The Role of AI in Retail: From AI Customer Experience to Virtual Assistants

The year 2025 shall always be looked back upon as the era of agentic AI, wherein autonomous systems have actively perceived and satisfied customer needs to transform the retail industry. According to an NVIDIA report, AI-enabled co-pilot usage has surged by 41%, and revenues of retailers that have implemented AI shopping assistance-based strategies jumped by as much as 69%. Besides lesser stockouts, AI-backed inventory management will spell fewer overstock scenarios. As a consequence of AI highlighting personalized recommendations, there has also been a 50% increase in conversion rates, while AI-enabled chatbots have resolved an astounding 80% of customer inquiries without human intervention.

With the following use cases, we would like to underscore autonomous AI trends in retail operations across industries.

5 Use Cases Dominated by AI in Retail

1. Personalized Virtual Shopping Assistants

   Agentic AI enables intelligent shopping assistants that provide real-time, personalized recommendations based on customer behavior, preferences, and past purchases. By understanding user intent, preferences, and emotions in real time, AI-driven assistants create seamless, interactive experiences that foster trust and boost retention. These digital twins analyze data to curate product selections, suggest complementary items, and even adjust recommendations based on user feedback, thereby increasing upselling and cross-selling.

2. Autonomous Inventory Management

   AI-powered inventory systems use predictive analytics to analyze demand patterns, supplier reliability, and seasonal trends, enabling precise stock optimization. These humanized AI agents can also track demand trends, monitor supplier delays, and automatically reorder products when necessary, ensuring seamless supply chain operations. Some retail brands have taken the liberty to install robotic AI agents in warehouses too for stock management.

3. AI-Driven Dynamic Pricing

   Agentic AI is also being trained to analyze market trends, competitor pricing, and consumer demand so that it can adjust product prices in real time. This allows retailers to maximize profitability while staying competitive. Studies show that AI-driven pricing strategies can increase gross profit by 5 to 10% and improve profit margins without manual intervention.

4. Automated Customer Support & Chatbots

   Retailers now deploy AI customer experience chatbots that handle up to 70% of customer queries, reducing wait times and improving satisfaction. These agentic AI systems can resolve common issues, process returns, and escalate complex inquiries to human agents only when necessary, cutting operational costs and enhancing efficiency.

5. AI-Powered Visual Search & Augmented Reality

   Retailers leverage AI-powered visual search tools that allow customers to upload images and find similar products instantly. AI-driven AR (Augmented Reality) features also enable virtual try-ons for apparel, accessories, and cosmetics, boosting engagement and reducing return rates by a sizeable percentage.

Agentic AI plays a large role in empowering all of these retail operations with the help of interdisciplinary technologies to streamline operations, improve customer interactions, and enable smarter decision-making. What if you were to find out that there is a means of Improving CX with AI to increase conversion rates with smart product discovery and implement AI-driven customer personalization?

What are AI Virtual Assistants?

Introducing Kiksy

Kiksy is an Agentic AI digital twin or AI virtual assistant designed to revolutionize customer experience (CX) transformation through intelligent automation. Acting as a virtual counterpart to CX leaders, Kiksy seamlessly integrates AI-driven insights, automation, and personalization to craft dynamic customer journeys at scale.

Interested to know more about Kiksy? Contact us .