The Third Prong
Using Technology to Maximize Peak Staffing “Time to Productivity”
A recent Martec Minute referred to three things to do to make it easier for temporary staff hired to cover peak periods get to full productivity faster. This Minute expands on the third option the use of technology, in this case talking specifically about store staff, though staff in e-commerce call centres could also benefit partially.
The first one is product knowledge, and a good example is what Amazon have done with Rufus. If you shop withy Amazon try using Rufus if you have not already. It is a large language AI model trained on Amazon product data, and it helps answer all kinds of shopper queries about products and how to use them.
At the time of writing, Google is beta testing Google Notebook LM. This is an example of an AI tool that can be used to create a database of product knowledge, which can improve staff productivity in two ways, one helping inexperienced sales associates and the other helping the customer self-serve. Product knowledge can be accessed by asking one or a few simple queries.
Companies can use the same tool to create the company process manual in an easy to query way, to speed up novices in how to complete processes with which they are not yet familiar. All they need is access to their smartphones.
The current generation of electronic shelf labels is another one. Modern labels can show QR codes that shoppers can scan on their smartphone cameras. These QR codes can provide information on the product, recipes, dietary advice, and other information to save the shopper holding up the associate. The labels can also store the shelf capacity for the product, the number of facings of each SKU, the backroom stock level, the e-commerce stock situation, etc, depending on what your systems can support.
These are just two examples of tech investments that can relieve pressure on sales associates providing more time for customer service. They can save shopper time too. These apply to temporary workers hired for peak times but also help regular associates and make them more productive as well.
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Posted by Brian Hume
19th August 2026
