The retailer, which has been struggling with declining sales, has made AI part of its growth strategy, but staff say “Help AI” is a poorly designed tool and a waste of resources.
Cyrus Farivar, Forbes Staff
Last month, Target officially entered the AI bubble. Like many other companies in retail, the company adopted something simple and easy to use: a ChatGPT-esque bot, but focused on employees rather than customer support.
“We’re continually experimenting with new tools to make it easier for our teams to do their jobs and deliver more of what our customers love about shopping at Target,” Target CIO Brett Craig enthused in a press release, touting the company’s “innovative GenAI technology” that will be rolled out to all of the company’s nearly 2,000 stores by August.
The “Help AI” will be a kind of “store process expert and coach” to help new and seasonal team members learn on the job. It will also “answer questions about on-site processes, mentor new team members, help with store operations management and more,” making “your team’s job easier, allowing them to work faster and more efficiently.”
However, this proved not to be the case.
“Why don’t they spend their time applying AI to things that are actually useful?”
Anonymous Target Employee
Target employees told Forbes that “Help AI” struggled to provide good answers, was cumbersome to use, and was most distracting, and many said it was a waste of the company’s resources.
“This tool is [Target] “You can say, ‘Oh, we’re so innovative,'” one Target employee, who asked not to be named for fear of professional retribution, told Forbes, adding that HelpAI is like a worse version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but with more limitations. “We call it a shit bot because it gives you shit answers,” another employee said.
In one example shared by Forbes, Help AI answered some questions well but struggled with others. When an employee asked how to deal with a rude customer, Help AI instructed them to “stay calm” and “be polite.” But when asked the same question about a difficult coworker, Help AI refused to respond. Another employee said the bot couldn’t explain basic store terminology and its answers were generally “incomplete and largely useless.”
“Why aren’t you spending your time applying AI to things that actually help?” another employee asked. “Why aren’t you using machine learning to identify which items are trending toward canceled orders?”
A shopper looks at merchandise stored behind glass as it is hidden at a Target store in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan on September 28, 2023 in New York City.
Getty Images
To make matters worse, when a Texas employee asked Help AI what to do if there was an active shooter in the store, Help AI instructed them to confront the shooter if he was near a weapon, specifically suggesting that they use a baseball bat.
“It’s not a good idea. Just hide,” the employee told Forbes. “If you’re in the break room, stay there and don’t go looking for a weapon.” Homeland Security guidelines suggest “shelter” and “hide” as first and second options before taking action as a “last resort.”
Target spokesman Brian Harper Tirado did not respond to questions about the chatbot’s guidance on mass shootings. In a statement, he said the company is “committed to making our associates’ jobs easier” as a way to “better serve our customers” and welcomes feedback about the bot.
“Given the transformative nature of this technology, we’re focused on testing, learning, and iterating while gathering valuable feedback and insights from our teams to make this tool even more impactful in the future,” Harper-Tirado said.
“Will the end result be improved customer satisfaction and increased sales? I think that’s still to be determined.”
Duleep Rodrigo, KPMG
Target said in its annual report earlier this year that AI is part of its growth strategy. The $70 billion retail giant has struggled with a downturn, including its first sales decline since 2017. The company has cut prices on some products to stay competitive with Walmart. Target’s stock, trading at about $150 a share, is down nearly half from its 2021 peak.
Help AI appears to be the latest in the company’s AI efforts: In a press release announcing the chatbot, Target’s chief store officer, Mark Schindell, touted the tool as “freeing up the time and attention of our teams to serve guests with care and creating shopping experiences that invite discovery, ease and everyday moments of joy.”
While Target isn’t the first company to adopt AI chatbots (others include Apple, Klarna, and Morgan Stanley), it claims to be the “first major retailer” to employ an AI chatbot for internal business purposes.
Industry observers say it is too early to assess the company’s return on investment.
“Ultimately, does it help? Will it translate into the bottom line of improved customer satisfaction and driving sales? I think that’s an open question.”
Skye Canaves, an analyst at eMarketer, agreed that “it’s hard to gauge the exact impact the chatbot will have on sales, given other efforts Target has recently launched to turn around declining sales.”
But some Target employees question why the company invested resources in a tool like Help AI when there are resources that could be better used elsewhere.
“Have you ever had to wait in a long line at Target recently when they removed self-checkout and only had one cashier at the register?” she asked. “God knows how much money Target has spent on this nearly useless tool while stores struggle with unreasonable expectations and unmanageable workloads.” [Why didn’t it] Will we spend the time applying AI to something that is actually useful?
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