While Amazon has certainly been gaining on Walmart in terms of sales lately, when it comes to retail, Sam Walton’s famous chain is still the king.
When Walmart first opened its doors in Arkansas in 1967, it looked nothing like it does today, but Walton’s vision was the same from the very beginning: offer the lowest possible prices to customers.
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His formula was a hit with customers right from the start, and within five years, that one Walmart location had grown into 24 and raked in more than $12 million.
As Walmart grew from its humble beginnings into the retail giant it is today, it’s been great at making pivots as times have changed, keeping up with modern technology like self-checkout as it grew more popular.
Related: Walmart deals Amazon a blow, challenges Prime Day sales
Now the chain is making new changes with the latest big shift toward AI technology, and while some other companies have taken less-than-admirable approaches in the ways they’ve implemented it, Walmart’s stance is pretty amazing.
Walmart has launched an innovative tool to improve communcation with customers.
Image source: Walmart
How Walmart will make your in-store experience better
A language barrier can be difficult for anyone visiting a store in America if they don’t speak English.
At Walmart, you might have been lucky enough to encounter an employee who speaks Spanish, but most other languages might have been hard to find.
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Walmart has changed that with the help of AI by creating a real-time translation tool employees can use when they speak to customers. The company on June 24 unveiled the new tool, which allows staff and customers that speak different languages to communicate with one another.
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The tool also uses both text-to-text and speech-to-speech formats, so if an employee is asked a question in a language they don’t speak, they can use the tool to understand and to reply.
Walmart says it will also add more languages in the future and launch the tool internationally. For now, it offers 44 languages.
Walmart’s surprising stance
Along with launching the new language tool, Walmart made a statement about the use of AI in its business that will be a relief for many of its loyal employees.
“AI is a key enabler in improving how we work, and we believe its full potential is unlocked only when paired with the strengths of our people,” said Transformation & Innovation Senior VP Greg Cathey.
“When you put intuitive, accessible technology into the hands of millions of associates, the impact isn’t incremental — it’s transformational.”
Cathey’s comments come at a time when warnings about layoffs and jobs being replaced by AI are at an all-time high. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently addressed the topic, essentially warning employees that big changes are coming.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” said Jassy. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” he said.