There are numerous AI applications that enhance the customer experience in the retail industry. These applications target different areas and have varied success. However, with the introduction of an app that responds to queries in a near human-like manner, the retail industry will undergo a drastic transformation.
Yes, we are referring to ChatGPT, the popular tool that has been making headlines since its introduction in November 2022. This tool has repercussions for different aspects of the customer experience in the retail industry, including marketing, sales, and customer support.
Web design companies in Dubai and elsewhere are also jumping on the ChatGPT bandwagon as it makes their work easier. For instance, they can utilise it as a virtual assistant on client websites or even their own. It greatly enhances the user experience and reduces the workload for the developers.
Before we delve into the details of how GPT impacts customer experience, let’s talk about GPT first.
What is GPT?
GPT stands for ‘Generative Pre-trained Transformer’ and refers to a deep learning model by OpenAI. This model has the ability to produce human-like responses to any given input. ChatGPT uses the same learning model.
What makes ChatGPT different from others? It is vital to answer this question before moving forward. After all, there are numerous AI tools that at least resemble ChatGPT in functionality. So, what’s the reason behind the frenzy? It reached 100 million active users in just two months, making it the fastest tool or platform to do so.
1. Conversational Ability
The topmost reason for its popularity is its conversational ability. It can respond to any prompt in a human-like manner. For instance, I asked it to help me with an essay on freedom written using the Morgan Freeman style. The below figure shows the tool’s hilarious but creepily accurate response.
Figure 1. Conversations with ChatGPT
2. Contextual Understanding
Additionally, ChatGPT’s contextual understanding is what truly sets it apart from others. It can remember past conversations and prompts. In other words, it gives responses based upon earlier prompts. It is like talking to a human who understands the context and provides highly specific responses based on the context. No other AI tool comes close to this right now.
3. Safety and Moderation
While users will still find a way to circumvent ChatGPT’s safety and moderation features, ChatGPT has strict measures in place. It ensures a safer and more reliable conversational experience for the users. As OpenAI keeps improving it, there is no doubt that ChatGPT will only become safer in the coming time.
Now, let us explore how GPT can transform the customer experience in retail.
GPT in Retail
While GPT can prove instrumental in every aspect of the customer experience, let’s focus on the most important ones.
1. Market Research
An organisation cannot achieve success without market research. After all, it is the research which helps organisations identify customer needs and how to fulfil them. However, introducing a product is only the first step. For the best customer experience, organisations need to continuously undertake market research.
The reason is that they need to understand customer preferences and behaviours. Otherwise, the product will become irrelevant, and the audience might shift to a competitor. ChatGPT can be a highly valuable tool for conducting retail market research. The only requirement is that the business must know how to use it properly.
ChatGPT can provide insights into buyer behaviour by analysing the available data. For instance, if you enter the data into it, the tool can reveal the most popular products and which marketing or sales channels the target audience prefers the most. The retailer can use the information to tweak the product offerings accordingly.
If you already have high-end tools to help with the data analysis, then you can use ChatGPT to conduct customer surveys. ChatGPT can collect customer feedback and then provide valuable insights into the data. The management can use the suggestions to make the necessary changes.
2. Marketing and Sales
The two are critical to enhancing the customer experience. By providing ChatGPT access to your customer data, the tool can create personalised marketing messages for each customer. The personalised message can be a product recommendation that is on the customer’s wish or preference list.
Secondly, ChatGPT can be instrumental in providing responses to product information queries or answering FAQs. Retailers can assign their workers to more value-addition tasks such as customer relationship management. The sales team can use ChatGPT to send follow-up messages to further enhance the customer experience.
3. Personalised Recommendations
AI is instrumental in personalising recommendations. You can train the ChatGPT tool to send personalised recommendations based on user behaviour, past purchase, and more. Why is it important? According to Amazon, it drives almost 35% of its revenue from the recommended products list.
4. Customer Service
While chatbots are nothing new, none of them come close to ChatGPT. With ChatGPT, it is impossible for the customer to discern if they are talking to a bot or a human. Retailers can use ChatGPT to answer customer queries and address their concerns in a human-like manner. On top of it, all responses are prompt.
That’s not all. One of the best things about ChatGPT is its language translation capabilities. If a retailer is targeting multiple countries, they don’t need to hire a separate customer service agent for each market. Instead, they can use ChatGPT to provide support in multiple languages.
It allows them to target a wider customer base. This benefit is not only for retailers but all organisations directly dealing with customers. Web design and web development companies in Toronto, like many others worldwide, are also integrating ChatGPT into their websites and apps for a more seamless experience.
5. Fraud Detection
Unfortunately, despite advancements in technology, fraud continues to be a big problem for retailers and all organisations. While large organisations can afford to invest in cutting-edge technology and tools to combat fraud, smaller retailers are left at the mercy of their employees.
However, retailers can now use ChatGPT to combat fraud and secure their resources. The tool can analyse large amounts of data quickly and identify patterns that indicate fraudulent activities. You find this as an exaggeration, but JP Morgan and Chase is using a ChatGPT-like tool to detect fraud as well.
6. Inventory Management
Lastly, inventory management and customer experience go together. If there is low inventory, customers won’t be able to buy the desired product. It can lead to a negative experience. ChatGPT can analyse sales data to accurately predict demand. It ensures there is no product over or understocking.
Conclusion
These are only some of the ways that GPT can and has impacted the customer experience in retail. With further enhancements on the way, we can only conclude that GPT will have a much greater role to play in modern retail. As a retailer, you should start mastering GPT and other AI tools for extra effectiveness.
