Artificial intelligence (AI), according to International Data Corporation (IDC), the global provider of market intelligence and advisory services, is a technology almost as old as the computer industry itself, and has come into widespread awareness with the advent of personal assistants and bots, image recognition, personalised recommendations and more. In their research on the economic impact of AI released in June 2017, IDC foresees that the year of 2018 is expected to be a landmark year for AI adoption with 41 percent of all respondents worldwide saying their companies will adopt AI within the next two years.
It is little wonder that the jewellery and watch industry will go with the tide, with some of the mostly-renowned names such as de Grisogono, Audemars Piguet, and Omega embraced this technology. In February 2018, Sarine Technologies opened up its first AI-based diamond grading lab – Sarine Technology Laboratory in Israel, offering automated, accurate, consistent, digital and objective 4C grading and authentication of polished diamonds, to eradicate the subjectivity and inconsistency of human grading. Following Israel, its global network will expand to India, Hong Kong and New York.
Grading reports of the lab are all digital and customisable as to layout and design to reflect the retailer’s branding message. They can be fully integrated with the Sarine ProfileTM experience and information including light performance, imaging, hearts and arrows analysis, brand stories, etc. “The AI-powered grading services give retailers a much higher level of confidence and trust in grading reports,” David Block, CEO of Sarine told Hong Kong Jewellery. “We see great potential for AI in the diamond industry especially at the retail level. I believe a lot of value will be provided through AI technology.”
Chatbot is probably one of the most widely used AI applications in the jewellery world or even the whole retail world, with platforms like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant, to interact with customers and help promote products on e-commerce and online stores without human intervention. Recently, some large companies have shifted to use their own chatbots provided by AI software agencies, communicating with customers across multiple channels.
“The benefit of having one’s own chatbot rather than a general chatbot provided by those platforms, is that your own chatbot can be specific to your customers and the products they use, making users feel the conversation is less robotic and helpful for their purchasing experience,” said Gerardo Salandra, founder and CEO of Hong Kong-based AI chatbot provider Rocketbots.
Founded in 2016, Rocketbots offers clients information and tools to build effective chatbots, with the aim to collect insights on user conversations with AI agents, help clients analyse this data and hybridise chatbots with human intervention to create a seamless user experience for end-consumers.
Salandra thinks that chatbot is commonplace; however, the ability to manage chatbots and analyse the data comes from their conversations with customers could lead to a higher level of insights into what customers are interested in the most.
Henri d’Anterroches, co-founder and CSO of Paris-based Southpigalle that provides high-scale AI services mainly to the luxury industry holds the same view. “Chatbots are just the tip of the iceberg and most of the time not super relevant. AI is totally reshaping the luxury business. The industry can benefit from applications like sales assistant, concierge, personalisation across touch points, advertising, stock management and piece tracking, brand intelligence, HR, customer care, and commerce, to name a few,” he said.
Linking those AI solutions to a deep customer relationship management (CRM), and feeding CRM with valuable data to implement personalise services, according to d’Anterroches, is how jewellers can better utilise AI to boost sales. Statistics from IDC indicated that AI associated with CRM activities will boost global business revenue from the beginning of 2017 to the end of 2021 by US$1.1 trillion. “AI gives tremendous opportunities for luxury brands to predict, understand and serve customers in real time by connecting data from social networks to boutiques. We are entering the ‘empathic’ era of brand as a service,” he stated.
Things are moving quite fast every day with AI applications applied at every level of different businesses. The jewellery industry is becoming more and more aware of the importance of AI in business operations, marketing and branding. Both Gerardo Salandra and Henri d’Anterroches believe that practitioners need to take AI revolution into account, if they want to be competitive and create a closer experience with customers.
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