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Are you ready for AI? Pioneers share their insights

Artificial intelligence offers many benefits, but businesses first need to understand what they want AI to help them accomplish, then make sure their organization is capable of executing an AI solution.

Christie Rice, of Intel, introduces panelists David Hewitt, Amanda Sulc and Scott Emmons to discuss AI.

June 6, 2019 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

The good news is that artificial intelligence, which experts claim will revolutionize many industries by allowing organizations to use extensive amounts of data, is already improving the customer experience in many environments. That much was evident form a panel discussion at the Interactive Customer Experience Summit in Dallas titled, "The Future is Now."

"The good news is there's real ROI," said panelist Scott Emmons, CTO at Current Global, which manages the integration of retail and brands across the beauty, fashion and technology sectors.

The caveat is knowing whether or not your organization can use AI takes an extensive learning process. The panelists agreed that businesses and organizations first need to understand what they want AI to help them accomplish, then make sure their organization is capable of executing an AI solution.

Session moderator Christie Rice, director of business development for visual solutions at Intel, began the session by asking the panelists to offer their own definitions of AI.

David Hewitt, vice president of Publicis.Sapient, a digital transformation company, said AI essentially allows computers to think and act like humans.

A practical perspective

Amanda Sulc, director of category insights and strategy at Accent Food Service, a nationwide provider of refreshment services based in Pflugerville, Texas, offered a practical perspective in saying that AI allows her company to know customer product preferences at any given location where the company provides refreshment products. Knowing what products consumers want in a given location makes the company's job much easier, Sulc said.

Emmons agreed with Sulc in observing that AI allows a business to engage with customers with a good understanding what products the customers want. But Emmons, the former founder of the Neiman Marcus Group Innovation Lab, pointed out that the task of partnering with an AI provider is complicated by the fact that many technology companies, cognizant of the current buzz around AI, falsely advertise themselves as AI providers.

"A lot of things are called AI and are not," Emmons said. "It's the buzzword today."

Emmons said a lot of technology providers claim to offer AI when all they really offer is data analytics. AI is unique in that it is capable of identifying patterns that a business will not recognize on its own.

Is your organization ready?

Retailers who do not understand what AI offers are not ready to invest in the technology, Emmons said. "They're not thinking about their (business) problem first," he said. "The strategy part is the important part."

Emmons acknowledged the benefits AI provides businesses. He said AI can provide great insight about customer needs and allow a company to improve their services to customers without adding staff. AI, unlike earlier customer experience technologies, is easily adaptable to many use cases, Emmons said. In addition, he said, "It's going to continue to get better."

Sulc's company was already using state-of-the art management software for its vending and micro market services before investing in AI. By partnering with Hivery, an Australia based AI provider, Accent Food Services has been able to determine the best selling product mixes for customer locations on an individual location basis. Prior to using the AI tool, Accent Food Services was using a standard machine planogram that limited the variety of products being offered. Accent Food Services' own data did not enable the company to offer products to the demographic characteristics of the customers in its locations, she said. The AI tool significantly improved product selection, which has reduced out-of-stocks, improved service route optimization and increased sales, she said.

"It can take any part of my job and I attend to more creative, practical projects," Sulc said.

Facial recognition powered by AI can also identify the emotions of a customer, Sulc said, and can allow the service provider to measure how well they satisfied the customer. But before a business can know what benefits AI can provide, it has to define its business goals, she said.

Hewitt said extensive data is required to process facial recognition in a way that matches products to facial images. He said AI is needed for projects involving massive amounts of data.

One of the biggest improvements AI has delivered retailers has been improving the benefits of loyalty rewards programs, he said. AI can identify patterns in customer behavior that allows a retailer to make better use of loyalty programs, Hewitt said. "They (AI) can see patterns we can't see," he said.

A practical approach

Emmons said retail organizations he has worked with first identified the problems they wanted to solve before deciding on what technology to invest in. "We weren't shopping AI, we were shopping a solution to an e-commerce problem," he said, reflecting on his days working with AI at the Neiman Marcus Group. "Maybe AI was a solution, maybe it wasn't."

Technology is not a "silver bullet" but one piece of a puzzle, he said. In addition, not every business problem requires an AI solution, Emmons said. "We're in the infancy of this stuff," he said.

The panelists agreed it is important for businesses to test before investing a lot of time and money.

"It was a lot of test and learn," Emmons said. There were some insights he came across that he didn't consider interesting that proved to be very helpful, while there were other insights he had high hopes for that didn't pan out.

"Until you get it out in front of your customers you don't know how they're going to interact with it," he said.

IT departments face a challenge getting support for AI projects. The panelists agreed it is important for company management to understand the purpose of AI is to better understand customers.

Introducing AI can sometimes reduce human interaction, Sulc acknowledged, and there is a value associated with human interaction. "It does dehumanize things, but it's all about the convenience factor," she said. "At the end of the day, there is that aspect of our brain that AI will never be able to accomplish."

"Keep asking the 'so what?' question," Hewitt advised attendees interested in exploring AI. Companies need to decide how committed they are to exploring new technology and taking risks, he said, and they need an agile "test and learn" process to innovate using AI.

"That engine is so much more important than any solution on technology," Hewitt said. "The engine at the end of the day is going to win the race because that race never stops."

"Their preferences change by the second," Sulc said of customers today. "Are you able to keep up with that fast paced journey? You may think of new ways to measure customer satisfaction."