Exploring new levels of productivity with GenAI in retail

Out of all industries, retail is perhaps the most potent playground for GenAI (generative AI) applications. With fewer regulatory restrictions compared to verticals like law and healthcare, and opportunities for leveraging across the entire customer journey, from marketing to customer support and beyond, retail businesses stand to make significant productivity gains with AI tools.

In fact, 93% of retail CxOs are planning to scale up their time, money, and human capital investment in AI over the next three to five years.

Below, we’ll walk through examples of how these investments might come to life and opportunities for leveraging GenAI to set new productivity benchmarks in retail and ecommerce.

5 ways to drive productivity in retail with GenAI

Retail and ecommerce businesses can leverage GenAI in numerous ways already, whether they’re looking to increase productivity in marketing, sales, or support:

1) GenAI-powered marketing

One of the most common use cases for GenAI that many businesses—both in and outside the retail industry—are exploring is using AI to create marketing materials.

According to a Botco.ai report, almost 73% of marketers say their companies use GenAI to generate text, videos, images, and other types of content, and over two-thirds of them use it for brainstorming.

At a basic level, companies are using GenAI tools such as ChatGPT, Writer, and Midjourney to generate content such as imagery, landing pages, marketing copy, and ecommerce product descriptions much more quickly than ever before. For small marketing teams, this can significantly increase productivity and output without putting a strain on limited resources.

2) Inventory management efficiency

GenAI can also be helpful from an inventory management perspective, by monitoring the flow of inventory throughout the delivery process and using machine learning algorithms to accurately predict demand levels for certain products. 

Walmart, for example, is using AI to improve inventory management for the holiday season. “By leveraging historical data and pairing it with predictive analytics, we’re able to strategically place holiday items across distribution and fulfillment centers, and stores, optimizing the entire shopping experience,” says Parvez Musani, Sr. Vice President, E2E Fulfillment.

What’s unique about Walmart’s approach is the company’s use of machine learning to operate more efficiently across its sprawling store footprint of over 4,000 stores in the US alone. Its AI is able to automatically adjust for regional differences in buying habits. 

“For example, we will always make sure that pool toys are available in the sunny states, and warmer sweaters are stocked in colder states. Our engines are always learning, so we can optimize, increase demand or reposition inventory to higher selling regions,” says Musani.

3) Personalized customer experiences

Providing a personalized customer experience has become a requirement—no longer simply a nice-to-have offering. AI is quickly becoming the key to unlocking personalization at scale, and it can do a lot more than provide a better chatbot experience.

From tailored product recommendations to dynamic pricing, there is a wide range of GenAI applications in just the customer experience alone. 

For example, AI-powered contact center platforms such as RingCX offer GenAI features to help service or sales agents in real time by suggesting responses, pulling relevant content from knowledge sources, and more.

Instead of needing a supervisor or manager to monitor and coach every call manually, GenAI can take on this role, monitoring every conversation for keywords and guiding agents to provide the best solution for customers based on existing content:

4) Operational streamlining

Beyond content generation, GenAI can also be useful in streamlining operations. Lindex, a Swedish retail brand, released a unique AI assistant. Unlike most AI copilot or assistant features, which are designed to help contact center agents handle customer inquiries more efficiently and effectively, the Lindex Copilot is trained to be an expert on the processes and systems that are involved in running a Lindex store. The goal: to empower Lindex employees with personalized tips and guidance on how to fulfill their roles and operate a Lindex store successfully.

Lindex Copilot is an example of how AI can be used to improve operations and optimise the customer experience. By leveraging the power of AI to offer better support to its employees, Lindex can increase efficiency and improve customer service. As Lindex continues to drive innovation and development, Lindex Copilot will play a critical role in ensuring that the fashion company continues to be a leading player in the fashion industry.

Carrefour, a French supermarket and convenience store chain with over 14,000 locations globally, is using GenAI to increase the efficiency of its procurement processes. ““We realized comparing three quotes would take around 30 minutes for a buyer to do it manually,” said Florian Tué, Head of Procurement Transformation at Carrefour. “If we do it with ChatGPT and the POC that we’ve been running, it takes only 10 minutes.”

5) Future-proofing

Even though GenAI is in many ways still an emerging technology, it can nonetheless already help futureproof retail businesses in various major areas. Almost a third (32%) of retailers say AI has created a competitive advantage, while 24% say AI has opened new business opportunities and revenue streams and 21% say it has yielded more accurate demand forecasting—all potential pillars to a retail future-proofing strategy.

Whether it’s using AI-powered dynamic pricing to stay competitive as inflation rises or forecasting demand for products more accurately, generative AI has provided retailers with a crucial opportunity to reinforce and accelerate their future-proofing plans.

Transforming retail productivity with AI

GenAI can support retail businesses in countless ways, but if you’re looking to improve internal and customer communications at scale, consider an AI collaboration and contact center solution. 

With features such as AI assists to help agents respond to product questions in real time and AI chatbots that can respond to order status, product tracking, and more, RingCentral is designed to empower retail businesses to operate more smoothly while providing an excellent customer experience. 

See why retailers such as Hot Topic, Conair, and John Varvatos team use RingCentral’s AI-powered communications solutions—book a demo with our team today. 

Originally published Feb 05, 2025