NRF 2018 Vlog Day 1

Retail Assist NRF 2018

Hello from New York! Rhianne Poole from Retail Assist’s Marketing team brings you highlights from the Show in the first of our NRF18 videos. The key trend we identified from Day 1 of NRF 2018 is the advancements in AI, turning the power of data into realistic, use-case scenarios. Watch our technology insights from NRF Expo 2018 in the below video or over on YouTube here.

Here are our 3 tech highlights from NRF 2018 Day 1.

AI for product visual search: Slyce

Visual search was brought onto the retail scene last year by ASOS, to enable the customer to take a photo of a product in real life, on a catwalk, or from a magazine – whenever inspiration or a customer need occurs.

Slyce is taking this to the next level, partnering with retailers such as American Eagle, Tommy Hilfiger’s UK and US app, and Urban Outfitters.

Working with another AI disruptor, Find Mine (used by Adidas), Slyce offers slick integration with a chat bot to provide the instantaneous social commerce favoured by Gen Z.

Slyce’s customers have reported a 20% increase in average order value thanks to the technology’s ability to successfully identify product in an engaging way, or offer similar items to close a sale.

AI and conversational commerce: IBM

Watson now reacts to emotion in real time during conversational commerce. The demo seen in our vlog above is applied to an online scenario, but also works paired through voice.

AI is playing a role in the following:
• Supply chain – for efficiency
• Operational – for merchandising
• Consumer – to interact in a retail context (voice, natural language, emojis). The consumer is the main focus for Watson Commerce.

Watson’s Chatbot demonstrates conversational commerce and learns to undertake emotion, changing the content to meet consumer needs.

In the demo, the user has asked to see a range of sweaters. She asks the chat bot “Add that to my cart”. But what is “that”? Watson is able to identify which item the user might desire based on the fact that she clicked into the item detail, and by inferring positive sentiments from her language use. Rather than a typical Siri based “all questions, less answers”, Watson has learned to pre-empt and suggest to improve the customer experience.

This links to Google Home/Alexa, whereby asking “where is my order” can bring up previous order history and delivery details.

And the buzzword process for cognitive? Understand, reason, learn, interact. You heard it here first!

Digitisation of the store through smarter product looks

You may have seen recently that Retail Assist has partnered with Mercaux. The in-store technology company enables retailers to transform their in-store shopping experience by bringing the benefits of digital into physical stores.

Mercaux, which supports the likes of United Colors of Benetton, L.K. Bennett and French Connection, offers a mobile platform that unifies a retailer’s online and in-store sales experience and empowers store associates to deliver an exceptional omnichannel customer journey. The in-store platform is supported by Machine Learning and empowers retailers to control their digital content, communicate with stores, and gather in-store analytics. L.K. Bennett launched the Mercaux app earlier this year across a number of London stores, helping store associates to increase basket size and provide optimised customer service.

We hope you enjoyed our NRF 2018 Vlog part 1! Tune in tomorrow for our NRF 2018 Vlog part 2, where we will be bringing more insights from Retail’s Big Show in New York! Make sure to follow us on Twitter to see live updates from the show.