The idea being it reduces the number of staff needed to run the store because now we can restock shelves uninterrupted.
Of course, that’s not what’s happening. Instead of being asked where our canned mushrooms are, we’re now being asked where aisle 31 is, and we’re having to take extra time to find out what their actual question is.
Because there are only 14 aisles in the store.
Oh, and I actually like being asked where stuff is, because it breaks up the monotony of bringing out rollcomp, rotating, stocking, facing up, putting back rollcomp, repeat until lunch.
My biggest experience of this is that those systems just aren’t updated. So they will have rearranged a bunch of stuff and now the website is wrong. When they’re doing it right, the same system that generates the printouts to tell store workers where to move things is also connected to the site. But there’s still errors. An AI isn’t going to solve that in any meaningful way, you just need to pay someone to check the locations of the top 100-200 selling items. Or niche items or whatever works to reduce the number on enquiries. It’s pawbably much cheaper to do that once a month, or once every three months, than pay OpenAI for a huge contract. Have that person rotate through all the stores in a region. But that would be too bloody smart for a business to do.