Does Loss Prevention Impact Footfalls for Retail?

False positives are the bane for security products and technologies. They tend to take the focus away from the prevention of incidents. Teams and personnel end up working overtime to ensure that product experience for customers and prospects are not adversely impacted due to events being misreported. With the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the problems associated with false positives have only increased.

With the retail sector witnessing an alarming rise in shrinkage, Loss Prevention Officers are actively exploring all available options to reduce losses. However, it is paramount that loss prevention does not impact or break the customers’ shopping experience at the store.

Let’s consider take concealment for instance. The Visual AI solution monitoring the aisles will immediately capture the video evidence of the act of concealment and send an alert to the security staff. Now, here lies the problem.

When Concealment is Not Equal to Theft

Not all customers who place items in their bags or clothing can be considered as shoplifters as most of them pay at the counter while checking out of the store. Now imagine what happens when the security staff confronts a customer who is enroute to the checkout counter, with the act of concealment.

A genuine customer or someone who would have proceeded to making the payment at the counter will be shocked with the intervention. Trust is everything and equally important to the customer as it is for the business. For retail chains, erosion of trust can directly lead to reduction in footfalls.

If you are thinking of using facial recognition to thwart retail theft, things will only get worse from a customer confidence perspective. Ethical debates and litigations associated with facial recognition gets more attention than the technology itself.

End-to-End Loss Prevention

The Visual AI solution that you choose for your store needs to ensure that the customers’ activity is tracked and analyzed in a comprehensive manner – from the aisles all the way, through to checkout.

Such an end-to-end approach can help prevent unnecessary friction with customers and ensure that they remain happy with their shopping experience and visit your store again.

About SAI

As a leader in computer vision technology, SAI Group delivers cutting-edge, multi-modal AI solutions into retail environments. Using a unique platform approach, its technology uses existing camera systems to target losses, increase store safety, and underpin operational efficiencies.

All solutions are built from the ground up to ensure the highest levels of security and data protection, respecting the privacy expectations of the public and operating to stringent ethical standards while delivering substantial value to our clients. Globally, SAI monitors millions of transactions per day, protecting the revenues from tens of millions of product sales and hundreds of millions of customer interactions. Its models also accurately identify anti-social behaviour, aggression and violence, helping to de-escalate situations with real-time interfaces to security officers and operations centres.