Industry

AI use cases in retail and ecommerce

Physical and online retailers and marketplaces: shopping assistance, service, merchandising, supply chain and store operations.

Use cases
22
Deployments
30
Organizations
26
Outcome disclosed
77%

22 Retail and ecommerce use cases

26 organizations in 9 countries run these use cases in public. 77% of those 30 deployments disclose a measurable outcome.

Cross industryBanking

AI agent for branch finding and appointment booking

A conversational agent that finds the nearest suitable location, checks opening hours and which services it offers, books an in person or video appointment with the right specialist, and records the reason for the visit so staff are prepared. In banking it answers "where is my nearest branch" and books the mortgage or business banker; the same job exists in retail, healthcare and property.

Deployments
4 public, best grade B
Autonomy
Autonomous
Cross industryTechnology and software

AI agent for data quality monitoring and observability

An AI agent that watches data pipelines and tables continuously, uses machine learning to learn the normal pattern of freshness, volume, schema and distribution for each one, flags anomalies before they reach a dashboard or a downstream model, and traces the lineage back to the change that caused them so an engineer can fix the source, not just the symptom.

Deployments
2 public, best grade C
Reported productivity gain
50%
SeatGeek, vendor claim
Cross industryBanking

AI agent for first line contact centre service

An AI agent that answers the first line of inbound customer contact on phone, chat and messaging, resolves general and routine questions end to end in the customer's own language, and routes everything complex, sensitive or regulated to the right human team with the context attached.

Deployments
18 public, best grade B
Median containment rate
47%
7 deployments
Cross industryBanking

AI agent for IT service desk resolution

An AI agent in Microsoft Teams, Slack or the intranet that takes the high volume IT support queue, such as password and MFA resets, account unlocks, VPN, device and software requests, and resolves common requests by acting in the identity and IT service management systems, handing the rest to the right resolver group with the context attached.

Deployments
6 public, best grade B
Reported employee adoption
94%
Mercari US, vendor claim
Cross industryRetail and ecommerce

AI agent for order status, delivery changes and returns

An AI agent that answers "where is my order", changes delivery details and arranges returns, exchanges and refunds end to end for online and omnichannel shoppers, by reading and writing to the order, carrier and returns systems within the retailer's policy, and hands exceptions such as damaged goods, disputes and upset customers to a person.

Deployments
5 public, best grade B
Reported customer satisfaction
98%
BARK, vendor claim
Payments and cardsBanking

AI agent for payment initiation within a customer mandate

An AI agent that initiates and completes payments or purchases on a customer's behalf, within a mandate the customer set in advance (spending caps, allowed merchants or categories, a tokenized credential and rules for when to ask for confirmation), and then confirms and reconciles every transaction it made.

Deployments
7 public, best grade B
Autonomy
Supervised agent
Cross industryBanking

AI assistant for procurement and supplier contract review

An assistant for procurement and vendor management that reads supplier contracts and proposals, extracts the key terms, flags deviations from the organization's standard positions, drafts requests for proposal and evaluation matrices, and prepares negotiation positions, with a procurement or legal owner approving every conclusion.

Deployments
5 public, best grade B
Autonomy
Copilot
BankingCross industry

AI cash flow forecasting for corporate treasury

Machine learning and conversational analytics, offered by some banks inside their cash management platforms, that categorise a company's cash flows, forecast positions across accounts and currencies, and answer treasurers' questions in plain language, so the treasury team decides on funding and idle balances with better information and less spreadsheet work.

Deployments
5 public, best grade B
Reported productivity gain
about 90%
JPMorgan Chase, organization claim
Retail and ecommerce

AI demand forecasting and automated replenishment for retail

Machine learning that forecasts demand for every item in every store or fulfillment center, day by day, from sales history, promotions, prices, weather and local events, and turns the forecast into automatic store and warehouse orders within limits set by planners, who handle the exceptions.

Deployments
4 public, best grade B
Autonomy
Supervised agent
Cross industryManufacturing

AI for cash application and remittance matching

AI that reads remittance advices in many formats, matches incoming customer payments to open receivable invoices, proposes deduction and short pay reason codes from prior resolutions, and routes only the genuine exceptions to a cash application analyst, so the accounts receivable sub ledger clears itself for the clean majority of payments.

Deployments
2 public, best grade C
Reported automation rate
98%
Keurig Dr Pepper, vendor claim
Payments and cardsBanking

AI for chargeback and representment operations

AI that runs the dispute engine room for issuers, acquirers and merchants: it maps each dispute to the network reason code, gathers the matching evidence, assembles a network compliant chargeback or representment package, drafts the rebuttal, tracks every deadline and processes pre dispute alerts so a refund can be issued before a chargeback lands.

Deployments
2 public, best grade B
Autonomy
Supervised agent
Logistics and transportationRetail and ecommerce

AI for customs classification and declaration preparation

AI that reads what is being shipped (the commercial invoice, the product data and sometimes a photo), proposes the tariff classification code with its reasoning and a confidence score, drafts the customs declaration with value, origin and parties, and sends only uncertain or high risk entries to a licensed customs specialist before filing.

Deployments
3 public, best grade B
Reported automation rate
90%
United Parcel Service, organization claim
Cross industryBanking

AI for supplier invoice processing in accounts payable

AI that captures supplier invoices from any format, extracts header and line data, matches them to purchase orders and goods receipts, proposes tax and cost centre coding, flags duplicates and suspected fraud, and routes them for approval and posting, leaving only exceptions to accounts payable staff.

Deployments
4 public, best grade B
Reported productivity gain
80%
Kingfisher, organization claim
Cross industryRetail and ecommerce

AI for voice of the customer and feedback analysis

AI that reads every piece of free text customer feedback, such as survey verbatims, NPS comments, reviews, social posts, chat and call transcripts, and turns it into themes, sentiment, drivers and suggested actions that a named owner can act on, so the organization hears all of its customers instead of a sample.

Deployments
5 public, best grade B
Reported accuracy
84%
SBF Group, vendor claim
Cross industryRetail and ecommerce

AI localization of marketing, product and web content

AI that translates and adapts an organization's commercial content, such as campaigns, emails, product pages, help content and websites, for each market and language, using the brand's glossary, style guide and past approved translations, and routes the output to human linguists and local marketers for review in proportion to how visible and risky the content is.

Deployments
3 public, best grade C
Reported cycle time reduction
10x
Swarovski, vendor claim
Cross industryTravel and hospitality

AI marketing personalization at scale

AI that runs marketing campaigns at the level of the individual: it decides for each customer which product, offer, message or content to show next across email, app, web and paid media, and generates the matching copy and creative variants within brand and compliance rules. It is the marketing team's engine across many campaigns and channels, not an agent that converses with the customer.

Deployments
7 public, best grade B
Reported conversion uplift
30%
Catchtable, vendor claim
Retail and ecommerceCross industry

AI product content and catalog enrichment for online retail

AI that writes and repairs product content at catalog scale: it drafts titles, descriptions and image alt text, and extracts missing attributes such as color, size and material from supplier text and product images, then checks its own output before the content is published to the store and to search engines. A human owns the rules, the quality thresholds and the exceptions.

Deployments
4 public, best grade B
Reported quality score uplift
40%
Amazon, organization claim
Cross industryBanking

AI quality and compliance monitoring of every customer interaction

Automated quality assurance that transcribes and scores every customer interaction, voice and chat, against the organization's own rubric, checking required disclosures and script adherence, flagging conduct and mis selling risk, and surfacing coaching opportunities, instead of the small sample a human QA team can review.

Deployments
5 public, best grade C
Reported quality score uplift
about 10%
British Gas, vendor claim
Cross industryManufacturing

AI quote and estimate generation from customer requirements

AI that turns what a customer sends, such as a product list, a drawing, a roof photo or a request for quotation, into a draft quote: it reads the input, matches items to the catalog, calculates quantities and applies the organization's price rules, and hands the draft to a seller or estimator who checks and sends it.

Deployments
3 public, best grade C
Reported handling time reduction
87.5%
Enpal, vendor claim
Cross industryRetail and ecommerce

AI shopping assistant for product discovery and recommendations

A conversational assistant on a retailer's site or app that answers product questions, compares items and recommends products from the retailer's own catalog for a need, project or occasion described in the shopper's own words, grounded in product data, reviews and stock, and hands the shopper to a basket, a store or a human expert.

Deployments
5 public, best grade B
Reported conversion uplift
3x
Sun & Ski Sports, vendor claim
Cross industryBanking

Governed text to SQL analytics assistant

An assistant that turns a business user's plain language question into a query against governed data, runs it under that user's own data permissions and returns the table or chart together with the SQL and the tables used, so routine ad hoc questions no longer queue for the data team.

Deployments
3 public, best grade B
Autonomy
Assist
Cross industryBanking

Real time AI assist for contact centre agents

A real time copilot for human contact centre agents during a live call or chat: it transcribes the conversation as it happens, surfaces the relevant knowledge and next step, drafts responses, and writes the after call summary and CRM notes, while the agent stays in control of what is said and done.

Deployments
5 public, best grade B
Reported productivity gain
15%
Definity, vendor claim

Free PDF playbook

AI use cases in retail and ecommerce: the playbook

22 use cases with deployments, value, playbooks and governance, in one document for your team.

What the evidence says

Computed from the 30 public deployments behind these use cases at retail and ecommerce organizations. Numbers update with every checked record.

Benchmarks with at least 3 pooled values

Benchmarks across Retail and ecommerce use cases
KPIMedianReported rangeData pointsClaimed by
Productivity gain50%
50% to 80%
Not pooled: up to 90%
3plus 1 up to1 organization, 2 vendor
Deployments by stage
  • Announced
    1
  • Pilot
    1
  • Production
    14
  • Scaled
    14
Public deployments by region
  • North America
    12
  • Europe
    7
  • Global
    7
  • Middle East
    2
  • Asia Pacific
    1
  • Latin America
    1

Organizations with a public deployment

7-Eleven Vietnam, Albert Heijn, Amazon, BARK, Best Buy, Domino's Pizza, DoorDash, Etsy, Ingka Group, Kingfisher, Lowe's, Majid Al Futtaim, Majid Al Futtaim Retail, Mercari US, Morrisons, Next, One Stop, SBF Group, SeatGeek, Sun & Ski Sports, Swarovski, The ODP Corporation, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Zalando, eBay.

The same use cases in other industries

70 public deployments at 63 organizations outside retail and ecommerce run these use cases too. They are not counted in the numbers above; each use case page shows them.

Other industries