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Investment in staff training and truly listening to front-line teams is essential to retailers’ survival amid the rise of AI, attendees at the World Retail Congress in Berlin heard on Tuesday.

“One of the biggest challenges retailers are facing at the moment is productivity in stores,” said David Boynton, Managing Director Northern Europe at Pandora, during a panel called ‘From Task-Takers to Value-Makers: Elevating the Front Line for a New Retail Era’. “The value of every hour becomes incredibly important."

Boynton said Pandora has become “super obsessive about what we call selling and non-selling tasks”.

He said it’s about using automation and AI on the mundane tasks to free managers up to get out on the floor: “To me it’s a crime when a store manager is spending 20-30% of his time in the office,” he said. “You need those folks out on the store floor coaching and selling.”

As well as focusing on increasing sales, Judith McKenna, Non-Executive Director at Unilever, Delta Air Lines said the “secret sauce” is creating loyalty on all fronts.

“You want people to be loyal to you. How can they help create loyalty for the business? That is the secret source of how this is going to work in the future,” she said, adding that regular training of staff is needed. You’re trying to grow and create loyalty. It’s this tension between automation that creates efficiency - but people create growth.”

During a discussion on what retailers could do better, McKenna stressed bosses needed to listen to their employees.

“Retail is truly not easy and I don’t think it has ever been harder,” she said. “Are you really listening to the people at the front line? Do you truly hear what they’re saying? And do you have a mechanism for doing something about it?”

Andreas von Paleske, Chief Executive Officer at Naivas, the largest supermarket chain in Kenya, said encouraging staff to focus on “mini moments” like connecting with customers is key.

“We often underestimate how much we’re leaving on the table,” he said, adding that bosses should take frontline staff - and even entry-level staff - seriously and share data with them.