沃尔玛如何使用生成式AI

尔玛美国首席产品官 Jon Alferness 与 Retail Dive 谈到了这家大型零售商如何部署技术来服务客户和一线员工。

公司对生成式 AI 的使用“可能成为零售业未来的模板”，一位专家告诉 Retail Dive

一、沃尔玛通过人工智能，提升了顾客商品搜索的能力。

在这项技术首次亮相大约一个月后，沃尔玛首席执行官道格·麦克米伦 （Doug McMillon） 表示，沃尔玛已经看到了这种改变所带来的成效。

 “帮我买一份情人节礼物 ”是当月最受欢迎的搜索之一。而且，新的搜索方式不会向以往单独搜索巧克力、汽车、珠宝、鲜花等单一商品，而是系统会根据搜索的场景要求给出一系列相关的、策划好的推荐商品。

沃尔玛在去年年底开始部署生成式AI，开发了以回应客户基于“购物目的”的搜索，同时沃尔玛也用AI赋能一线员工，使他们能够更好、更实时地为客户服务。

沃尔玛美国首席产品官 Jon Alferness 在接受 Retail Dive 采访时表示，生成式 AI 可以通过上下文和个性化建立联系并为客户提供结果。 该技术还可以帮助客户确定他们想要购买的商品并发现新产品。Alferness 表示，沃尔玛的数据对推进生成式AI驱动的搜索的实施非常重要。

沃尔玛美国首席产品官 Jon Alferness说，消费者经常会问一些基于“购物目的”的问题。在将人工智能整合到搜索功能中之前，给客户的答案还可以，但不是很好。目前通过人工智能的应用，这种状况正在发生日新月异的变化。

二、沃尔玛利用人工智能技术为员工赋能

沃尔玛美国首席产品官 Jon Alferness表示，沃尔玛还部署了生成式AI技术，来为员工提供更多信息，帮助他们更好地为客户服务。这项技术将员工可能使用的所有工具组合在一起，为客户有关的商品问题提供上下文相关的解答，从而为与客户的互动提供了一张备忘单。

沃尔玛美国首席产品官 Jon Alferness说，例如，一个顾客可能来到一家商店，请求一个店员帮忙在货架上寻找一个与电视节目或电影有关的特定玩具，但是顾客不记得电视节目的名字、电影名字或角色的名字。但是人工智能可以让店员帮助客户找到他们想要的东西。

如果产品不在货架上，员工也可以使用人工智能来获得答案。在很短的时间内，员工就可以就可以了解到供应商是否缺货，产品是否正在用卡车运往商店的路上，甚至了解它是否正在从卡车运到库房，甚至是什么时候从库房陈列到商店货架上等详细信息。连接所有这些点需要借助人工智能的力量。整个过程都很自然、流畅、无摩擦，人工智能的魔力也被发挥得淋漓尽致了。

沃尔玛表示，沃尔玛的生成式 AI 技术会基于顾客的查询、会话和参与度来分析客户意图。然后，沃尔玛会使用这些信息，从不同类别的商品中挑选商品，创建一个商品集合，以提供满足客户需求的结果，并且不会出现重叠或空白。

汤姆 · 陶利(Tom Taulli)是《生成型人工智能: 聊天 GPT 和其他人工智能工具将如何彻底改变商业》(Generative AI: How ChatGPT and Other AI Tools WillRevolutionize Business)一书的作者，他在一封电子邮件中告诉记者 “这项技术超越了典型的单词匹配，可以检测到更复杂的关系和联系。”这被映射到自然语言提示。换句话说，这是一种更好的搜索体验。”

陶利说，沃尔玛对这项技术的部署可以成为零售业未来的模板。

“生成式 AI 是一项变革性技术，”汤姆 · 陶利(Tom Taulli)说。 “数百万人已经看到了 ChatGPT 的力量——这提高了 AI 应用的标准，”汤姆 · 陶利(Tom Taulli)说。“为了让企业保持相关性，他们需要采用这些强大的技术。”

三、零售业中的生成式AI仍处于早期阶段

根据相关研究机构在对1,100 名零售行业决策者的调研中反映，只有 4% 的零售领导者表示 AI 不是一个重要的考虑因素。而另一个调研机构在最近的另一项调查发现，58% 的受访者表示生成式 AI 改善了他们的在线购物体验。一半的受访者表示，他们会使用生成式AI这项技术来帮助他们购买衣服。

“在许多方面，人工智能基因已经是先进零售战略的重要组成部分,”生成式人工智能专家、作家伯纳德•马尔(Bernard Marr)在一封电子邮件中告诉记者。“它集成了各种数据点(从浏览习惯到购买历史记录，甚至是实时行为) ，以提供一个令人信赖的个性化的购物之旅。随着零售业的不断发展，采用这些技术不仅对保持竞争力有利，而且对满足消费者日益复杂的期望也是必要的。”，零售商和消费者都受益于生成性人工智能不断升级的应用实施。

汤姆 · 陶利(Tom Taulli)表示，零售商和客户都受益于生成式 AI 的不断普及。

“一个自然语言提示可以指示生成式 AI 创建一个个性化且基于某些约束条件（如成本）的计划，”Taulli 说。

然而，Taulli 表示，生成式 AI 在零售业中的应用仍处于早期阶段，它可能还需要几年时间才能成为该行业整体全渠道战略的核心部分。原因之一是：基于公司专有数据集部署生成式 AI 模型仍然是一项复杂的任务。

四、生成式 AI 是客户对未来零售业的“期望”的一部分

在 2 月份的财报电话会议上，McMillon 表示，沃尔玛“对生成式 AI 感到非常兴奋”，并看到了改善客户和员工体验、提高生产力和降低业务成本的“巨大机会”。

而追求人工智能举措的远不止沃尔玛一家。百思买(Best Buy)上个月宣布，它将谷歌云(Google Cloud)合作推出虚拟助手和 AI 增强的客户支持服务。亚马逊首席执行官安迪·贾西 （Andy Jassysaid in April） 在今年4月表示，公司计划加深对生成式 AI 的投资，并将该技术视为改善客户体验的基本要素。

此外，Marr 说，生成式 AI 能够弥合在线和店内体验之间的差距，这是该技术“正在成为全渠道零售战略的重要组成部分”的关键原因。“它弥合了在线和店内体验之间的差距，确保客户互动在所有渠道上都是无缝的、个性化的和响应式的。”

Marr 表示，沃尔玛采用生成式 AI 反映了其在零售业中的变革性作用。

“生成式 AI 对沃尔玛的未来至关重要，因为它使公司能够通过个性化推荐、优化库存管理和改善客户服务互动来增强购物体验，”Marr 说。

Marr 说，自动化和定制这些方面使沃尔玛能够提高效率并加深客户参与度，而这些问题“在当今竞争激烈的零售环境中至关重要”。

英文原文：

How Walmart is using generative AIAI has changed what Walmart can do with search.

About a month after debuting the technology, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said the company was already seeing results. McMillon said during a February earnings call that “help me buy a Valentine’s Day gift” was one of the most popular searches that month. “And rather than searching separately for things like chocolates, a car, jewelry, flowers, the search returns a list of results that are relevant and curated,” McMillon said.The retailer began deploying generative artificial intelligence late last year to answer customers’ mission-based searches and empower frontline employees with information that enables them to serve customers better and in real time.

Generative AI can make connections and serve results to customers with context and personalization, Jon Alferness, chief product officer for Walmart U.S., told Retail Dive in an interview. The technology can also help customers identify what they want to buy and discover new products. Alferness said the company’s data backs up why advancing the implementation of generative AI-powered search is important.
Customers regularly ask mission-based shopping questions, Alferness said. Before integrating AI into search, “the answers that we were giving our customers were OK but not great,” he said.

That is changing.

Empowering associates with AI

Alferness said Walmart has also deployed generative AI to empower its associates with more information that can help them better serve customers. The technology serves as a cheat sheet for customer interactions by bringing all the tools an employee might use under a single umbrella to offer contextualized answers to customers’ product questions.

For example, Alferness said, a customer might come to a store and ask an associate for help searching the aisles for a specific toy tied to a TV show or a movie but they can’t remember anything – the show, the movie or the character’s name. But AI can help find what a customer wants.

“We don’t want our customers to have to think about the complexity behind the scenes,” said Alferness, whose past experiences include multiple roles at Google. “I think the magic of all of this is done really well when it is natural, fluid, frictionless.”

Associates can also use AI to get an answer if a product isn’t on the shelf. Within moments, they can find out if the supplier is out of inventory, if the product is on its way to a store on a truck, or even the approximate time it’ll get moved from the truck to the backroom and then a shelf on the sales floor.

Connecting all those dots requires the power of AI.

Walmart said its generative AI technology analyzes customer intent based on query, session and engagement. It then uses that information to create a holistic product offering in categories to serve results that cover a customer’s needs without overlaps or gaps.
“The technology goes beyond the typical word matching and can detect much more complex relationships and connections,” Tom Taulli, the author of “Generative AI: How ChatGPT and Other AI Tools Will Revolutionize Business,” told Retail Dive in an email. “This is mapped to natural language prompts. In other words, this is a much better search experience.”

Walmart’s deployment of the technology could be a template for the future of retail, Taulli said.

“Generative AI is a transformative technology,” Taulli said. “Millions of people have seen the power ofChatGPT – and this has raised the bar for AI applications,” Taulli said. “For companies to remain relevant, they will need to adopt these powerful technologies.”

Generative AI in retail still early stage

Just 4% of retail leaders said AI isn’t an important consideration, according to a recent survey of 1,100 retail industry decision makers by Algolia and Coleman Parkes Research. Another recent survey by Adobe found that 58% of respondents said generative AI improved their online shopping experience. Half of those surveyed said they’d use the technology to help them buy clothes.

“In many respects, Gen AI is already an essential part of advanced retail strategies,” Bernard Marr, a generative AI expert and author, told Retail Dive in an email. “It integrates various data points — from browsing habits to purchase history and even real-time behavior — to deliver a cohesive and customized shopping journey. As retail continues to evolve, the adoption of such technologies will become not just advantageous but necessary for staying competitive and meeting the increasingly sophisticated expectations of consumers.”

Taulli said retailers and customers alike benefit from generative AI’s rising implementation.
“One natural language prompt can instruct the generative AI to create a plan that is personalized and based on certain constraints, like costs,” Taulli said.

However, Taulli said generative AI’s use in retail is still in the early stages and it will likely be a few years before it’s a core part of the industry’s overall omnichannel strategy. One reason: deploying generative AI models based on a company’s proprietary dataset is still a complicated task.

Generative AI is part of ‘what customers expect’ for the future of retailDuring the February earnings call, McMillon said Walmart is “very excited about generative AI,” and sees “big opportunities” to improve experiences for customers and associates, boost productivity and reduce costs for the business.

Walmart is far from alone in pursuing AI initiatives. Best Buy announced last month that it’s partnering with Google Cloud to introduce a virtual assistant and AI-enhanced customer support. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in April that the company plans to deepen its investments in generative AI and views the technology as a foundational element of better customer experiences.

Additionally, generative AI’s power to bridge the gap between online and in-store experiences is a key reason the technology “is becoming an essential component of omnichannel retail strategies,” Marr said. “It bridges the gap between online and in-store experiences, ensuring that customer interactions are seamless, personalized, and responsive across all channels.”

Marr said Walmart’s adoption of generative AI reflects its transformative role in retail.
“Generative AI is crucial for Walmart’s future as it enables the company to enhance the shopping experience through personalized recommendations, optimized inventory management, and improved customer service interactions,” Marr said.

Automating and tailoring those aspects, Marr said, enables Walmart to increase efficiency and deepen customer engagement, and those issues are “vital in today’s highly competitive retail landscape.”

本文由数字化转型网人工智能专题小编翻译而成，原文来源：retaildive。

CXO UNION（cxounion.cn）转载而成，来源于网络；编辑/翻译：CXO UNIONCXO联盟小C。

如需加入CXO UNION（CXO联盟）高管社群，请联系社群小伙伴哦~

免责声明: 本网站(http://www.cxounion.cn/)内容主要来自原创、合作媒体供稿和第三方投稿，凡在本网站出现的信息，均仅供参考。本网站将尽力确保所提供信息的准确性及可靠性，但不保证有关资料的准确性及可靠性，读者在使用前请进一步核实，并对任何自主决定的行为负责。本网站对有关资料所引致的错误、不确或遗漏，概不负任何法律责任。

本网站刊载的所有内容(包括但不仅限文字、图片、LOGO、音频、视频、软件、程序等) 版权归原作者所有。任何单位或个人认为本网站中的内容可能涉嫌侵犯其知识产权或存在不实内容时，请及时通知本站，予以删除。