Kroger Co. has formed a partnership with an artificial intelligence company in an effort to make the self-checkout process smoother.
Downtown Cincinnati-based Kroger (NYSE: KR), the nation’s largest operator of traditional supermarkets, is teaming with New York-based Everseen on the technology. Everseen provides artificial intelligence technology for retailers to improve customer engagement and profitability.
Kroger began using Everseen in March. Its technology aims to reduce errors in the checkout process, particularly with self-checkout. Its goal is to make it easier and more efficient for customers to find and self-correct errors as they’re scanning their items. That reduces the errors and the need to call over an employee to help, which slows the checkout process.
The Everseen technology can watch video and understand processes to not only help customers correct errors but also help Kroger reduce “shrink” which occurs partly from theft of items.
Kroger will continue rolling out the technology at stores and plans to have it available at 2,500 stores across the country, Everseen officials said in a release. Kroger has nearly 2,800 stores in 35 states.
“We are laser-focused on continuous improvements to customers’ experience across our stores,” Mike Lamb, Kroger’s vice president of asset protection, said in the release. “By leveraging Everseen’s Visual AI and machine learning technology, we’re not only able to remove friction for the customer, but we can also remove controllable costs from the business and redirect those resources to improving the customer experience even more.”
