Robots Taking Over In the Retail Business
Gone are the days when robots were only associated with big industries and warehouses. With new technology trends and competition from everywhere in, the world, business people are trying all ways possible to increase their productivity and improve marketing and advertising processes. They will go to any lengths to entice customers in order to keep up with the competition. One way the public and private enterprises are doing this is by introducing collaborative robots in their workplaces to work along humans. One of the best sources of collaborative robots that many of the businesses are going for are from Universal Robots.
Universal Robots is a Dutch company that manufactures flexible and safe cobots that can work efficiently alongside humans. The highly advanced robots not only make the processes easier but they also improve the ROI. Unlike the traditional industrial robots, the new generation robots are smaller, lighter and do not have to be caged. You can read all about the collaborative robots from www.universal-robots.com . First, let us look at how the robots are bringing change to the retail market.
Item Retrieval
Serving customer in a retail outlet can sometimes be tedious and time wasting. Some customers do not want to go around the shop to locate whatever they need and will pressure the staff to find the items for them. Now collaborative robots can take up this role and help to retrieve items for customers. They will do this manually by following the instructions or commands given to them. The positive side about this is that a cobot will not tire off and can serve as many customers in a day as possible. This is unlike humans that tire easily and maybe at some point even lose their cool. This also increases efficiency in the retail shop.
Customer Services
Attending to customer inquiries and answering their questions about different items in the retail shop is an everyday issue because at any given time, there will be customers calling in. Handling all these calls can be a headache and at some point, it even becomes boring. Cobots can now save on the situation. The new generation cobots take over customer services and answer the phones as humans do. They attend to every query, respond well to any complaints about the retail shop or the products and even go further to fetch what the customers want.
Act as Couriers
Courier robots are becoming a popular thing in retail shops. Some of the first businesses to try out the courier robot services were restaurants. Now the trend is spreading and many industries are using robots as couriers to deliver items to their clients.
Organise and Pack Stuff
One of the main activities in any retail is packing and organising items. This needs a lot of work force to carry out the tasks. Now the robots can easily do that and save on costs of employing many humans to carry out the tasks. One robot can carry out the tasks of more than 10 employees. Unlike humans, the robots are more organised, faster, safer and do not occupy a lot of space.
Stacking
Another time consuming job in a retail is stacking up the shelves. Some of the shelves are so high up that one needs a ladder to stack things on top. This is both risky and frankly boring. Cobots can now stack up the shelves without messing anything up or risking anything. They can stack the items on any location. While at it, they can also check on the pricing and take an inventory of all the products in the store.
Wrapping It Up
These new generation are a completely different breed from the traditional industrial robots. They almost think as humans because they can actually carry out all the duties humans can. They will attend to customers, answer all their questions, retrieve and deliver items, take inventories, stack up shelves and much more. They work alongside humans without any interferences and make everything seem so easy. They are what retail businesses need today.