Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
With an aptitude for technology and a desire to continually improve efficiencies across his operation’s seven stores, Hassett Hardware president Eric Hassett has been exploring the ways artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in the independent channel.
Located in the Bay Area of California, Hassett Hardware has implemented everything from employee communication technology to electronic shelf labels, and recently implemented Fast Query.
At its simplest, Fast Query is an AI integration tool that gives employees immediate access to information about every product in their store, says Fast Query founder Anton Kulikalov.
“Employees can ask Fast Query a question and get an immediate response,” Kulikalov says. “Even if they are working for the first day in a new store, they can get up to speed with the locations of products, inventory and more.”
Answers at Your Fingertips
While the original concept Kulikalov developed was more consumer-focused, Hassett saw from the first demo how Fast Query could have an even bigger impact in the hands of his associates.
For the first couple of weeks that Hassett had his associates utilize Fast Query, they focused on using it to share product knowledge with customers, looking up information such as if the store had a specific item and if they did, how much the item was, the price of the item, how many were in stock and where the item is located in the store.
“I think for the independent channel, the model works really well when we’re empowering the associates,” Hassett says. “This tool puts limitless information into their hands.”
From those first few weeks of utilization, Kulikalov started analyzing the data and was able to point out other ways the stores could use the platform, including upselling, more accurate inventory counts and restocking.
“For any item, an associate can click on the ‘Upsell’ button, which will pull associated information that has proven to be very accurate and helpful to increase cart sizes,” Hassett says.
Kulikalov says employees can give Fast Query a list of SKUs from the store and it will sort the items in a number of ways, such as by product category or location in the store, to make it easier to restock.
“You can ask it to sort the SKUs properly, so that you can more efficiently navigate the store and put the items in their places,” Kulikalov says.
When a subject matter expert isn’t readily available in the store, associates can use Fast Query for technical questions, such as how many bags of concrete a customer will need to pour a pad of concrete of a certain size or what is the maximum temperature and humidity for a certain paint.
“It’ll be so much easier to get our associates behaving at a level as experts without even necessarily needing to train them all the way through the process,” Hassett says.
Building Employee Confidence
Fast Query runs through a mobile application, which Hassett has downloaded on each of the Zebra communication devices the stores use. Hassett says many of the employees have also downloaded the app on their personal phones to have access.
“I think Fast Query will be especially impactful in our industry when it comes to onboarding new associates,” Hassett says. “For a brand new associate, it’s a very common trait for them to be scared to ask somebody when they don’t know the answer. But Fast Query takes that away by providing the answers they need and can help build their confidence.”
Hassett is incentivizing his employees for coming up with new ways to use the program to make their jobs easier and benefit the company.
“Some of the employees are even having their own competitions to see who can come up with something that will stump it,” Hassett says. “Anton has added an excellent feedback feature, so he very quickly adjusts anything that’s not coming back quite right.”
Since the launch, the program has quickly evolved to meet the needs of Hassett Hardware even more comprehensively. Along with typing a query into the app, employees can physically ask a question through the communicator and get a verbal response right back.
“Ultimately, associates can be even more productive, talking to a customer who called in, radioing to each other and querying Fast Query, all in the same five minutes,” Hassett says.
Fast Query now has a direct connection to Ace’s distribution centers via API provided by Ace Hardware, which gives authorized retailers access to pricing, QOH in Ace’s warehouse and any other properties they need, Kulikalov says.
“It makes special ordering easy and has potential to drive up revenue on additional sales,” Kulikalov says. “Right now Fast Query cannot place special orders due to Ace’s API limitation, but it helps a lot with discovery.”
Hassett especially appreciates this feature, so when a customer is looking for a product that store doesn’t have in stock, an employee can see if any are available in the warehouse or at a nearby store.
“There are stores pocketed in between my stores that aren’t mine, but I’m open to my employees being able to point the customer to a nearby store that does have what they need,” Hassett says. “If the customer is in a brick-and-mortar store, we want them to stay brick-and-mortar. Even if I don’t get the transaction, I will always advocate for shopping local and brick-and-mortar.”
