Best Buy taps Google Cloud, Accenture for AI customer service chatbot – Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal – The Business Journals
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Best Buy Co. Inc. is partnering with Google Cloud and Accenture to use generative artificial intelligence for customer-service support.
Customers will be able to connect with a AI-powered virtual assistant for self-service support, freeing up human agents to serve customers in other ways, according to an announcement. Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) expects the virtual assistant will kick off in late summer.
The announcement comes amid a round of layoffs for an unknown number of employees at Best Buy’s Geek Squad unit, which provides a range of technology services to customers. Best Buy didn’t say what sort of employees would be affected by the job cuts. The company also laid off hundreds of in-store workers last year.
The assistant will help with troubleshooting product issues and rescheduling or combining order deliveries, Geek Squad subscriptions and My Best Buy memberships.
Best Buy is also working with Mountain View, California-based Google Cloud and Dublin-based Accenture to develop an AI-driven assistant for its front-line employees. The assistant will help with things like finding internal company resources or pulling up specific product guides.
Best Buy executives made it clear during a Feb. 29 earnings call that AI would be critical to the company’s strategy. The company is opening a digital and technology hub in Bangalore, India to support the AI push.
Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said during the call that Best Buy is also redirecting some corporate resources toward AI.
Executives recently said that there hasn’t been a lot of new consumer technology innovation, and Barry said during the earnings call that AI is likely the next frontier. She said AI’s “innovation horizon” is really vibrant right now.
She added that AI makes consumer electronics products more human, and there’s a question of how those products can interact with consumers more seamlessly.
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