With 90% agreeing personalized experiences are now essential,
the new study reveals AI is no longer optional for e-commerce
leaders
MONTREAL and SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 14,
2024 /CNW/ - Coveo (TSX: CVO), the leading
enterprise AI platform that brings AI Search and generative AI to
every point–of-experience, today announced a new report, by Harvard
Business Review Analytic Services and co-sponsored by SAP, that
highlights that the "AI: The Secret to a Thriving E-Commerce
Business" report found that 70% of respondents believe implementing
AI within e-commerce operations is very or extremely important.
Businesses already using AI are reaping significant rewards: 69% of
survey respondents report improved efficiency and speed of work as
a direct result of implementing AI.
While a majority of organizations recognize the power of AI, the
study also showed significant obstacles remain to widespread
adoption. These include data privacy concerns (cited by 55% of
respondents), a lack of talent with necessary AI expertise (49%),
and the absence of a clear AI strategy (48%).
"The report underscores what we hear every day: AI is no longer
a 'nice-to-have' but a 'must-have' for e-commerce success. To
deliver the personalized experiences customers crave while also
driving operational efficiency and growth, organizations must
prioritize implementing AI-powered platforms and solutions that
enhance every aspect of the digital journey," said Sheila Morin, Chief Marketing Officer at Coveo.
"We're no longer in the experience economy — we've moved into the
AI-experience economy, where leveraging AI is essential for staying
competitive and delivering meaningful, scalable customer
experiences."
The paper also delves into the strategies needed to help
businesses overcome these challenges and drive greater adoption of
AI and gen AI in e-commerce:
- Establish Strong Leadership: Designate a dedicated
leader or team responsible for driving AI initiatives and fostering
collaboration between IT and business units. Dedicated leadership
can demonstrate to employees, across all functions, that AI is a
strategic priority for the business and critical to
profitability.
- Prioritize Data Governance: Ensure data is clean,
accurate, and well-governed to enable AI models to deliver accurate
and relevant results. With data privacy concerns cited by 55% of
respondents as a major obstacle to AI adoption, well-governed data
can go a long way toward building trust between brands and their
consumers.
- Embrace a Human-in-the-Loop Approach: Recognize
that AI is most effective when combined with human oversight and
validation, particularly in areas like content generation and
customer service; even the most carefully designed large language
models can generate bias or misinformation.
- Invest in Employee Upskilling: Provide employees
with the training and resources they need to work effectively with
AI and adapt to evolving job roles. Organizations should have a
clear vision and strategy for how they'll incorporate these new
generative AI tools will be integrated into specific job
functions.
- Start Small and Scale Gradually: Even the most
closely followed best practices can't fully eliminate many of the
issues surrounding the use of gen AI in e-commerce, with 81% of
respondents agreeing that achieving success with customer-facing
gen AI initiatives requires calculated risk taking. Organizations
should begin with targeted AI use cases and gradually expand as
confidence and expertise grow.
"The true power of AI in e-commerce lies not in replacing human
interaction, but in enhancing it," said Ritu Bhargava, President and Chief Product
Officer, SAP Industries & Customer Experience. "AI-powered
shopping assistants can handle routine queries, allowing staff to
focus on complex, high-value customer interactions."
To download the report, click here.
Experts from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, Coveo
and SAP shared key insights from this survey of 200 industry
professionals to help shape your AI strategy. Watch the webinar to
learn more.
About Coveo
We strongly believe that the future is business-to-person. That
experiences are today's competitive front line, a make or break for
every business. We also believe that remarkable experiences not
only enhance user satisfaction but also yield significant gains for
enterprises. That is what we call the AI-experience advantage – the
degree to which the content, products, recommendations, and advice
presented to a person online aligns easily with their needs,
intent, preferences, context, and behavior, resulting in superior
business outcomes.
To realize this AI-experience advantage at scale, enterprises
require a robust, spinal and composable infrastructure capable
of unifying content securely and delivering AI search, AI
recommendations, true personalization, and a trusted generative
experience at every touchpoint with each individual customer,
partner and employee.
Coveo is dedicated to bringing this advantage to every
point-of-experience, using powerful data and AI models to transform
the enterprise in commerce, customer service, website and
workplace.
The Coveo platform is ISO 27001 and ISO 27018 certified,
SOC2 compliant, HIPAA compatible, with a 99.999% SLA available. We
are a Salesforce ISV Partner, an SAP EndorsedⓇ App,
an Adobe Gold Partner, MACH Alliance member and a Genesys
AppFoundry ISV Partner.
Coveo is a trademark of Coveo Solutions Inc.
Stay up to date on the latest Coveo news and content by
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on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
Forward-Looking Information
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SOURCE Coveo Solutions Inc.