Skip the Dashboards. Ask Your Store Team Instead.
Welcome to DX Brief - Retail, where every week, we review industry podcasts and reports to share what’s insightful and what you can do about it.
In today’s issue:
How Coop Norway used AI-powered microlearning and competitions to drive revenue
The fastest path to better customer experience is reducing the administrative burden crushing store managers
Empowering frontline store teams: How SYNQ turned two-way radios into AI-powered assistants
1. How Coop Norway used AI-powered microlearning and competitions to drive revenue
Axonify at NRF Europe 2025, Session: How AI-powered, personalised training drives revenue and retention at Coop grocery in Norway (Oct. 21, 2025)
For: Grocery operators, retail transformation leaders, frontline enablement teams
The headline: Coop Norway (28,000 employees across 60 cooperatives spanning the country) launched an AI-powered learning app with a "bring your own device" strategy. The result? A summer 2024 barbecue campaign delivered 3x sales increase.
TLDR
Coop's "Coop School" works because employees can complete 2-minute modules on their phones before hitting the floor
Treat training like a marketing launches, not a training rollout: Coop turned their barbecue season into a gamified competition with teasers, prizes, and store-vs-store leaderboards, driving engagement that translated directly to sales
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) builds trust and democratizes access: 90% of Coop employees chose to use their personal devices once given the option.
Here's the learning framework many retailers miss:
Pick your LMS based on desired behavior, not a feature list. Coop Norway didn't ask "what learning management system should we buy?" They started with four principles that became their forcing
Learning must be operational (done during everyday work),
accessible (on your phone, not your manager's computer),
relevant (to your role, competence level, and store type), and
fun (engaging enough that people come back more than once or twice a year).
Those four principles eliminated 90% of vendor options immediately. When you define learning as "2 minutes before you go out on the floor," you can't pick a system that requires employees to log into a back-office computer. When you define it as "fun," you can't pick another boring compliance module.
Turn training into campaigns, not deployments. Coop Norway needed to win the 2024 barbecue season. Norwegian summers are short, and when the sun comes out, everyone grills. Rather than launching another long learning module and hoping for the best, they built a multi-month campaign from April to August.
It started with a The barbecue season is coming. Are you ready?" They asked simple questions like "What's your best grilling tip?" Then they used the same marketing materials customers saw in media and mirrored them into the learning app, so employees recognized the campaign. They sent continuous microlearning modules about burgers – videos, quizzes, recipes – in bite-sized variations throughout the summer.
The killer move? They set up store-versus-store competition with leaderboards and prizes. Retail teams love to compete. Coop turned training into a game where stores competed to sell the most burgers, and the learning became the playbook for winning.
Result: 3x sales increase on burgers.
What to do about this:
→ Define your desired behaviors or outcomes before evaluating any learning platform (like "must complete in under 3 minutes" or "must work on phones"). Use these to eliminate options before you even start demos.
→ Pilot one campaign-style training launch in Q1 2025. Pick a seasonal promotion (spring, back-to-school, holidays) and build training like a marketing campaign: teasers, prizes, gamification, store competitions.
→ Build a 3-person "content sprint" team. Coop serves 28,000 employees with just 3 people creating content. Stop trying to scale headcount. Instead, build a small team that can create and deploy microlearning in days, not months, by working closely with subject matter experts.
2. The fastest path to better customer experience is reducing the administrative burden crushing store managers
Innovate on Purpose podcast, Episode: AI Meets s Blueprint for Retail Transformation (Oct. 16, 2025)
For: Specialty retail operators, store operations leaders, workforce management executives
The headline: Ryan Holm spent 10 years at Helzberg Diamonds before taking on the role of VP of Innovation and Operations. His insight? The fastest path to better customer experience is reducing the administrative burden crushing store managers. Using tools like Zipline for communications and Legion for AI-powered scheduling, Helzberg is freeing managers from tasks that keep them busy without being productive.
TLDR
Make frontline employees co-creators, not they ask store teams to help develop the solution. This turns resistance into championship and makes concepts 10X better.
Convert your biggest skeptics into your loudest champions: Helzberg deliberately engages the holdouts and naysayers, because once you get them on board, adoption spreads like wildfire through the informal store networks.
Here's the framework many retailers miss:
Start with "busy vs. productive" instead of "technology vs. manual." Ryan's transformation insight came from store experience: It's easy for store leaders to be busy without being productive. Managers and associates juggle serving customers, maintaining visual standards, hitting KPI targets, being great leaders, coaching, training, and recruiting. The task list is endless.
The question isn't "what technology should we deploy?" The question is "what administrative task, if eliminated, would free up a store manager to do something only they can do?" Like recruit. Or strengthen relationships with team members. Or train someone.
Helzberg uses a 2x2 impact-vs-effort matrix for every initiative. One axis is impact; the other is effort required. Most corporate initiatives land in "high effort" because they're designed for corporate processes, not store reality. Helzberg deliberately hunts for "high impact, low effort" wins – things that make a massive difference for managers without disrupting their entire workflow.
Result: Managers get hours back to spend on the floor, and employees get schedules that respect their lives. High impact, relatively low effort to implement.
Turn store teams into co-creators during pilots, not after launch. Ryan learned this lesson the hard way early in his innovation role. He'd roll into a store saying, "I'm going to change your life with this new tool!" But to the store manager, he was disrupting their entire process. Even if the old process sucked, it was their process.
Ryan changed his Making frontline teams co-creators changes everything. They have the answers – they're living it day in and day out. When they help shape the solution, buy-in goes through the roof and the concepts get 10X better.
Deliberately recruit your biggest skeptics – they will be your best champions. Most innovation teams get frustrated by holdouts. Ryan sees them differently: "Attach yourself to the person who's most negative, most judgmental, who thinks 'this will never work.' If you can work with them and get them to buy in, everyone else will follow."
When you convert someone from "this will never work" to "everyone should be doing this," you've just created your most powerful advocate. Skeptics-turned-champions are more credible than natural enthusiasts because everyone knows they were the hardest sell.
What to do about this:
→ Map your store manager's week on an impact-vs-effort matrix. Shadow 3-5 store managers for a full week. Document every task. Plot each task on impact (revenue-driving, team-building) vs. effort (time required, complexity). Target the high-effort, low-impact tasks for elimination or automation.
→ Make your pilot participants co-developers with bi-weekly check-ins. During pilot programs, schedule structured feedback sessions every 2 weeks. What's working? What's broken? What would you change?" This creates ownership before rollout.
→ Identify your loudest skeptics and recruit them personally. Before rolling out any new initiative, identify the 5-10 people most likely to resist. Schedule 1:1 calls with them. What's holding you back? What would make this work for you?" Often they just want to be heard, and once they understand the "why," they flip from opponent to advocate.
3. Empowering frontline store teams: How SYNQ turned two-way radios into AI-powered assistants
Retail Razor podcast with Jeff Strasser, GM of AI Business Solutions at Microsoft and Nolan Wheeler, CEO of SYNQ, Episode: How Voice AI is Revolutionizing Retail Teams Forever (Oct. 21, 2025)
For: Retail CIOs/CTOs, store operations leaders, omnichannel technology teams, apparel and footwear retailers, inventory management executives
The headline: SYNQ Technologies partnered with Microsoft Azure OpenAI to turn the two-way radios associates already use into AI-powered assistants. Instead of a sales associate radioing back to the stockroom asking someone to check for size 11 in brown, they ask the AI directly, while helping the customer. If inventory is zero, the AI automatically prompts for the customer's zip code and finds nearby stores with stock.
TLDR
Deploy AI on existing hardware instead of requiring new devices: SYNQ connects legacy two-way radios to Azure OpenAI, enabling retailers to start faster and cheaper by upgrading software on the backend rather than replacing frontline tools.
Free up associates from running to back rooms and kiosks: voice AI provides instant answers in the aisle while making associates more effective.
Here's the framework many retailers miss:
Upgrade the software, not the hardware – it's faster and cheaper. Jeff Strasser from Microsoft uses this Think of self-driving cars, just by upgrading the software on your existing car. How cool would that be?" That's what SYNQ is doing for retail.
Most retailers assume AI requires ripping out old systems and deploying expensive new devices like Zebra scanners across every store. SYNQ connects the two-way radios associates already use to Microsoft Azure OpenAI on the backend. The associate presses the talk button and asks a question. The AI responds in their ear. Hands-free. No new hardware required.
Why does this matter? Many apparel retailers, especially in fitting rooms, don't give associates handheld devices – they only have radios. Instead of waiting 18 months for a device rollout and budget approval, you can deploy voice AI in 90 days using what's already there.
Log the "shots you take and miss" – it's more valuable than POS data. Jeff Strasser and Nolan Wheeler discuss "survivorship bias" in retail: We know everything that sold because it's in the POS system. BUT, we don't know what didn't sell because the data doesn't exist.
Voice AI changes that. When an associate asks, "Do we have size 11 in brown?" and the AI responds "inventory zero," that gets logged. When the AI then prompts for a zip code and finds stock at another location, that gets logged too. When a customer says "never mind" and walks away, that missed sale gets logged.
This data is transformational for buying teams. In real time, they can see: "We would be selling more units if we had those sizes." No one is filling out a report form after missing a sale saying "we didn't sell a product because we didn't have size 11 in brown." It's invisible. Until now.
Turn stockroom requests into agentic workflows, and free up high-value time. In most apparel and footwear stores today, a sales associate on the floor radios someone in the back Tim, can you check if we have this product?" Tim stops what he's doing, searches the stockroom, radios back with the answer. Multiply that by dozens of requests per day across hundreds of stores.
SYNQ's AI makes this "agentic": the AI checks inventory automatically and responds in seconds. Tim doesn't need to stop his work. The associate gets an instant answer. If inventory is zero, the AI prompts for the customer's zip code and finds nearby locations with stock, enabling the associate to say: "We don't have it here, but we have three at the store on your way home."
What to do about this:
→ Audit your existing radio infrastructure before buying new devices. Survey which departments use two-way radios (apparel fitting rooms, footwear, high-volume floor areas). Identify if these radios can connect to WiFi or backend systems. Many legacy radios have capabilities retailers don't realize.
→ Pilot voice AI in one high-complexity category (footwear or apparel). Select a single store and deploy voice AI for inventory queries only. Track two metrics: time saved per associate and number of missed sales captured.
→ Create a "missed sales dashboard" for your buying team. Once voice AI starts logging inventory requests with zero stock, build a weekly dashboard showing: most-requested products out of stock, most-requested sizes out of stock by category, and estimated revenue lost.
Disclaimer
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and summarizes public sources and podcast discussions at a high level. It is not legal, financial, tax, security, or implementation advice, and it does not endorse any product, vendor, or approach. Retail environments, laws, and technologies change quickly; details may be incomplete or out of date. Always validate requirements, security, data protection, labor, and accessibility implications for your organization, and consult qualified advisors before making decisions or changes. All trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.
