Kudos to Target for taking their existing documentation and throwing it all into a large language model (LLM) for use by GenAI. It’s a step in the right direction, but hopefully they realize that it’s step one of many. It will help associates get to information faster, in support of or unfortunately in place of adequate training. However it won’t fully address the top two of five pain points noted by in-store associates:
They can answer questions faster, but this doesn’t replace leading class store management and customer experience.
GenAI will empower employees to be more productive and efficient. Using natural language, employees will be able to ask questions and get the answers they need to support customers with pricing and inventory questions. And that’s just the beginning. This is a powerful tool that benefits Target, its employees, and its customers. That’s a trifecta!
This is a great demonstration of the ability of AI to provide accurate and consistent responses. It’s also a, “be careful what you wish for” moment for associates. With these tasks effectively addressed by AI, fewer associates will be required. If associates are just there to pass along information easily discovered by giving shoppers access, associates become and extra step not a value add.
While still in its early stages, Generative AI will have tremendous impact across industries. Companies are using the technology to aid in real time decision making, process efficiencies and the interpretation of big data, streamlining operations/back-end and even front facing customer service (like call centers and ecom). Training is definately a way to leverage the intelligence but with caution. AI should not replace human engagement as empathy and interpretation are still worthy of physical interface. Large fastfood chains have eliminated the AI drive thru service and many retailers are reconsidering or rescinding self check out. While not completely related, the message is the same–keep people actively involved in AI assisted roles, not replaced.
There are many benefits to be derived from implementing GenAi in retail, and not just at Target.. Training of the store associate is one major benefit. Empowering an associate to be customer responsive by being able to get answers about product is destined to have a dual positive impact: making the associate feel more useful and expanding the quality of customer service.
I’m not sure this is actually a proper use of AI as much as it sounds like searching through a database of FAQs. There is a lot of buzz around AI, but in some cases it is unnecessary. Although the gen AI will provide some unique responses, if Target wants to have consistency across all associates then this likely isn’t the way to go. This also shouldn’t take the place of actual training as a shortcut. Shouldn’t all associates be trained on promoting the red card before they hit the salesfloor?
The GenAI capabilities that Target is providing their store associates are just the beginning of a significant shift in store operations. These innovations have the power to enhance the customer-facing professionals’ roles. What Target is providing in its initial rollout is a digitized version of its onboarding materials. However, as companies such as Target embark on their business transformation journeys and assess their GenAI capability investments, it’s crucial to recognize the vast potential of these innovations.
What Target is implementing is the crawl stage of the innovation process. They are putting generative AI capabilities directly in the hands of their associates, unlocking their potential and, most importantly, helping to enhance the customer experience. One of the most significant challenges retailers experience today is unifying data from disparate systems to gain valuable insights and drive operational execution strategies. With the support of the Azure-supported GenAI capabilities, retailers will have the ability to drive personalization at scale.
The most valuable technology solution may not be the one with the most lines of code, or with an ingeniously trained model. This is a simple straightforward NLL based solution that offers Retailers a way to improve the ability of their customer facing associates, in an era when turnover is high, and the number of people willing to work retail jobs is diminished.
GenAI technologies such as Target’s Store Companion will expedite tasks like training, operational queries, and daily routines for in-store associates. This can notably accelerate customer service and enhance engagement by freeing up time for personalized interactions. Still, AI technologies struggle in situations that require human intuition for managing complex issues. Ultimately, the effectiveness of GenAI hinges on integration with existing systems and continuous updates to maintain relevance and enhance productivity, without compromising on service quality.
GenAI technologies like Target’s Store Companion empower in-store associates by providing instant access to information, facilitating training through virtual coaching, enhancing customer service with personalized assistance, optimizing operational efficiency, and fostering a more confident and engaged workforce.
GenAI tools are set to redefine the retail experience by leveraging AI’s transformative capabilities. This technology may fall short in areas requiring nuanced human judgment or empathy, such as handling complex customer complaints or situations requiring delicate interpersonal skills. It might also struggle with non-standard scenarios or tasks that require creative problem-solving beyond predefined algorithms.
The retail industry often faces high employee turnover, with many seeing it as a temporary job. GenAI can help new employees find answers for themselves and customers more easily, especially given the inadequate training new starters get due to time/cost constraints.
However, this is just the beginning for GenAI at the store level. There’s other use cases that can be automated to reduce the number of manual routine tasks carried out on the store level.