As the e-commerce industry continues on its path of innovation, AI has taken to the forefront of innovating the customer experience. What was once science fiction is now very much a reality- and online retailers are jumping on board and trying out new ways to implement this into their business models. This webinar, "Machine Learning 101 and Predictive Buyer Scoring: How to Personalize your UX for Conversion" will delve into these topics, teaching you how to use AI that learns about your customer's behavior from the time they land on your page. Our guests, Jerry Abiog and Suresh Mahadevan of DXi will give you insight into the world of AI and its implications for e-commerce UX personalization. Join our webinar today- spots are limited!

Earth Fare has reported solid improvements in year-on-year top-line sales, a year after adopting artificial-intelligence (AI) technology to help optimize promotions, determining which items to promote and how often to do so. The Asheville, N.C.-based natural and organic grocer, which partnered with Toronto-based AI software company Daisy Intelligence, operates 41 stores and is currently working to grow store units by more than 25 percent annually. Given the competitive landscape, it sought a significant advantage to enable its merchandising team to leverage powerful insights locked within its significant volume of historical sales data. AI-driven insights – which can increase total sales by 3 percent, according to Daisy – helped add significant efficiency and predictability to the sales-planning process, which previously posed challenges. Before deploying the solution, Earth Fare's merchandising and marketing teams had to earmark numerous hours each week for determining which products to promote, and the demands for time to drive innovation for new store activations were challenged as the company began to activate its robust pipeline.

While online shopping has taken great strides in recent years, the brick-and-mortar retail hasn't managed to keep pace. Artificial intelligence now permeates every aspect of ecommerce platforms, especially where customer interactions are involved. Smart product suggestions, AI-powered search, cognitive customer service agents are just some of the innovations that have helped make online shopping more personalized and enjoyable for the customer--and more profitable for the retailer of course. Meanwhile, AI advances in brick-and-mortar retail have mostly remained in inventory management and back store operations. The few innovations that have happened in the customer-facing aspects of in-person retail have little or no AI involved, and have failed to make tangible positive impact in the shopping experience and gain wide adoption.

As chatbots become more and more sophisticated, brands are increasingly relying on them as an easy (and inexpensive) way to provide customer assistance. Likewise, plenty of consumers are happy to skip the help line and get straight to the answer. But does that mean chatbots will totally replace live agents? "No doubt many of the simple and repetitive questions can easily be handled by'digital employees,' but consumers still prefer talking to a live person when customer service complexity comes calling," said Tim Dryer, senior director of public and analyst relations at Aspect Software, which recently conducted a poll of agents and consumers to gauge their feelings about the chatbot revolution. "The key take-away is that chatbots could usher in the elevation in importance of the customer service agent as we know them: higher skilled, greater company loyalty, higher job satisfaction. For marketers, this equates to a higher caliber brand ambassador pool."

Robot developers say they are close to a breakthrough--getting a machine to pick up a toy and put it in a box. It is a simple task for a child, but for retailers it has been a big hurdle to automating one of the most labor-intensive aspects of e-commerce: grabbing items off shelves and packing them for shipping. HBC -1.08% and Chinese online-retail giant JD.com Inc., JD 0.37% have recently begun testing robotic "pickers" in their distribution centers. Some robotics companies say their machines can move gadgets, toys and consumer products 50% faster than human workers. Retailers and logistics companies are counting on the new advances to help them keep pace with explosive growth in online sales and pressure to ship faster.

Robot developers say they are close to a breakthrough--getting a machine to pick up a toy and put it in a box. It is a simple task for a child, but for retailers it has been a big hurdle to automating one of the most labor-intensive aspects of e-commerce: grabbing items off shelves and packing them for shipping. HBC -1.08% and Chinese online-retail giant JD.com Inc., JD 0.37% have recently begun testing robotic "pickers" in their distribution centers. Some robotics companies say their machines can move gadgets, toys and consumer products 50% faster than human workers. Retailers and logistics companies are counting on the new advances to help them keep pace with explosive growth in online sales and pressure to ship faster.

This article is part of a series exploring the skills leaders must learn to make the most of rapid change in an increasingly disruptive world. The first article in the series, "How the Most Successful Leaders Will Thrive in an Exponential World," broadly outlines four critical leadership skills--futurist, technologist, innovator, and humanitarian--and how they work together. Today's post, part five in the series, takes a more detailed look at leaders as technologists. Be sure to check out part two of the series, "How Leaders Dream Boldly to Bring New Futures to Life," part three of the series, "How All Leaders Can Make the World a Better Place," and part four of the series, "How Leaders Can Make Innovation Everyone's Day Job". In the 1990s, Tower Records was the place to get new music.

Walmart is developing a facial recognition system to monitor customers at its checkouts for signs of anger and dissatisfation. The technology uses video cameras at store checkout lines that monitor customers' facial expressions and movements to try and identify varying levels of dissatisfaction, according to a patent filing. If the system detects an unhappy customer, it will alert employees and order them to report to the register. The technology uses video cameras at store checkout lines that monitor customers' facial expressions and movements to try and identify varying levels of dissatisfaction. If the system detects an unhappy customer, it will alert employees and order them to report to the register.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. As fewer shoppers choose to frequent stores, retailers are looking for new ways to rejuvenate the shopping experience, whether through a wholesale reinvention of the retail space or by doubling down on efforts to send consumers targeted ads. To that end, retailers are increasingly turning to technologies such as artificial intelligence algorithms, messenger bots, and even robots, to gather data and improve the in-store experience for shoppers.