The customer walks in with a phone in hand. The sales associate needs to know more

MiRT Radar no. 7

At Christmas, 77% of Italians choose the shop. But they walk in with their phone in hand: 79% use it while shopping, and 12% ask an AI assistant for advice right there in the aisle.

The shop hasn’t lost. It has changed opponent.

It used to compete with the shop next door. Now it competes with whatever the customer just read on a screen, standing in front of the shelf, while you finish serving someone else.

The customer arrives informed

An informed customer is not a problem. It is a customer who skips the easy questions and asks you the hard ones.

“I read this one also works for outdoor wood, is that true?” “Online they say this one costs less and does the same thing.” “The assistant recommended this other one. What do you think?”

Here the sales associate has two paths. Answer better than the phone, or find out live that they can’t.

The sales associate needs to know at least as much as their customer’s phone. Better still: more, because they have something a screen doesn’t. They can see the customer, their problem, their project.

What Ace and Walmart teach us

The big retailers have chosen a clear direction: AI goes into the hands of the people in the store, not in their place.

Ace Hardware is a hardware cooperative with thousands of stores run by independent owners. In April 2026 it launched “Hey ARMA”, an AI assistant for store associates, now active in more than 2,300 stores. They use it to compare products, answer questions about a job the customer wants to do, and track down an item the customer bought elsewhere. Ace was explicit that the assistant works in the background and that people remain the ones serving the customer.

Two details matter more than the numbers. The assistant lives inside the device associates were already using, so nobody has to learn a new place to look things up. And it does one job only: faster, better answers, so less time searching and more time with the customer.

Walmart made the complementary choice: instead of only providing the tool, it works on the people. Its stated goal is to give all of its 2.1 million employees, from tech to checkout, some level of AI skill. Role-specific certifications, developed with OpenAI and Google, are already open to about 1.7 million people across the US and Canada. Walmart reports that those who completed the OpenAI training declared a 27% gain in confidence using AI.

Note the word: goal. It is a multi-year plan, not a finished result. But the direction is the same as Ace’s.

The lesson for anyone running a shop of 3 or 10 people is simple: the tool alone is not enough, and neither is training alone. AI has to sit where the work happens, and the people using it have to know when to trust it and when not to.

The specialist shop starts ahead

You already have the expertise. The owner knows which paint withstands damp, which spare part is not compatible, which customer came back three times for the same mistake.

The problem is different: that expertise lives in one head.

On Saturday afternoon there is one owner and ten customers. Nine wait, or ask the sales associate, who calls the owner, who is busy serving the tenth.

AI does not replace this expertise. It helps get it out of the owner’s head and into everyone’s hands.

Three concrete uses, for a real shop

1. The question bank. For one week, every question that only the owner can answer goes on a sheet next to the till. One line: the customer’s question, the right answer. After seven days you have 20 or 30 answers. AI helps put them in order and turn them into short cards the sales associate can check in 20 seconds. The knowledge is yours; AI makes it searchable.

2. Checking what the customer has read. The customer shows a page or an assistant’s reply. The sales associate, with a safe tool and the cards above, checks what is true, what applies to this case and what is missing. The point is not to contradict the phone but to complete it. “What you read is half right. I’ll tell you which half, and why your case is different.”

3. The December hire. Every Christmas brings seasonal staff who don’t know the catalogue or the regulars. With the question-bank cards and a few well-written prompts, a newcomer answers better from day two. The owner stops being the switchboard.

In all three cases the MiRT house rule applies: every answer goes through a person. AI prepares, the sales associate decides, the customer trusts a face, not a text. And no customers’ personal data ever goes into the tool.

What to do on Monday

No software, no budget. Five moves.

1. Monday: put up a sheet by the till titled “Questions only the owner can answer”. Pen attached.
2. Monday to Saturday: whoever answers one of these questions writes it down, with the right answer, in one line.
3. Saturday evening: count. The five most frequent are your first training module.
4. Sunday or the following Monday: turn those five into 5-line cards. Use AI to tidy them up, then reread them yourself.
5. Before opening the tool at the counter: set the rules. What can be asked, what is never entered, who checks.

If you only do the first point, you already have an edge: you finally know which questions cost you the most time.

A question for you

In your shop, what is the customer question that only the owner can answer?

Write it in the comments on the LinkedIn post, or download the free kit: the forms for collecting customer questions and 8 safe prompts for using AI at the counter.

Sources: Ace Hardware press release of 28 April 2026 (Hey ARMA, 2,300+ stores); CIO Dive and Walmart, 2026 (AI training goal for 2.1 million employees, certifications open to about 1.7 million in the US and Canada, +27% reported confidence).