Dovr CEO Jake Freedman shares AI advice with retailers during the recent Las Vegas Market.
Retailers at the recent Las Vegas Market learned tips for how to use artificial intelligence (AI) to sell smarter by improving operations and customer interactions.
Jake Freedman, CEO of Dovr Media, broke down how furniture retailers can use personalization, smart search capabilities and predictive analytics to generate more revenue.
“The future is personal but still human. The furniture retailers who win will not be the most automated, they will be the most intentional,” Freedman said. “AI will power the experience, but sales reps will close the sale.”
According to Freedman, personalization is not just product recommendations, it’s also offering the right sofa at the right price, determining shopper intent and helping customers to make big decisions.
The way to start, without overwhelming your team, he said, is to audit your current use of technology and identify friction points in the customer journey, then prioritize automation that makes the biggest impact and train your team alongside the new technology rollout.
“It’s also important to measure outcomes consistently,” he added.
Some of the frequent mistakes that retailers make include what Freedman calls “chasing shiny tools without a plan,” as well as over-automating customer interactions, ignoring poor data quality and expecting instant results.
“AI is a system,” he said. “Not a switch.”
What winning retailers do, according to Freedman, is invest in infrastructure that helps them to unify online and showroom experiences by adopting new technology gradually and intentionally.
He suggests measuring the conversion rates on your site since higher rates should lead to lower cost for customer acquisition and improved close rates in-store.
“If you can’t measure it, it’s not a working strategy,” Freedman said. “AI offers an understanding of what questions your potential customers will be asking. There are no excuses anymore, since we do have the opportunity to automate a lot of the areas that previously were big time drains.”
He suggests automating repetitive tasks, preserving relationship-driven selling and giving sales teams better customer context. AI can also help with generating consistent content for the website.
“AI can suggest new products and offers the opportunity to send thousands of emails with a click of a button,” Freedman said. “You can never have too much creativity, but it’s important to remember that people are always coming up with something new, so we need to stay ahead of the curve.”
When it comes to specific customer interactions, Freedman said AI can:
· Show stock that is available while removing items that are not in stock.
· Send the customer 10% off of what they are currently shopping for while they are on your site.
· Get the customer’s phone number and use this to look up shopping patterns.
“We believe that everyone should have mandatory AI training policies that make it easy and granular for your team,” he added.
