Best Buy picks Google Cloud as AI innovation and strategic partner for several key customer care initiatives

Best Buy, Google Cloud, and Accenture have announced a new collaboration that will involve deploying generative AI (genAI) to improve the experience for the former’s customers looking for support services.

By leveraging Google Cloud's generative AI technology, Best Buy says that it is creating new and more convenient ways for customers to get the solutions they need.

This work will provide customers a self-service option, allowing them to find solutions more independently and will also allow Best Buy customer service agents to better serve customers by providing them with new tools that make interactions more efficient and personalised.

It is anticipated that Best Buy's US customers will be able to connect with a genAI powered virtual assistant for self-service support starting in late summer.

The assistant can help with things like troubleshooting product issues, rescheduling or combining order deliveries, or managing software, Geek Squad subscriptions and My Best Buy Memberships.

Customers will be able to access all of these services while shopping on BestBuy.com, using the retailer’s mobile app, or calling the customer service line directly.

In the coming months, Best Buy will also launch new genAI enabled capabilities for customer care agents to use while interacting with a customer across various internal platforms.

These tools are designed to help reduce the mental workload for agents, allowing them to better focus on personally connecting with the customer.

During interactions between an agent and customer, these tools will also assess, recap the conversation, detect sentiment of the interaction, and provide agents with real-time, relevant and human focused recommendations.

The data from these calls will be used to ensure a positive resolution is reached for the issue at hand and to reduce the likelihood that similar issues will occur for Best Buy customers in the future.

In addition to implementing tools to assist customer care agents, Best Buy will work with Google Cloud and Accenture to develop an AI driven assistant specifically for its front-line employees serving customers nationwide.

This assistant will aim to provide a broad array of solutions to support employees in stores with things like finding internal Best Buy company resources or pulling up specific product guides to help better serve a customer.

"These new genAI powered capabilities further enhance our commitment to deliver better, more personalised experiences to our customers by unlocking the power of people," says Brian Tilzer, Chief Digital Analytics and Technology Officer at Best Buy.

"We are excited to leverage and tailor these innovations with great partners like Google and Accenture so we can continue to serve our customers in unique and differentiated ways and make our employees' jobs easier." 

"Retailers are increasingly tapping into genAI to create more seamless customer experiences and empower employees with new tools to make their work more impactful," says Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud.

"Our collaboration with Best Buy will help customers better interact with Best Buy's brand and services, and employees will also gain more sophisticated tools to assist shoppers."

Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO, Accenture, says: "This collaboration further advances Accenture's longstanding commitment to helping Best Buy achieve superior shopper and employee experiences, optimise costs and create growth.”

“With a strong digital core and innovative generative AI solutions, Best Buy can tap the power of cloud, data and AI to do more efficiently what it does so well, take good care of its customers, and reach new levels of performance across the business."

Best Buy will tap into a range of products including Gemini models and Vertex AI, to create and launch these AI capabilities, as well as Contact Center AI to develop conversational agents.

The selection builds on how Best Buy uses AI across a number of customer care fronts.