4 technological innovations that you should implement at your point of sale and why
Technology doesn’t stop changing at the same rate as society evolves. Innovations that appear on the market every time play a more important role in the life of people. Like brand or company, if you want to be update and still be competitive with respect to the sector, it is important that you will be able to innovate and adapt new technologies to your points of sale.
However, within this world of possibilities, it is sometimes complicated to know in which innovations you should invest your business efforts within the retail industry. At Cosin Consulting, as technological consultancy specialized in retail, we recommend you that you have to optimize your resources. Here we recommend you 4 technologies to implement in your points of sale, but always remember to measure your results. To choose a strategy that must be coherent with your business, your brand and your values is essential.
1. Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is a branch of informatics that works on the development of intelligence agents, systems that are able to reason, learn and act in an autonomous way. Thanks to AI systems it’s possible to automate tasks, improve decisions and develop new products and services.
AI is every time more common to the majority of consumers on the day by day of the people. We can use artificial intelligence to improve the buying experience of customers when it’s used to make customized recommendations based on their previous buying behavior. It is also used to answer pre-sale questions at the point of sale, both physical and online, and to resolve customer problems.
An example of how AI will be able to help the retail sector is identifying those customers who are more likely or more willing to buy a particular product. Once identified, we can offer them customized recommendations. We could also use this technology to resolve doubts or problems related to orders or deliveries.
2. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)
In the first place, it is important to distinguish between augmented reality and virtual reality. Augmented realty overlays digital information to the view of the real world, doing and improving this one. On the augmented reality you don’t lose the contact with the environment that is around you. Instead, on the virtual reality, a different, totally immersive experience is sought. In this case, a virtual reality is created parallel to the environment and aims to generate completely new experiences.
3. Chatbots
Chatbots are computer programs that simulate conversations with human users, usually over the Internet. These bots can be programmed with a set of rules, or they can use artificial intelligence to learn and adapt to individual conversations.
In retail, they can be used to provide customer support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through online points of sale. They are used to answer questions, solve problems, and make recommendations. But they can also act as in-store assistants through interactive in-store displays if you have a digital strategy in place at your points of sale. We can use chatbots to answer pre-programmed questions about products or services and help customers with ordering issues.
