45% Of Retailers Plan To Add AI To Enhance Customer Service

Retailers appear to be warming to artificial intelligence and virtual reality. There's a coming convergence of AI with traditional customer service, which is on track to completely change the shopping experience, based on a new study. Almost half (45%) of retailers plan to utilize artificial intelligence for customer service within three years, according to the BRP 2017 Customer Experience, Unified Commerce Benchmark survey of 500 executives at retailers in North America, with a focus on specialty retail. Virtual reality is not far behind, with more than a third (34%) of retailers planning to implement it within the next three years, and augmented reality is right behind that, at 33%. Already, 14% of retailers say they have implemented both AI (digital assistants, chatbots, etc.) and augmented reality and 8% have implemented virtual reality.