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.
What a weird way to do it. Suppose some sales person sold them on a “”shortcut””.
Offer great semantic search on a site/app, show only items that exist (with clear markings when in-stock), add pin to store map. Home Depot, Target, Walmart… they’ve all figured it out.
Exactly, this isn’t a difficult problem to solve. If it’s even a problem in the first place, because a sensible layout with good signage is enough for 99% of customers. A website to navigate a store is probably not even worth it in terms of net time savings, but it’s convenient for customers and makes them more likely to go to your store if they can see something is in stock before they even leave their home, which is where the real return on investment is. An LLM can’t give you live stock updates, so that’s half of the value proposition gone.