A shopper smiles as their face portrays facial recognition points.

How Facial Recognition Is Transforming the Retail Experience

Retailers have long appreciated the power of the personal touch — and recognized its ability to enhance service and boost customer loyalty.

Now, it’s possible to deliver that level of service at scale, thanks to facial recognition technologies that can quickly and unobtrusively identify customers and help retailers tailor their experiences according to personal preference.

Fast-fashion retailers, such as Amazon Fresh and 7-Eleven, use facial recognition to power contactless payments and deliver personalized shopping recommendations. Supermarkets use it to verify age-restricted purchases and accelerate self-checkout. No wonder the facial recognition market is expected to expand by more than 15% annually in the coming years.

Making Secure, Frictionless and Personalized Customer Journeys a Reality

Facial recognition is as simple as taking a selfie: after uploading a photograph, customers can enroll in a loyalty program that recognizes when they’re in the store and greets them with personalized service, special offers and more.

Frequent customers might be given extra care and attention in order to cultivate deeper relationships. Sizes and styles could be analyzed by combining artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies with information on past purchases — enabling stores to deliver better, more personalized services. Promotions, upselling and exclusive offers could be targeted to specific customer groups.

Facial recognition also makes age verification and contactless payment even more seamless and secure. Here’s how it works: the payment terminal scans an enrolled customer’s face and sends it to their payment service provider or bank for identification and authentication. Fractions of a second later, money is automatically deducted from their account. The ability to accelerate checkouts is an especially noteworthy benefit in a world where waiting in line can cost retailers up to 100 billion dollars per year.

How else can facial recognition help retailers deliver experiences that are secure, frictionless and personalized? Watch our video to find out:

The use of facial recognition is part of an industrywide paradigm shift that seeks to make in-store shopping as customized and convenient as it is online. Few technologies are better poised to help stores recognize — and deliver — exactly what customers want.

Facial recognition is just one of the biometric technologies that are reinventing retail. Learn more in our eBook, How Biometrics Are Transforming the Retail Landscape >>

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