Fashion retailer credits record online holiday sales to AI

The use of artificial intelligence has given Charlotte Russe an important competitive edge.



With its online and mobile shopping communities growing larger and their expectations for flawless services increasing, the apparel retailer turned to IBM to prepare for the busy and critical 2016, five-day holiday shopping season kick-off. To get a jump start, Charlotte Russe launched IBM’s Watson Customer Engagement solutions in seven months. And the technology immediately gave the retailer a wake-up call.



Following deployment, the Charlotte Russe team analyzed its initial sales and transactions projections for the holidays with output from Watson. The new system immediately revealed the results were significantly lower than its projections. Specifically, Watson estimated that online sales would increase over 2015, and volume could cause potential disruptions in service and dissatisfaction among customer during the most critical period of the year.



To help ensure its success, Charlotte Russe turned to IBM's Holiday Readiness team, which quickly assessed if the retailer could handle this drastic spike in product demand. Based on results of the assessment, IBM recommended adding capacity to help meet the anticipated growth, fine-tuned the system and ran in depth performance tests ahead of peak holiday shopping time. And efforts paid off.



Despite record volumes of orders, there were no performance issues and the volume was handled easily by the system. Meanwhile, using IBM's Order Management, the chain is better handling orders, has integrated with financial processing systems, can process shipping notifications, interfaces to customer email and settlement systems, and updates inventory systems in real-time. This helps the chain make more informed decisions about how to fulfill customer orders, potentially resulting in improved profitability and customer satisfaction.



"Like all retailers, our business is judged by its ability to serve the needs of our customers. If we can't meet their expectations we can't compete," said Debra Jensen, CIO for Charlotte Russe. "IBM is a proven leader when it comes to retail transformation. Now we know that our backend systems — the engine that keeps sales flowing, orders shipping and customers happy — is solid, taking whatever our customers throw at it and automatically understanding the best way to meet their needs,” she added. “We also know that as new trends emerge we are in step with each customer."



Charlotte Russe continues to fulfill record numbers of customer orders, improve profitability and maintain high-levels of customer satisfaction, the retailer said.