Target’s AI Transformation: Elevating Employee Efficiency & Customer Delight
Source: CMS Wire, Scott Clark
Photo: Courtesy of Target Corporation
How technology and human creativity are shaping the future of the customer experience.
The Gist
AI empowerment. Brands use AI to automate tasks, enhance insights and provide personalized service.
Data-driven insights. Predictive analytics in AI helps brands understand and anticipate customer needs.
Streamlined operations. AI automates routine tasks, enabling employees to focus on strategic activities.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing customer interactions, offering businesses unprecedented opportunities to enhance customer experience (CX). By integrating AI, brands like Target, with its Store Companion, empower employees to automate routine tasks, gain deep insights into customer preferences, and deliver more personalized, efficient service.
This blend of AI and human expertise enables faster, more accurate service, attuned to individual customer needs. Consequently, employees are better equipped to craft experiences that build lasting customer satisfaction and loyalty.
This article explores AI’s transformative role in CX through employee enablement, showcasing how technology and human creativity are shaping the future of the customer experience.
Target Recognizes AI’s Potential for Enhancing EX and CX
AI is already impacting the way businesses operate, profoundly enhancing how they interact with customers and streamlining operations. Companies are improving efficiency and elevating the overall customer experience by empowering employees with AI-driven tools.
A prime example of this trend is Target’s recent deployment of an AI tool called “Store Companion,” which is designed to assist store employees in managing daily tasks more effectively and enhancing customer service by “answering on-the-job process questions, coaching new team members, supporting store operations management and more.” This tool streamlines team operations, enabling quicker and more efficient service, enhancing guest engagement, and improving the shopping experience. It’s a key component of Target’s strategic use of generative AI to empower employees, elevate customer interactions and drive sustainable growth.
In the announcement, Brett Craig, executive vice president and chief information officer at Target, said, “We know technology will continue to play an outsized role in the future of retail — for our team members, our guests and our business. With that in mind, we’re continually experimenting with new tools to make it even easier for our team to do their jobs and to bring more of what guests love about shopping at Target to life.”
Mark Schindele, Target’s executive vice president and chief stores officer, stated that generative AI is a game-changing technology, and Store Companion will make daily tasks easier and enable Target’s team to respond to guests’ requests with confidence and efficiency. “The tool frees up time and attention for our team to serve guests with care and to create a shopping destination that invites discovery, ease, and moments of everyday joy,” he said.
Target isn’t the only retailer leveraging generative AI. Walmart adopted the technology late last year to enhance mission-based customer searches and equip frontline employees with real-time information, improving their ability to serve customers effectively. In recent years, the connection between an organization’s employee experience (EX) and its CX has become increasingly evident.
With evolving labor force dynamics and advancements in technology that connect companies, employees and customers, many leaders now view EX as a key driver of CX. This recognition has led to a strategic focus on integrating EX and CX initiatives, leveraging smarter approaches to simultaneously enhance both.
The Role of AI in Understanding Customer Needs
AI has become instrumental in decoding the complexities of customer behavior and preferences through sophisticated data analysis, predictive analytics and sentiment analysis. This capability not only enhances how businesses understand their customers but also enhances the way they meet customer needs proactively.
AI excels in its ability to sift through vast quantities of data to extract meaningful insights, a task unfeasible at such scale and speed for human analysts. By applying machine learning (ML) algorithms and data mining techniques, AI systems can identify patterns and trends that escape the naked eye. For instance, AI can analyze purchase histories, browsing behaviors and social media interactions to offer a granular view of customer preferences and satisfaction levels.
Pablo Sánchez, global CMO and ESG director at business transformation outsourcing provider Atento, told CMSWire that AI is revolutionizing customer interactions by enabling businesses to deliver personalized experiences for each inquiry.
“For instance, advanced AI and analytics tools can analyze voice and text interactions across various communication channels, allowing companies to predict consumer expectations and demands, thereby offering a unique experience for each user,” said Sánchez. “This personalization translates into improved customer satisfaction, increased loyalty and a deeper relationship with the brand.”
Beyond just understanding current trends, AI leverages predictive analytics to forecast customer behaviors and needs. By analyzing past interactions and behaviors, AI models can predict what customers might need next, sometimes even before the customers themselves are aware of the need. This aspect of AI enables businesses to provide proactive service, such as recommending products, anticipating customer issues before they become problematic, or automating replenishment of goods based on predicted demand.
For example, an AI system could alert a customer service representative to reach out to a customer who is likely to need support, or it could suggest additional products to a customer online based on their buying patterns and predicted needs. This proactive approach not only enhances the customer experience by making it smoother and more personalized but also helps in building a stronger, more trusting relationship between the customer and the brand.
“AI tools are providing significant support to agents, leading to more effective interactions and conversations,” said Sánchez. “This technology provides them with real-time information, analytics and recommendations to deliver a unified and consistent customer experience. The combination of virtual and human agents allows for more accurate, efficient and personalized experiences, integrating multiple communication channels, even automatically sending protocols and updated process information to consumers.”
Sánchez suggested that ultimately, a better EX translates into a better CX, creating a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement and satisfaction for both customers and employees.
Streamlining Operations and Improving Efficiency
AI is increasingly crucial in streamlining operations and enhancing efficiency within organizations, especially in contexts that directly affect customer experience. In customer service, AI is capable of automating routine tasks and optimizing resource allocation, improving operational workflows and enhancing the ability of employees to focus on more strategic and complex activities.
Joe Alim, VP of product and operations at employee benefits software company Compt, told CMSWire that AI has had a transformative impact on both the employee and customer experience. “Since integrating AI into our operations, we’ve streamlined many routine tasks. I’ve seen firsthand how it empowers my teams (customer success, product and engineering) to focus on more strategic and creative aspects of their roles,” said Alim.
AI excels in automating routine, repetitive tasks that traditionally consume a significant portion of employees’ time. This includes processes such as data entry, scheduling, inventory management and basic customer query handling through chatbots. For example, AI-powered chatbots can handle a large volume of routine customer inquiries such as tracking order status or answering FAQs, allowing human agents to focus on more complex and sensitive customer issues that require human empathy and judgment.