How AI Is Helping Retail Companies in Charlotte Cut Costs and Improve Efficiency

AI matters for Charlotte retail because national and local signals show it can cut costs and keep stores competitive: a 2025 retail survey finds 93% of retailers have adopted automation and 70% rely on data analytics to guide buying and pricing, while shoppers demand omnichannel convenience and personalized offers - trends driving in-store tech, QR-driven checkout and BNPL growth that directly affect Charlotte malls and food-service sites.

See the 2025 retail trends and automation adoption for the full data set and practical recommendations, and consider Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work registration page to train staff on prompt-writing and operational AI skills; small, measured pilots (inventory, marketing automation, QR-enabled touchpoints used by 59% of consumers daily) are the fastest path to measurable savings and better customer experiences.

Bootcamp	AI Essentials for Work
Length	15 Weeks
Courses	AI at Work: Foundations; Writing AI Prompts; Job-Based Practical AI Skills
Cost	$3,582 early bird / $3,942 regular (18 monthly payments)
Syllabus	AI Essentials for Work syllabus

“When we're talking about the types of occupations specifically in Charlotte, that's retail sales, customer service reps, bookkeeping, accounting, auditing clerks,” - Collin Czarnecki, Chamber of Commerce researcher.

Charlotte's AI scene pairs big‑bank scale with nimble local labs and robot franchises: Bank of America's enterprise AI and virtual assistant Erica - now handling 2.5+ billion client interactions and adopted by over 90% of employees - demonstrates how a Charlotte headquarters can operationalize automation at scale, while UNC Charlotte labs and Novant Health show sector‑specific wins in medical imaging and stroke alerts that shave minutes from critical care pathways; meanwhile franchises like RobotLAB and Hornets + MeetKai experiments surface commercial robotics and virtual retail experiences for shoppers and food‑service operators.

These overlapping players - finance, healthcare, higher education, sports entertainment and robotics - create practical pathways for Charlotte retailers to pilot demand forecasting, cashier automation, in‑store robots and customer chatbots with local partners and proven vendors.

See the Charlotte Observer regional AI deployments and the Bank of America newsroom AI adoption and impact for a sense of adoption and impact when planning pilots and governance for store rollout.

Organization	AI use	Key metric
Bank of America	Erica virtual assistant (customers & employees)	2.5+ billion interactions; >90% employee adoption
RobotLAB (Charlotte)	Service/delivery/cleaning robots	Robots cost ≈ $8,000 and up
UNC Charlotte	Medical AI (retinal imaging, deep learning)	Research includes IDx‑DR device use
Novant Health	Imaging AI for stroke	Reduced time‑to‑intervention by ~10 minutes

“Any machine that can make any decision can be an AI.” - Minhaj Alam, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, UNC Charlotte (Charlotte Observer)

Customer service automation is increasingly tangible in Charlotte retail, moving beyond web chat to conversational voice assistants that handle real transactions: Bojangles' Bo‑Linda is a local example of a drive‑thru virtual assistant that can take guest orders about 96% of the time and improve order accuracy while freeing staff to focus on speed, quality and upselling - reporting also suggests Bo‑Linda can shave roughly 4–5 hours of employee labor per day at some restaurants, a measurable efficiency that reduces pressure during early shifts and when team members call out; retailers planning similar chatbots should study Bo‑Linda's rollout and pair pilots with clear KPIs and governance to protect service and privacy (Bojangles Bo‑Linda conversational drive-thru AI details, Charlotte Magazine coverage of AI impacts in Charlotte) and adopt a pilot‑first approach with KPIs and governance for stores (Pilot AI with KPIs and governance for retail stores).

Metric	Reported value
Order take rate	~96% handled without human intervention
Estimated labor saved	4–5 hours per day (per location)
Deployment	Reported across dozens to hundreds of Bojangles locations (varies by source)

“Bo‑Linda takes orders more than 96% of the time without human intervention. This directly promotes overall satisfaction by offloading order‑taking tasks from team members to enable their focus to be on providing a fantastic and consistent customer experience.”

Point‑of‑sale voice automation is delivering concrete savings and smoother service at Charlotte drive‑thrus: Bojangles' Bo‑Linda (powered by Hi Auto) is reported to handle roughly 95–96% of orders without human intervention, raise order accuracy, and upsell menu items, translating to an estimated 4–5 hours of employee labor saved per location per day - relief that matters for early shifts and when staff call out; rollout figures vary by source (from a few dozen test sites to claims of 360+ restaurants), so Charlotte retailers should pilot voice POS with clear KPIs for accuracy, throughput, upsell lift and privacy before scaling.

See the Bojangles Bo‑Linda feature list and availability Bojangles Bo‑Linda feature list and availability and the Restaurant Dive coverage of the scaled deployment Restaurant Dive article on Bojangles deploying Hi Auto drive‑thru voice AI at scale to benchmark vendor claims and set measurable targets for local pilots.

Metric	Reported value
Order handling / accuracy	~95–96% (vendor/chain reports)
Estimated labor saved	4–5 hours per day (per location)
Deployment (reported)	Ranges from dozens to 360+ locations (varies by source)

“Bo‑Linda can take guest orders 96% of the time with no human intervention.”

Charlotte retailers are already testing in‑store robotics and autonomous systems that shave routine tasks from staff workloads: at Yiding Hot Pot in Pineville, Keenon “dinerbot” servers named Wall‑E and Eve use an AI pathway system to carry stacked plates from the kitchen to dining areas while human servers complete handoff, a hybrid approach aimed at easing chronic labor shortages (Yiding Hot Pot Pineville robot servers); similar pilots span the region - from Lowe's tests of autonomous security robots in local stores to vendors building AI mobile assistants for inventory tasks - signaling that robotics can be deployed for delivery, security, and stock‑finding without replacing customer‑facing staff entirely (Charlotte Magazine: AI in Charlotte robots and retail experiments).

The practical takeaway: a shelving robot that costs roughly $10,000 and never calls in sick can reduce routine labor pressure and free employees to focus on upselling, hospitality and loss prevention - making short, measurable pilots a clear next step for Charlotte retailers planning efficiency gains.

Store	Robot	Model / Use	Approx. cost
Yiding Hot Pot (Pineville)	Wall‑E & Eve	Keenon dinerbots - kitchen‑to‑table delivery	~$10,000 each

“The robots are very helpful to the restaurant to reduce the labor.”

Charlotte stores can cut carrying costs and shrink stockouts by moving inventory planning from static averages to predictive analytics that fuse POS, loyalty and external signals (weather, local events, social trends); Vusion reports retailers using these models have seen up to a 30% reduction in both overstock and stockouts, which directly lowers markdown risk and frees working capital tied in unsold goods (Vusion predictive analytics for retail inventory optimization).

Pairing that forecasting with a local fulfillment hub reduces friction: iDrive's Charlotte center advertises order accuracy above 99.9% and a dock‑to‑stock window of 2 days, metrics that speed replenishment and make automated reorder thresholds reliable in practice (iDrive Fulfillment Charlotte NC warehouse information).

For Charlotte retailers, the practical next step is centralizing first‑party sales and web data to feed models and pilot a single SKU or category for 8–12 weeks to prove a measurable reduction in stockouts and carrying costs (Guide to centralize first‑party retail data for Charlotte retailers).

Metric	Value	Source
Reduction in overstock & stockouts	Up to 30%	Vusion
Order accuracy (Charlotte fulfillment)	99.9%+	iDrive Fulfillment
Dock‑to‑stock (Charlotte)	2 Days	iDrive Fulfillment

Charlotte retailers can turn local loyalty into measurable online revenue by layering personalization, visual search and virtual storefronts into omnichannel experiences: the Charlotte Hornets' Hornets Virtual Fan Shop uses MeetKai's AI digital‑twin to recreate the Spectrum Center store so fans can build 3D avatars from selfies, roam aisles, virtually try on gear and buy items (the initial launch featured 50 products) with purchases fulfilled by Fanatics - an approach that both deepens engagement and creates a direct ecommerce funnel for local merchandise (MeetKai Hornets Virtual Fan Shop press release (NBA)).

Avaturn's avatar and inclusive garment simulation tools reduce manual asset work and speed onboarding for diverse body types, making virtual try‑ons practical for Charlotte brands (Avaturn Hornets virtual fan shop case study (avatar simulation)); the result is a low‑friction way to test personalization: pilot one category, measure engagement lift and on‑site conversion, then scale what moves both revenue and customer lifetime value.

Partner	Capability	Customer benefit
MeetKai	AI digital twin / virtual storefront	Immersive shopping, mobile/web access
Avaturn	3D avatars & inclusive garment simulation	Faster virtual try‑on, broader representation
Fanatics	E‑commerce fulfillment	Home delivery of virtual purchases

“At MeetKai, we are honored to power the NBA's first immersive shopping experience, allowing fans to engage with their favorite team and shop for gear in a space designed to make them feel like they're there in person on game day.”

Charlotte retail marketing teams can cut creative costs and speed campaigns by using generative AI to automate product descriptions, ad variants, emails and social visuals - approaches that accelerate time‑to‑market by nearly half and enable hyper‑personalization at scale; enterprise surveys report broad adoption (≈78% of retailers) and concrete wins such as ASOS using AI to write 90% of product descriptions, saving more than $400,000 per month, while platforms like Salesforce Einstein have driven ~28% higher email engagement for auto‑generated messages.

Start with a narrow pilot (product pages or email cohorts), track conversion and cost‑per‑asset, then scale successful templates; practical playbooks and vendor comparisons are available in guides like Creole's GenAI use‑cases, Jellyfish's retail examples, and M1‑Project's marketing tools and case studies to match Charlotte budgets and compliance needs.

Back‑office AI - intelligent document processing (IDP) plus RPA - turns Charlotte retailers' AP and supply‑chain paperwork from a staffing headache into a measurable efficiency engine: vendors' invoices, bills of lading and purchase orders can be read, matched to ERP records, and routed for payment with minimal human touch, reducing late payments that otherwise risk stock disruptions.

Real retail case studies show the scale: Auxis built a UiPath IDP workflow that achieved 95% touchless invoice processing and 40%+ productivity gains, UiPath implementations cut per‑invoice processing from 3–5 minutes to ≈30 seconds and saved 160+ hours monthly, and ABBYY's Vantage advertises 90%+ recognition accuracy out of the box - proof that a six‑to‑eight‑week pilot (monitor mailbox → extract → PO match → exception to Action Center → ERP create) can free AP staff to focus on exceptions, vendor relationships and cash strategy.

Charlotte finance teams should pilot IDP on a single vendor cohort, measure touchless rate and exception cost, then scale to protect local supply lines and reclaim labor for higher‑value work (Auxis accounts payable automation case study, UiPath major retailer RPA case study, ABBYY Intelligent Document Processing overview).

Metric	Value	Source
Touchless invoice processing	95% (20 largest vendors)	Auxis
Processing time per invoice	3–5 min → ~30 sec; 160+ hours saved/month	UiPath / Accelirate
IDP recognition accuracy	90%+ out of the box	ABBYY

“Once the customer started using it in production, 93% of the invoices were going straight through to the reconciliation queue without needing any manual inspection.” - Ahmed Zaidi, Accelirate

Charlotte's pharmacies and clinic‑based retail sites are already tapping the same clinical AI tools hospitals use to speed diagnosis and reduce staff burden: Novant Health's partnership with Viz.ai for stroke detection routes CT analyses and alerts to stroke teams within minutes, Aidoc's imaging AI flags acute conditions (studies show shorter ED stays), and systemwide tools like DAX Copilot automate documentation to reclaim clinician time - Novant reports nearly 900 clinicians and 550,000+ encounters documented with the Copilot program.

For retail clinics and pharmacy‑based care in Charlotte this means faster triage for high‑risk findings, fewer after‑hours notes for clinicians, and more capacity on the floor for medication counseling or immunizations; a practical pilot is to integrate one imaging or documentation AI module with clear KPIs (time‑to‑triage, patient throughput, clinician after‑hours minutes) and measure impact over 8–12 weeks before scaling.

AI tool	Local impact / metric
Viz.ai (Novant)	CT images analyzed & alerts sent to specialists within minutes
Aidoc (Novant)	AI triage modules; studies report ~1 hour ED length‑of‑stay reduction
DAX Copilot (Novant)	~900 clinicians; >550,000 encounters documented; reduced documentation burden

“Time is very critical for the brain and we need to shave off minutes every opportunity we can.” - Dr. Laurie McWilliams, Novant Health neurointensivist

Charlotte retailers face concrete risks - false or “hallucinated” outputs, unclear liability, biased decisions, concentrated vendor power and energy impacts - that demand governance before scaling AI: audits cited in a strategic framework found an alarming ~30% hallucination rate in anesthesia drug‑dosage recommendations and documented a $2M loss from an AI‑generated merger rumor, showing a single bad output can cause patient harm or serious financial damage.

Local leaders stress responsibility and data governance as priorities; North Carolina conversations recommend pairing pilots with legal review, clear KPIs and carbon/vendor assessments (North Carolina AI investment and governance roundtable).

Technical and process guardrails - human‑in‑the‑loop review, retrieval‑augmented generation and provenance tagging, fact‑checking pipelines, and structured validation - are practical mitigations that reduce hallucinations and legal exposure (see the primer on AI hallucinations primer (SAS)); run a tailored Responsible‑AI audit and mitigation plan for Charlotte retail compliance for Charlotte compliance, then pilot one high‑impact workflow with a cross‑functional governance charter and rollback criteria to limit downside while proving ROI.

Risk	Practical guardrail
Hallucinations / false outputs	HITL review, RAG, fact‑checking, provenance
Liability & compliance	Legal review, AI governance working group, pilot KPIs
Bias & workforce impact	Responsible‑AI audit, reskilling plans, transparent metrics
Vendor concentration & energy	Vendor diversification, carbon assessment, contractual SLAs

“Biggest issue is who's responsible when things go wrong.”

Charlotte retailers can move from idea to impact with a simple, staged roadmap: begin with an AI readiness assessment and short transformation workshop to map data, systems and KPIs, then run a focused pilot - Launch's 12‑week AI pilot is a practical model - to test feasibility on one SKU, checkout flow or employee‑experience use case and collect hard metrics (accuracy, touchless rate, throughput, labor hours); pair every pilot with governance (human‑in‑the‑loop review, data‑use limits and vendor IP contracts) aligned to the three scaling pillars Incisiv highlights (accelerated compute, trust‑based implementation, IP ownership), and use public‑sector pilots in North Carolina as a playbook for privacy controls (the state treasurer's OpenAI trial limited analysis to public data and similar trials reported ~1.5 hours saved per employee per day).

If the pilot passes predefined KPIs, standardize APIs, vendor SLAs and rollback criteria, then scale iteratively so each store rollout delivers measurable savings without sacrificing compliance or customer trust; this reduces risk and makes ROI visible within weeks.

Step	Example / Typical duration	Source
Assessment & workshop	Free readiness check; 2–3 hour workshop	Launch AI Readiness assessment and workshop
Pilot	12‑week focused pilot (employee or product workflow)	Launch AI‑first pilot program details
Scaling pillars	Compute, trust, IP ownership	Incisiv report: Accelerating Retail AI from Pilots to Scale
Privacy precedent	Public‑data limited trial; ~1.5 hours/day saved (reported)	WBTV coverage of NC government AI pilot program

“The human has to be involved to make sure that we are talking about the right thing and that the tool has provided them with the right answer.” - Brad Briner

Charlotte's clearest local case study is Bank of America's Erica: launched from its Charlotte headquarters, Erica logged more than 2.5 billion client interactions since launch and handled 676 million interactions in 2024 alone while serving roughly 20 million clients and delivering over 1.2 billion personalized insights - real activity that retailers can benchmark when planning conversational assistants or proactive alerts.

The internal rollout shows operational lift: Erica for Employees is used by more than 90% of staff and has reduced calls into the IT service desk by over 50%, demonstrating how a virtual assistant can reclaim routine work hours and let employees focus on in‑store service and loss prevention.

Fast average response times (answers in about 44 seconds for most clients) and measurable touchless usage provide concrete KPIs local pilots can copy; see Bank of America's 2025 digital interactions report and its announcement on workforce AI adoption for the full metrics and implementation lessons.

Metric	Value	Source
Total Erica interactions (since launch)	>2.5 billion	Bank of America 2025 digital interactions press release
Erica interactions (2024)	676 million	Bank of America 2025 digital interactions press release (2024 data)
Active Erica users	~20 million clients	Bank of America 2025 AI workforce adoption announcement
Employee adoption / IT calls	>90% adoption; IT calls ↓ >50%	Bank of America 2025 AI workforce adoption announcement (employee metrics)

“AI is having a transformative effect on employee efficiency and operational excellence.” - Aditya Bhasin, Chief Technology & Information Officer, Bank of America

Charlotte retailers ready to turn pilots into lasting savings should pair focused experiments (start with one SKU, one checkout flow, or a drive‑thru voice POS that vendors report can save roughly 4–5 staff hours per day) with governance, local partnerships, and workforce training so gains are measurable and compliant with evolving North Carolina rules; align pilots to the state's policy landscape and health‑sector AI precedents to avoid regulatory surprise (see Maynard Nexsen's review of AI and health regulation in the Carolinas) and bake legal/ethical checks into vendor contracts as recommended by North Carolina tech leaders (Business North Carolina roundtable insights).

Practical next steps: run an 8–12 week pilot with human‑in‑the‑loop checks, centralize first‑party POS data for forecasting, and reskill staff in prompt‑writing and AI workflows - skills taught in Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work - to lock in savings without sacrificing customer trust.

That combination of short pilots, training, and legal guardrails is how Charlotte stores turn experimentation into predictable cost cuts and better service.

Program	AI Essentials for Work
Length	15 Weeks
Courses	AI at Work: Foundations; Writing AI Prompts; Job‑Based Practical AI Skills
Cost	$3,582 early bird / $3,942 regular (18 monthly payments)
Register	Register for Nucamp AI Essentials for Work

“I don't know how we're going to regulate all this stuff … By the time you get done with the hearings, the technology has already changed.” - Darrell Fruth