Last month, our Partner Manager, Madeleine Anderson, attended Shoptalk in Las Vegas. With attending brands from Sephora to Bandier and an exciting musical performance by Nelly, the event did not disappoint. We checked in with Madeleine to hear her thoughts about the conference.

Shoptalk is one of the world's leading retail innovation summits. Boasting almost 10,000 attendees with an excellent mix of brands and tech providers, this is not an event anyone in the omnichannel retail world should miss. 

Going into Shoptalk I was curious to see how different it would be from NRF. It was my first time attending but I had heard really great things. My main takeaway? AI (Artificial intelligence) is everywhere.

Every company is getting in on the AI trend in some way or another and it is really exciting to think about how the world might change with the increasing amount of AI services. When I first started hearing about AI or ChatGPT, I thought of big computers taking over. Now, I know that’s not quite what things look like. 

But let’s back up. What exactly is ChatGPT? Sabrina Ortiz writes in her article, “ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations and much more with the chatbot. The language model can answer questions and assist you with tasks like composing emails, essays, and code.” 

Working at a clienteling SaaS company, one might think AI is bad news for us - but that isn’t necessarily true.

AI can be a really powerful tool for retail sales associates to use in addition to their clienteling tool. Does AI pose any threat to a traditional CRM like Endear? Absolutely not! In the same sense that Klaviyo and Endear go hand in hand in providing more robust services for our clients, ChatGPT or AI solutions are extremely beneficial tools for sales associates to utilize for their customer outreach. 

How will AI change how we work with partners on marketing initiatives? Think of how much faster you could get the outline for a joint blog post or publish a case study highlighting a mutual customer! The excitement around AI and ChatGPT and the velocity in which it is evolving makes me really excited about the future of partner opportunities beyond the traditional lead sharing.  

Overall, the event was hugely successful. I talked to so many great partners and brands. I left with strong connections and it made me really excited about going into Q2. The Exhibitor Hall was always jam-packed and active. There is nothing better than the energy buzz on the first day of a conference. 

The best part of the event (besides the excellent connections) was for sure the pre-booked meetings. I cannot recommend them enough for people attending next year. These 15 minute “speed dating” type meetings were a quick and efficient way to get in front of brands and partners you want to know. 

There are more and more companies utilizing AI as a sparkly new value proposition. One company from Shoptalk that stands out for me is Algolia, which is optimizing your search results using AI. Hubspot is harnessing the power of AI by creating a Content Assistant. If we have already progressed this far since November, I can only imagine where we will be with AI in a year!