IBL News | New York

Google Cloud launched this month new chatbots and virtual agents for retailers, which they can quickly deploy on websites and apps to personalize shopper experience, schedule appointments, and offer product recommendations based on consumers’ preferences.

For example, a virtual agent can converse with a shopper looking for a formal dress for a wedding, and provide personalized product options based on preferred colors, venue type, weather, matching accessories, and budget.

This Generative AI solution can run on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, or be embedded into a retailer’s existing catalog management applications.

In the same Vertex platform, Google Cloud also introduced a new AI Search capability to provide more relevant product results to consumers and improve engagement.

Retailers custom-tune an LLM to their unique product catalog and shopper search patterns.

This offering integrates with a retailer’s existing customer relationship management (CRM) system.

In addition, retailers can use the solution to boost employee productivity with AI-powered summarizations of customer conversations and respond to clients in real-time based on knowledge across a retailer’s internal resources.

Retailers can use this technology—when combined with Google Cloud’s data warehouse, BigQuery—to synthesize shopper sentiment across sources like online reviews, social media posts, customer feedback, and chats with customer service representatives.

Google Cloud’s announcement of these AI tools comes days before the start of the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York City.

Amazon debuted an AI tool for sellers last fall, and many retailers incorporated conversational AI systems into their platforms in 2023.
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