Driving Performance In Retail With Data-Driven Insights

In an industry that supports one in four jobs in the U.S., retail innovation is more than just a buzzword—it’s a necessity for businesses that want to survive and thrive in the rapidly changing and highly competitive retail market. Customers today can be fiercely loyal to the brands they love, but also demand a fast, seamless and personalized experience across all channels, whether they are shopping online, in-store or on their mobile devices.

According to a recent PR Newswire article, having a seamless omnichannel experience is critical, as 50% of customers engage across three to five channels per journey in retail. While retail brands have made strides in enhancing their respective online, mobile and in-store experiences, there is room to improve and unify into memorable omnichannel experiences that their customers will love.

To create that seamless digital and physical store experience, retailers need to transform their IT infrastructure and leverage technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). AI can help retailers gain insights into customer behavior, preferences and needs, as well as optimize supply chain management, pricing, marketing and customer service. For example, according to Retail Info Systems, top retailers are piloting Computer Vision, an application of AI that helps expedite and improve the checkout experience using visual data to reduce the wait time. The initial pilots in test stores have resulted in a 20% lift in Overall Satisfaction Score and allowed the greeters from the big box stores to interact and engage more with the shoppers.

However, AI requires a robust and reliable IT backbone that can support large volumes of data, high-performance computing and real-time analytics. That’s where Lumen can help.

Leverage AI for Innovation and Personalization

To handle transactions in real time, you need new applications that can run smoothly with low latency across all solutions. Whether it’s analyzing huge amounts of data for making crucial decisions or easily fulfilling customer orders, you need a flexible and dependable network that can securely scale and link your data centers, cloud providers and edge locations.

Lumen is a leader in IT solutions and offers a comprehensive portfolio of services and solutions that can help retailers modernize their infrastructure and elevate their customer experiences to gain a competitive edge in the market. Lumen can help retailers:

• Gain an edge in the competitive retail landscape by modernizing your infrastructure to meet retail scalability, seasonal and innovation demands. Adapt your networking needs to seasonal and market demands to continue driving growth and profitability.
• Enhance your operational performance by using our support throughout the whole retail tech lifecycle, from initial planning to continuous management. Our team of architects can help you move your applications to the cloud, simplify your network operations and lower your IT costs and complexity so you can concentrate on making your customers and employees happy.
• Keeping safe online and in-store has become more of a top-of-mind concern recently with both shrinkage and ensuring customer data privacy. Lumen can help you in innovating in-store solutions as you adapt your retail operations as well as guide you with the industry best practices on cybersecurity to help ensure a secure and worry-free shopping experience for your customers.
• Elevate customer experiences by bridging physical stores, websites, apps and eCommerce platforms into a real-time, secure and unified ecosystem built on our robust and reliable IT network. We can help you deliver personalized, seamless, data-driven CX across all touchpoints, designed to enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction.

In a fast-paced retail landscape, adapting to how customers shop is key not just to survive, but also to thrive. Embracing technology to create an end-to-end experience that your customers will love is paramount.

Explore our guide to AI in retail for expert insights on the capabilities you need to deliver personalized, sustainable shopping experiences.

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