Conducting the digital symphony: Key steps for retail success

Digital innovation is causing seismic shifts in the retail industry, creating exciting opportunities for great customer experiences, streamlined operations and smarter decision-making.

But the path to digital transformation is not a straightforward one. System-integration woes and cultural resistance to new technologies are just some of the hurdles retailers have to overcome before reaping all the benefits.

If this sounds familiar, read on to see how you can set yourself up for success.

System integration is essential

A major headache is the lack of integration between all the systems that support all the many areas of customer engagement: point of sale, ecommerce, contact centers, loyalty programs, marketing, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management.

These systems and channels need to work together seamlessly, but in many cases, they have evolved separately rather than being architected holistically from the start. This leads to duplicated efforts and higher costs. And without a unified view of their customers, retailers will always struggle to deliver the memorable experiences their customers expect.

To address this, retailers have to rationalize their overall customer management architectures to remove overlapping abilities, then follow an integrated systems approach to get a unified view of their contact centers, stores and online platforms.

A rationalized infrastructure is a critical enabler of streamlined operations that can swiftly and easily adapt to changing business needs.

• ALSO READ → From points to perks: transforming customer loyalty with new technology

AI and automation are changing everything

Even the most old-school retailers know that AI and automation are delivering a growing array of benefits. AI algorithms can analyze customer data to provide personalized recommendations, offers and experiences, while chatbots and virtual assistants provide full-time customer support, answering queries promptly and assisting with purchases.

Apart from customer service, AI can be applied in inventory management to predict demand more accurately and prevent over- or understocking. It can also process vast volumes of data to generate insights into customer behavior, sales trends and operational performance.

These technologies are even being used to analyze surveillance data to detect unusual behavioral patterns that may indicate theft or fraud, helping retailers to prevent losses.

Don’t expect overnight success

Yet, despite the clear upside of AI and automation, many retailers are still struggling to find use cases that create significant value. This is often because they can’t go from zero to 100 with AI without taking some essential first steps.

The most important one is cleaning up, organizing and integrating all their data as part of implementing a fit-for-purpose data-management strategy.

Then, they have to embrace a culture of innovation and educate their employees on how AI, including GenAI, can enhance, rather than replace, human interactions and help them work more efficiently.

As NTT DATA’s Global GenAI Report notes, 96% of organizations are assessing the opportunities created by GenAI to streamline employee workflows and support processes, yet 2 in 3 acknowledge that their employees lack the skills to work with GenAI.

On the infrastructure side, migrating to the cloud is required to support the real-time, AI-enabled data analysis that helps retailers to supercharge customer experiences and engagement.

• ALSO READ → Turn your retail employees into customer-service heroes

How is the industry addressing these challenges?

Leading retailers are working with expert service providers to supercharge their digital transformation in various ways — for example, by introducing AI into their contact centers.

Solutions like NTT DATA’s Syntphony can handle inquiries efficiently, minimize wait times and free up human agents to deal with complex queries.

Syntphony is a cloud-native platform designed to help organizations rapidly develop and deploy secure digital solutions — in contact centers and beyond — with prebuilt components, templates and minimal coding. It speeds up the development process and reduces time to market for new applications.

The platform can integrate with a range of enterprise systems, data sources and application programming interfaces, and it supports the automation of business processes. Furthermore, its analytics and reporting tools give useful insights into application performance and user behavior, making it a powerful tool in digital transformation.

• ALSO READ → NTTDATA delivers digital innovation to retail with Syntphony

Leaders play an important role

Platforms like Syntphony make it easier for retailers to launch hyperpersonalized offers, analytics, gamification and other strategies to take their loyalty programs to the next level while integrating disparate customer channels to achieve that all-important holistic approach.

Syntphony Conversational AI, for example, is an enterprise platform for creating and managing virtual agents. It uses GenAI to understand and deliver hyperpersonalized responses to customers, helping to resolve customer inquiries faster.

Automating repetitive tasks improves efficiency and frees up staff to spend more time on high-value work — but it’s not always love at first sight when they’re introduced to new technology. Sometimes, the opposite is true.

Overcoming resistance to digital transformation within organizations requires proactive, responsible leadership — especially when it comes to AI and GenAI.

Leaders must champion the benefits of these technologies while addressing the concerns and fears of their teams. This involves communicating clearly about the changes and offering training and support.

Responsible leadership also means being mindful of the ethical implications of AI and GenAI. Leaders need to prioritize transparency, fairness and privacy, setting clear guidelines for data usage and regularly auditing AI algorithms to prevent unintended consequences.

Take the next step

The retail industry is at a crossroads. Those who embrace innovation, address current challenges head-on and capitalize on emerging trends will position themselves for long-term success built on operational efficiency and outstanding customer experiences.

Act now to become your customers’ retailer of choice.