Why Your Store Associates Know Less than Your Customers — and How AI is Changing That

The gap in knowledge between today’s digitally empowered shoppers and what store associates have at hand is quietly becoming one of retail’s most urgent operational crises. Today, few shoppers walk into retailers blindly.

They have insights from reviews, compared prices across three websites, watched unboxing videos on TikTok and narrowed their shortlist before ever setting foot in the store.

The reality for store associates is often radically different Many are insight-challenged since the tools, workflows and information architecture inside most stores hasn’t evolved to keep pace with today’s uber-informed shoppers.

Associates are still equipped with static product knowledge and legacy systems from the early 2000s that weren’t built for this moment. The Information Gap Threatening Stores Research from Retail Systems Research (RSR) found that 36% of retailers say meeting the demands of the hyper-informed shopper is one of the top threats to their business.

Meanwhile, 45% say their associates are spending too much time simply trying to find answers to customer questions. They’re toggling between screens and different systems that are siloed. This puts both revenues and relevance of stores – which 85% of retailers say is their primary growth channel – at risk.

The store’s greatest competitive advantage is the human interaction between the associate and the customer. If the associate knows less than the customer, and can’t deliver excellent, personalized service, that competitive advantage falters. The Culprit: The Legacy Tech Stack This challenge has little to do with associates themselves.

You can’t hire or train your way out of an information architecture problem. The real issue is that in most stores, the legacy tech stack is working against the associate.

Associates must search for information across disparate systems (POS, CRM, inventory lookup, loyalty, clienteling), each with a different UI, a different login, different logic and sometimes, accessed through a different device altogether. This creates friction that kills crucial customer engagement moments.

When shoppers can access answers on their phone faster than associates can, they quickly lose patience. Investigating this problem further, RSR’s research finds that more than half (54%) of retailers say they can’t keep up with the pace of technology change. That’s because legacy store systems are rigid, monolithic and not built to be agile.

Rethinking In-Store Technology The answer isn’t adding another system or tool to the retail tech stack, but in rethinking the presentation layer entirely and creating a unified associate experience that surfaces the right data at the right moment. This is the most practical use case for AI in retail today.

AI isn’t a silver bullet, but when applied intentionally, it can address the knowledge and context gaps that undermine the associate experience today. Consider clienteling, for example. The idea of tracking customer preferences, purchase history and relationships isn’t new – retailers have done it for ages.

But it’s always been limited by manual data entry and technology that was too hard to use. AI eliminates those challenges by automatically surfacing customer context in the flow of interactions.

The associate doesn’t need to pull up a profile for a customer and scan their transaction history – AI does it and instantly synthesizes the relevant context, from what they’ve browsed online to what this customer cares about. It’s putting the associate on the same playing field as an ecommerce website.

AI can also empower the associate with real-time information about product details, trends and inventory. For example, Lowe’s equips associates with an AI-powered app that helps associates confidently assist customers with home improvement projects by giving them information about different types of projects at their fingertips.

The hyper-informed shopper is already in your stores. Each time they have an interaction with an associate that doesn’t meet expectations, the brand relationship erodes slightly.

Retailers that invest in equipping associates with real-time context, unified customer insights and AI-assisted answers won’t just improve service scores – they’ll transform the store floor into the strongest competitive advantage they have. Lauren Cevallos is Head of Strategy and Customer Success at Jumpmind.

Jumpmind powers inspired in-store experiences for a growing list of leading retailers, including American Eagle Outfitters, Bath & Body Works, Build-A-Bear Workshop, DTLR, Petco, Reitmans Canada Ltd. , Shoe Palace, The Paper Store, Landmark Group and The Vitamin Shoppe.