In the United States alone, there are over 63,000 supermarkets and grocery store businesses. Since grocery and CPG (consumer packaged goods) represent essential industries, we will take a look at how AI in grocery stores is improving both the customer and employee experience.
AI in grocery retail is a broad topic, so we will hone in on how speech AI solutions are empowering employees to do more in less time, capture otherwise lost data, and work more safely.
Understanding Speech AI
A close look at speech AI begs the questions, “What is speech AI and how does it work?” Speech AI is technology that enables communication between computer systems and humans through language.
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is what enables the computer to transform spoken language into text, leveraging natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU). The process of transforming language to text happens through models, including: lexicon model (describes how words are phonetically pronounced), acoustic model (outlines acoustic patterns of speech), language model (determines which word is most likely to be spoken next based on statistics of language), and decoding (which combines all the models to create a transcript).
With this overview of speech recognition technology, let’s continue to understand why it is so valuable in the consumer packaged goods and grocery industries.
The Role of Speech AI in the CPG Industry
Consumer packaged goods companies rely on customer demand to succeed. From research and development (R&D) through to supply chains and distribution, CPG companies must have a real-time understanding of what people want.
When it comes to the use of AI, companies can leverage the technology for better product development, customer service, and market research, for example.
- Product Development: Product development teams go through iterative processes to ensure the best quality output moves to market. With a speech AI solution like aiOla, they can digitize their workflows and centralize them all in a single location. By speaking through their to-do lists, aiOla will capture otherwise lost data and update checklists in real-time. Not only does this increase accuracy and speed, but it also enables collaboration between team members, which is critical to bringing the best product to light.
- Customer Service: AI software enables real-time inventory management tracking and optimal logistics support, which all work to serve the customer. When customers are able to be supplied according to their demand, they are satisfied and more likely to remain loyal to a business.
- Market Research: AI supports predictive analytics, which leverages historical data to make inferences and provide forecasts about the future, including supply and demand. By being able to transform raw data into valuable insights, CPG companies can better manage their inventory, product development lifecycles, and marketing efforts to meet customers’ needs.
Enhancing Employee Efficiency with AI In Grocery Stores
Ultimately, CPG AI and grocery AI serve the customer. But, the only way this can happen is through the work of employees. With access to speech AI, employees are likely to increase their own job satisfaction, boost productivity, and reduce errors and delays.
Here’s how:
- Streamlining Communication: There are many processes that grocery employees have to move through in a day. Communication is paramount to all workflows, but without a centralized location to store data and make updates, mistakes and delays are inevitable. With speech AI, all data is neatly and properly stored on the spot in the system, allowing for accessibility, transparency, and collaboration. For example, if a grocery supervisor must conduct store inspections as part of their routine, they can use aiOla to do so. aiOla will effortlessly collect data and alert any relevant team managers or team members should action need to be swiftly taken to remedy a situation.
- Automating Routine Tasks: Automation saves time and reduces manual errors. Many repetitive tasks, such as data entry and report generation, can be automated. Consider routine checks like temperature monitoring for refrigerated goods, inventory tracking, or any other compliance-related task. Instead of your team spending hours manually inputting information, speech AI solutions capture data as they speak—seamlessly integrating into their workflow. Since speaking is faster than typing, grocery employees can continue working efficiently, keeping their hands free and eyes focused on their tasks. This ensures smooth operations without compromising speed, accuracy, or safety.
- Supporting Decision-Making: Last but not least, paper-based and manual processes suffer from data silos and even lost information. With speech AI, all data is automatically captured so that it can be used for informed decision-making and data-driven insights. Impressively, aiOla is the first-of-its-kind speech AI to understand business-specific jargon, in any language, accent, and acoustic environment. This means that no matter what vocabulary your business uses that is unique to its operations, aiOla’s language model will understand and capture it without any re-training required.
Transforming Customer Interaction
Going back to customers’ experience using AI in grocery retail, there are many advantages to be had, including:
- Improving Customer Service: AI-powered systems can also be used to automate customer feedback from different sources, including surveys and social media. Sentiment analysis can detect customers’ feelings about new and existing products, so grocers have a better understanding of what people like and dislike.
- Personalizing Customer Experience: AI is a game changer when it comes to providing personalized experiences. It can be used to understand customer preferences and buying history/patterns. Not only does this help to provide customers with what they like, but it can also be used to tailor marketing campaigns towards specific customer segments. With personalized marketing, grocers can optimize their conversions.
Challenges and Considerations
There is no denying that AI in grocery stores is valuable for employees, customers, and stakeholders alike. That being said, there are naturally concerns and considerations to take into account when implementing any type of new technology within your business. For example:
- Technical Challenges: Every AI and speech AI solution works in its own ways. And, the chances are high that you already rely on existing technological systems within your business. So, you’ll want to find solutions that integrate with your tech stack.
- Employee Concerns: At the top of the list of common concerns sits employees’ sentiments and fears about their changing job roles based on the use of speech AI. Employees may worry that the tool is going to replace them or that they won’t be needed as much. This is far from the truth– in fact, speech AI software is meant to aid employees and relieve them of repetitive, data-heavy, and time-consuming tasks.
- Ethical Considerations: Another big question around speech AI is how the user’s voice will be leveraged, as well as the privacy and security of company information.
Upskilling and Reskilling Employees
In order to successfully deploy your chosen AI in grocery, be sure to allocate time and energy towards change management. This will involve:
- Training: Providing skills training to employees to teach them how to use speech AI tools. aiOla’s speech AI works with any existing Android or iOS device, without disrupting or changing your processes. In fact, aiOla’s solution, aiOla Jargonic, will automatically digitize your workflows for you– all you have to do is upload a photo or file.
- Continual Learning: Additionally, ongoing education is always beneficial as technology and its applications change over time.
Talk the Talk: Speech AI in CPG and Grocery
AI in grocery stores and AI for CPG is enhancing customer and employee experiences. With a relatively small amount of effort required to implement your tools of choice, the outcomes are dramatically positive. From being able to better service customers, manage inventory, forecast future demand, communicate with customers, and capture otherwise lost data, the use cases for speech AI and AI in general are practically limitless.
