Artificial intelligence isn’t just marketing hyperbole. When its full potential is realized, AI has the power to solve a multitude of commerce problems. The conversation at Adweek's Elevate: AI 2022 focused on precisely this. From reducing wait times for at-home delivery to improving customer service on a digital channel to predicting (and even establishing) food trends, AI was championed as a central solution to tackling various challenges related to commerce.

Innovation and Understanding the Customer

Introducing new flavors and beverages to markets has always been a strategy to grow and diversify business offerings. Recently, major food companies have been using AI to help inform their product development and as a way to better understand consumer preferences. For example, PepsiCo uses AI technology to create products that customers don't even know they want. Its AI Tastewise tool analyzes over 95M menu items, 226B recipe interactions, and 22.5B social media posts to understand what customers want and why. This helped PepsiCo develop its bestselling seaweed-flavored snack in the UK, which has become a top seller since its launch.

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Enhancing Bots

Chatbots are an extremely handy tool for businesses looking to improve and streamline their customer service processes and have grown in popularity and consumer sentiment over the years.

Volaris Airlines started using bot support to assist with its customer service efforts. With AI learning, the airline was able to implement a humanized version of its automated interactions. This allowed the organization to scale customer engagement efforts and improve retention by elevating the overall customer experience. Vane, the Volaris chatbot acts as a virtual assistant that never sleeps on behalf of the airline. The friendly, always-on/always-learning bot helps customers check in for their flight, monitor their flight status, find reservation codes, and more. Customers can interact with Vane on Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

Image Source: Volaris Website

Easy and Clean Delivery

Walmart has partnered with Cruise, an autonomous vehicle company, to deliver groceries to consumers using self-driving cars. It promises to reduce its carbon footprint by using 100% electric with zero-emission vehicles. It also promises to improve waiting times as multiple vehicles will be available around the clock. Furthermore, this delivery option is more economical since users don't have to tip.

Image Source: Walmart

When thinking about the commerce journey from product creation and marketing approach to price and product delivery, ensure you clearly understand the problem you are trying to solve. And when considering the technology that supports the solution, focus on tangible impact and improvement rather than the technical complexity.