The NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show showcased groundbreaking innovations in the retail industry, with a particular focus on the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI). In this article, we will dive into two remarkable companies featured in the NRF Innovation Lab, shedding light on how they are leveraging AI to power the next generation of retail. PSYKHE AI and Zenlytic exemplify the profound impact of AI on personalization and business intelligence, revolutionizing the customer experience and unlocking new levels of efficiency for retailers.
- The Next Generation of Personalization: AI In the era of online shopping, personalization has become a key differentiator for retailers seeking to enhance the customer experience. By harnessing psychographic data and leveraging machine learning models, AI enables hyper-personalization across various categories for individual consumers.
Key Features of AI:
- Personalizing per-user, curating exact merchandise aligned with a shopper's preferences in real-time.
- Patented use of psychographics to understand consumer behavior and preferences.
- Application of learnings every 10 seconds, ensuring near real-time personalization for both logged-in and non-logged-in users.
Results and Impact: AI's impact is evident in its confidential partnerships, where retailers have reported impressive outcomes:
- Five-times increase in revenue.
- Three-times increase in basket value.
- 26 percent increase in customer retention rate.
- 4 percent decrease in product return rate.
Pierre N. Rolin, CEO of Ankh Impact Ventures, emphasizes the significance of AI's timing, bringing unprecedented levels of personalization to retail. As the company integrates with enterprise retailers in 2024, its exponential growth is poised to reshape the landscape of personalized online shopping experiences.
- The Next Generation of Business Intelligence: While business intelligence (BI) is crucial for retailers, traditional tools have often lagged behind, requiring extensive manual efforts to extract valuable insights. Enter Zenlytic, a next-gen BI tool that combines powerful analytics with a natural language interface, transforming the way retailers understand and leverage their data.
Key Features of BI:
- Integration of powerful analytics with a conversational AI interface for natural language interaction.
- Proprietary semantic layer technology ensuring higher accuracy than other AI-driven tools.
- Centralized data model allowing retailers to ask questions across all their data.
Results and Impact: Zenlytic's impact is evident in success stories such as Koio and LOLA:
- Koio's head of marketing saves 20 hours a week on reporting, leading to a 31% YoY revenue growth in a new female category.
- LOLA's VP of Direct-to-Consumer and Amazon initiates 80% of data queries through Zoe, Zenlytic's conversational AI.
Scott Friend, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, acknowledges the fundamental role of gen AI in Zenlytic's success, making business intelligence accessible to non-technical users.
Looking Ahead: As Zenlytic expands its customer base beyond ecommerce and DTC into SaaS, financial services, fintech, health tech, and consumer software, it exemplifies the broader impact AI can have across various industries.
These exemplify the AI-driven retail revolution, where personalization and business intelligence converge to reshape the customer experience and operational efficiency. The NRF Innovation Lab serves as a glimpse into the future, where AI-powered tools lead the way in transforming retail into a more personalized, efficient, and customer-centric industry.
