Over a quarter of retailers worldwide are deploying AI today, an increase of 17 per cent since 2017. These retailers represent 23 per cent of the global retail market by revenue. They feel using AI in customer-facing functions will reduce the number of customer complaints by up to 15 per cent, while 99 per cent expect AI to increase sales by up to 15 per cent.

These are the results of a survey by the Capgemini Research Institute. It finds there is a billion dollar opportunity for those retail companies that are able to scale and expand the scope of their existing deployments. However, just one per cent of use cases by retailers have achieved this level of deployment as on date.

Lack of scalability is likely caused by retailers focusing on more complex, higher-return projects. Deployments to date have also lacked a focus on customer usability. The driving forces behind current AI implementations are cost and ROI while customer experience and known customer pain points are significantly lower priorities.

There is a clear imbalance of organisations prioritising cost, data and ROI when deploying AI, with only a small minority considering customer pain points also. These two factors need to be given equal weighting if long-term AI growth, with all of the benefits it brings, is to be achieved.