Organizations are paying more attention than ever to what customers want, leveraging new technologies such as Generative AI (GenAI) to elevate customer experience (CX) and deliver personalization at scale. In retail, the customer-facing benefits of GenAI, such as product recommendations, personalized marketing, and virtual assistants, often receive the lion’s share of attention, for good reason. One pharmaceuticals company was able to deliver personalized content with a cost reduction of 50 pe
per cent, while a global hospitality leader experienced users saving double the number of vacation homes for intended booking with AI search.
It is critical, however, that improvements to behind-the-scenes applications aren’t overlooked. GenAI also has the potential to streamline and automate internal workflows, support faster decision-making, and reduce manual effort across back-office operations, procurement and sourcing, logistics, and HR.
For example, a major downstream oil-and-gas corporation is leveraging GenAI to improve operational efficiency by making internal documents and data easily searchable in a conversational way. This has led to a 94 per cent increase in data retrieval accuracy, as well as reducing the query time to process large volumes of data from five minutes to just 20 seconds.
C-suite vs V-suite: divergent priorities
For our recent global CX Benchmarking report, more than a third of leaders admitted to being challenged by rapidly changing customer expectations; however, there’s a disconnect between what executives prioritize and what frontline and operational teams value when it comes to GenAI. The C-suite remains much more focused on customer elements of GenAI, over applications that aid with logistics and software development, despite the efficiency, cost-saving and productivity advantages that these also deliver.
For C-level executives in the survey, the top three “extremely important” areas for GenAI were customer services (54 per cent), customer experience (53 per cent) and sales (51 per cent). IT (20 per cent), operations (17 per cent) and HR (17 per cent) were much lower priorities.
In contrast, the V-suite (the organizational layer of vice-presidents and senior vice-presidents positioned below the C-suite) identified opportunities for GenAI across the board. IT (37 per cent) was the top area, with customer service (36 per cent) and customer experience (36 per cent) seen as a priority essentially equal to product development (35 per cent). The V-suite respondents also saw operations (31 per cent) and HR (27 per cent) as more important areas for GenAI than the C-suite did.
The disconnect between C-suite priorities and V-suite insights points to uneven GenAI use across the business. While executives tend to focus on immediate, customer-facing outcomes, function leads are already identifying broader, systemic opportunities in areas like IT, operations and product development.
Organizations that fail to bridge this gap risk overlooking where GenAI can deliver the greatest long-term value. The real competitive advantage won’t come from being first, but rather from aligning strategic vision with practical application, and embedding GenAI where it can meaningfully transform how work gets done.
Data: the foundation of end-to-end GenAI transformation
To realize the full potential of GenAI across both customer-facing and behind-the-scenes operations, organizations need access to enriched, comprehensive real-time data – not just from customers, but from across the entire business. That includes operational, transactional and supply-chain data, all of which play a critical role in enabling smarter automation, forecasting, and decision-making.
Data management and predictive analytics were seen as a top-three priority for system modernization – an even more important priority than either security and compliance or legacy systems issues. But data security remains critical, with data privacy concerns continuing to be a top issue (42 per cent) for Australian consumers, second only to customer service issues (43 per cent).
A connected, high-velocity data infrastructure doesn’t just enhance CX, it enables operational efficiency, faster decision-making, and measurable ROI across the business. A major QSR brand used AI and data to enhance customer experience and cost savings and efficiency behind the scenes. A platform powered by AI models with a deep understanding of customer behaviors boosted loyalty and led to a 14 per cent increase in sales, as well as a 75 per cent reduction in reporting time. The real-time architecture of the platform allows the business to monitor over 1 million transactions per minute effectively. The business has ultimately achieved an ROI of 500 per cent, thanks to optimized data storage and reduced processing costs.
The transformation that GenAI offers the retail sector is epochal, and CX leaders need to start taking actions now that will enable them to compete in an unknown future. While personalization and customer experience remain critical, the real differentiator will be how retailers use GenAI behind the scenes to empower staff, optimize operations, and turn data into decisive action.
As the gap between executive vision and frontline needs becomes clearer, success will depend on aligning strategy with execution and embracing GenAI not just as a customer-facing tool, but as a catalyst for total business transformation. The retailers who act now to balance ambition with practicality will be best placed to meet rising expectations and shape the next era of retail.
Further reading: The new era of generative AI-driven search: What retailers need to know
