Project Overview
Confiz developed a GenAI virtual assistant for a leading North American outdoor equipment company, an expert in offering the best assortment of outdoor gear and sporting equipment, to empower their sales reps with instant access to comprehensive product knowledge, enabling them to deliver highly personalized customer experiences.
Through a successful MVP, Confiz demonstrated the feasibility of leveraging AI to enhance sales performance, improve customer acquisition, and deliver superior customer experience. Following the POC, Confiz delivered a full-scale solution implementation, with plans to extend AI capabilities to add more product lines and expand store locations across the country.
The need
North America’s leading outdoor sports equipment retailer recognized the need to enhance its sales operations with Generative AI. This would enable sales representatives in the outdoor equipment category to better assist in-store customers in finding the right gear for their outdoor sporting activities.
Faced with challenges related to limited product knowledge, the retailer saw an increase in customer dropout rates, which negatively impacted agent productivity and the overall customer experience, ultimately affecting the company’s sales targets. Hence, the client sought a partner capable of developing a Generative AI-powered conversational virtual assistant to equip their sales representatives with comprehensive product information and training materials, ensuring they could deliver an exceptional customer experience.
The Solution
Confiz, leveraging its expertise in Data and AI and its established reputation in the North American market, provided consultancy services to address the challenges the client’s sales department faced. Within four weeks of presenting Proof of Concept (POC) to assess the feasibility of a Generative AI solution, we seamlessly transitioned into developing a minimal viable product (MVP) for multiple brands within the boating product category across 13 locations within one state.
The Confiz team consolidated data from various sources, including structured and unstructured formats, and developed a Generative AI conversational virtual assistant using Azure OpenAI services. This virtual assistant was designed to assist sales representatives by processing customized prompts and natural language inputs to deliver tailored product recommendations based on customers’ needs.
The MVP’s success demonstrated significant improvements in customer experience, leading to a full-scale implementation of the solution. This implementation will include integrating voice input capabilities, allowing customers to provide audio prompts for more intuitive interaction. However, plans are in place to expand the solution to include other product lines and locations and to develop additional assistants to provide customer support.
The Outcome
Personalized shopping experience:
The GenAI virtual assistant significantly improved customer interactions by providing sales representatives with accurate, real-time product recommendations to offer a more personalized shopping experience.
Access to information in real-time:
Sales representatives gained immediate access to comprehensive product knowledge, allowing them to provide instant, accurate responses to customer inquiries.
Increased sales conversion rates:
With better-informed sales representatives, the retailer experienced a 25% increase in sales conversion rates.
Recorded customer interactions:
The virtual assistant’s ability to record and analyze customer interactions led to the development of personas, enabling the virtual assistant to provide even more personalized recommendations and enhance the overall customer experience.
Improved agent productivity:
The AI-powered virtual assistant reduced the time sales representatives spent searching for product information. This allowed agents to focus more on direct customer interactions, enhancing overall employee productivity by 30%
Reduced customer acquisition time:
The streamlined process enabled by the AI virtual assistant shortened the customer acquisition time by 60%, leading to quicker conversions and more efficient sales cycles.
