You're Deploying AI Faster Than Your Customers Trust It

0:00Companies are moving incredibly fast to deploy AI. Do customers actually trust it yet? Not the technology itself, but the experience. Forrester recently published new data, and the results tell a very clear story. That 65 % of consumers trust AI to compare prices across stores. 59 % trust it to help find items. And those are purely transactional tasks. They're fast, they're functional, they're frictionless, and AI is excellent at that. Customers have drawn a very clear line, and that line is the boundary between utility and relationship. And the moment a transaction requires judgment or nuance, they want a human every single time.

0:48Pew recently asked Americans how they think AI will impact society. And 53 % said AI will worsen people's ability to think creatively. Hi, I'm Ron Thurston, and this is Retail in America, where each episode I explore three human truths about retail, about technology, and the people caught in between. And there's something happening right now in retail that I've been thinking a lot about, and that companies are moving incredibly fast to deploy AI. New systems, new platforms, new conversations, new solutions, new tools showing up in stores almost overnight. But there's a question I don't hear asked very often, which is, do customers actually trust it yet?

1:39Not the technology itself, but the experience. Because the moment something goes wrong or when someone simply needs help finding something, the technology disappears. What matters is the person standing in front of them and the idea around trust that sits right at the center of everything happening in retail right now. But it's also the question most AI strategies aren't designed to answer. So today I'm going to talk about the trust gap. And let's start with human truth number one, that customers trust AI for transactions, not for relationships. Forrester recently published new data on which retail tasks Americans actually trust AI to handle.

2:28And the results tell a very clear story. That 65 % of consumers trust AI to compare prices across stores. Simple enough. 59 % trust it to help find items. And those are purely transactional tasks. They're fast. They're functional. They're frictionless. and AI is excellent at that. But here's where it gets interesting. Only 35 % of those trust AI to handle customer service questions and just 14 % trust AI to place an order on their behalf. So let's think about that for a moment. We're in the middle of the most aggressive AI deployment cycle in recent history, and fewer than one in six customers trusted to complete a purchase for them.

3:20Customers have drawn a very clear line. They'll let AI do all the legwork. They don't want it making decisions for them. And that line is the boundary between utility and relationship. And the moment a transaction requires judgment or nuance or someone to actually listen to someone's problems or questions. They want a human every single time. And I can tell you after more than 30 years in retail, I've learned something very simple. Customers rarely remember the technology. They remember the person who helped them, who solved their problems, who listened, who took time and showed empathy and curiosity, which is why the frontline matters so much in this conversation.

4:10The people on the sales floor are not a cost to optimize around AI. They are the trust infrastructure that makes AI worth deploying in the first place. So let's move to human truth number two. And I'm calling this the real disruptor isn't AI. It's the trust deficit behind it. So this report from Forrester's latest retail outlook describes the moment we're in as humanity versus tech. And they included a quote from a retail executive that I found pretty alarming. And they said, I'm having my top salesperson train the AI tool. So let's think about that. Your best person, your highest performer, the one who understands your customers, mentors the team, closes the heart of sales, is now spending their time teaching a machine how to do what they do.

5:07Now, if we layer in another piece of research, Pew recently asked Americans how they think AI will impact society. And 53 % said AI will worsen people's ability to think creatively. I think we've seen that already beginning to happen. And 50 % said it will weaken in our ability to form meaningful relationships, which is the foundation of brick and mortar retail. And more than half believe AI will make us less human. So that's the environment your frontline teams are already working in right now. It's the context in which we're asking them to adopt new tools and serve customers who may already feel skeptical.

5:55Now, I want to be super clear that I'm not anti-technology. I've spent my entire career at this intersection of people and innovation in retail for some incredible brands. And I believe deeply that the right technology deployed the right way can make the frontline workers job even better because I've seen it happen many times. But the right way to do this matters. And right now, too many companies are skipping that most important step, building trust before deploying the technology. Trust with your frontline team so they feel like partners in this transformation. Trust with your customers so that technology feels helpful rather than intrusive.

6:44And trust in leadership that the people closest to the work had a voice in shaping these tools. Because when your top salesperson is training the AI, every other high performer is watching. And they're asking the same question, which is where do I fit in this future? And lastly, human truth number three today. I'm calling this the companies winning with AI are building trust first. So what does it look like when a company gets it right? A couple of episodes, several actually of this series. I've talked about Walmart, and they've committed to training 1.6 million employees in AI through a partnership with Google.

7:28Frontline workers, corporate teams, everyone. And more than 6 ,000 associates had already been building their own AI-powered tools. Walmart calls them nanoagents. Small, purpose-built tools created by associates themselves to solve real problems on the sales floor. And that's not just an AI strategy. That's a trust strategy. And they're not dropping technology onto the front line and hoping that it sticks. They're building human capabilities first and letting technology follow the people. Forrester's research on agentic AI points to the same pattern. The AI investments delivering the most impact are the ones embedded in workflows that the frontline workers understand and control.

8:20So things like computer vision in warehouses, AI-driven feedback tools, insight engines that surface real data to the people who can actually act on it. Not AI instead of these people, AI in service of these people. And here's the framework I want to offer before you're deploying any AI tool into your frontline environment. Think about these three simple questions. Number one, does the person using the tool understand what it does and why it matters to their job? Not the IT version of the explanation, but the human explanation. Second, does the customer interacting with this tool feel served or surveilled?

9:08And customers know the difference and they will vote with their feet walking in or out of your store. And third, if your top performer left tomorrow, would this tool make the team stronger or actually expose the gaps and weaknesses? Those three questions won't slow you down in a decision, but they'll keep you from moving quickly in the wrong direction. And in a moment when consumer trust is fragile and frontline confidence is very stretched, as I've discussed here, speed in the wrong direction can become a very expensive mistake. That trust gap is real. And the companies that close it by investing in people before platforms will be the ones with loyal customers and engaged teams on the other side of this transformation.

10:02So here's the question I want you to carry into the week from this conversation. When your organization makes its next AI investment, what's the trust plan? Not the technology plan, not the rollout timeline, the trust plan for your frontline team, for your customers, for the high performers whose knowledge you're about to ask to train a machine because technology without trust isn't transformation. It's just disruption with a better demo. And in the last three episodes, we've been exploring what I believe are the defining leadership challenges happening in retail right now. Episode nine, I talked about the investment gap where we're spending$9 ,000 on the tool and$1 ,200 on the human for every employee right now.

10:54Episode 10 is about the turnover tax that we're all paying. The neglect is actually...

11:07Episode 10, I talked about the... Episode 10, I talked about the turnover tax. What neglect is actually costing organizations. And today I talk about this trust gap. What happens when technology moves faster than the human foundation needed to support it? And the reality is these are not separate problems. They're the same leadership challenge showing up in different places. And the solution every time starts in the same place. Invest in your people first and the technology will follow. The next episode, I'm going to zoom out a bit. we're going to talk about what Forrester is calling peak ambiguity, rising bankruptcies, falling consumer sentiment, the geopolitical uncertainty, and what all of that means for the people who absorb it first, which are your frontline managers.

12:05If this episode made you think differently about where trust fits into your technology strategy, share it with someone who should hear this. And of course, follow the show so you never miss what's coming next. I'm Ron Thurston, this is Retail in America, and I'll see you on the next episode.