Customer Service

Why the best retail technology makes associates more, not less, visible

The human element isn't something you bolt on through training or policy alone. It's shaped by how the store operates day to day.

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May 12, 2026

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Retailers are under pressure to do more with less. Labor shortages continue, as operational complexity and the demand for more in-person service grows.

That's why the conversation around automation in retail sounds very different from the broader debate around AI, where CEOs are attributing sweeping layoffs to the technology's promise.

Retailers aren't asking, "how do we remove people?" They're asking, "how do we free them up?"

There's a difference.

It's all about presence

Physical retail has one major advantage over e-commerce, and that's presence.

A customer can get an answer right now, from a person, without hunting through FAQs or waiting on a chat or automated phone line. In a store, that moment often determines whether someone buys or walks away.

The data backs this up. According to 2025 McKinsey research, personalized and meaningful human interaction can improve revenues by up to 15%. With over 80% of retail sales still expected to occur in brick and mortar, it's clear the human element matters a lot.

But here's the disconnect: 84% of retailers also reported in the UKG 2025 Retail Workforce Report that labor shortages are keeping them from meeting customer expectations. Meanwhile, Salesforce research found that store associates are being asked to master an ever growing list of new systems, as their roles broadens. In short, they're being asked to do more, with a lot less. And it shows.

To understand how this happened, it helps to look at how stores were originally designed to operate. Most weren't built to deliver constant availability on the floor. Associates have always handled a long list of operational tasks behind the scenes, including price changes, inventory checks, merchandising, exceptions, and more.

Changing job responsibilities

What's changed is the sheer volume of work. Online order fulfillment now happens alongside in-store shopping. Pricing and promotions change more frequently. And associates are expected to navigate a growing stack of digital systems to keep everything running.

Those tasks are necessary, but they add up to hundreds of operational hours per store each month. That's time that could have been spent helping customers.

The result is a familiar retail experience: shoppers looking for help while associates are tied up managing the mechanics of the store.

Self-checkout is a good example. When it first rolled out in stores, we expected it to make stores operate more smoothly and speed up checkout. What happened instead is that the workload just shifted. Instead of ringing transactions, associates now move between multiple kiosks helping customers clear errors, verify items, or restart stalled transactions. The line may look different, but the operational strain hasn't disappeared. It's just moved somewhere else.

The lesson isn't that automation doesn't work. It's that technology alone doesn't solve operational problems.

Where automation plays in

It has a role to play, of course, but it's not meant to be the starring act. It's the tool to remove the background noise that keeps associates from customers.

And when associates aren't buried in manual work, retailers can actually invest in the softer skills. The ones that make in-person retail truly valuable: real-time human judgment, problem-solving, and interaction.

Because the truth is: the human element isn't something you bolt on through training or policy alone. It's shaped by how the store operates day to day. Design for availability and focus, and it happens naturally. Don't, and no amount of customer service training will fix it.

Automation isn't competing with people. It's making room for them.

That's a future worth building.