AI for Retail

CHAPTER 19AI for E‐Commerce and Customer Service

Current Roles, Processes, and Inefficiencies

As discussed in previous sections already, e‐commerce will continue to be a growing piece of every major retailer's core business for as long as I can see. Customers will always want the option to buy online and pick up in store (colloquially called BOPIS), buy online and have the products delivered to their house (home delivery), or possibly walk in, grab what they want, and quickly walk out (traditional sale). There are some customers who will prefer just one type. There are others who may want all three depending on the situation.

The first thing to note is the huge growth over COVID‐19, and while this growth has slowed down to pre‐pandemic rates, it has stuck to 12–13%. The second thing to note is that a large and growing percentage of these orders are picked out of traditional grocery stores. For example, Instacart, Amazon Fresh, and Walmart grocery are all fulfilled from traditional grocery stores. In the case of Walmart, they have 4,700 stores located within 10 miles of 90% of the US population, so they should leverage them as much as possible.

Let's dive into how retailers achieve this feat today.

Retailers have marked off areas in their back rooms or entrances to collect and store e‐commerce orders as shown in Figure 19.1.

Teams of pickers walk around the grocery store with order picking carts where they typically will pick for six customers at a time, shown in Figure 19.2 ...