EBI.AI, an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab in the UK, has announced that Coop Sweden, one of the largest grocery retailers in the country, has successfully started to preview its virtual assistant, Cooper.
This marks the first significant milestone since EBI.AI was chosen by Coop Sweden earlier this year to build the world’s foremost grocery retail AI assistant. When Cooper is rolled out nationwide, it will provide users with a complete concierge service including dietary requirements, suggested recipes, nutritional and loyalty scheme information.
Initially available to a selected number of visitors to the recipe section of the Coop Sweden website, Cooper has been trained on approximately 125 different topics relating to recipes, store information, membership and online shopping. This new service is particularly relevant as more people use the web to shop as a result of the COVID crisis. Even online novices will find their experience enhanced by Cooper’s intuitive natural language which requires little or no technical know-how.
During the preview period, the different topics and type of real customer conversations handled by Cooper will enable additional questions and answers to be added. Therefore, allowing the virtual assistant to be reviewed and rolled out more fully on the coop.se website in the near future.
Matthew Doel, MD for EBI.AI commented:
“Moving Cooper into preview is a great milestone. We are already seeing a steady increase in usage and additional ways for Cooper to engage with Coop’s members as a result of actual conversations and questions. This is a brilliant way to create the amazing experiences customers need while rapidly delivering what Coop requested. By only building what members are asking for, we can reduce the timelines and costs of the overall project for Coop. The next steps will be even more exciting as we roll out Cooper to additional web visitors and prepare for the beta launch of the Cooper App.”
EBI.AI is hosting Cooper on its Lobster AI communications platform. This means that ultimately, the virtual assistant will be available on web, mobile app, messaging services, telephone and smart speakers.
Amer Mohammed, Chief Digital Officer at Coop Sweden concluded:
“Cooper is so much more than a simple Chatbot. It’s an all-in-one customer engagement tool that will strategically help us to build a level of customer experience that is unparalleled in the Swedish retail marketplace. Working closely with EBI.AI, we aim to transform customer relationships and drive greater membership loyalty by blending customers’ digital and in-store journeys in new and exciting ways. Our vision is for Cooper to lead the way, inspiring other pioneering organisations to transform the way they engage with customers through the power of AI.”
For more information on the Lobster AI communications platform, visit www.ebi.ai
About Coop
Coop is one of Sweden’s largest grocery chains with more than 800 stores owned by 3.5 million members. Coop has had an online shop since 2008 which today reaches over 60 percent of Swedish households with home deliveries and also offers meal plans that can be picked up in all Coop stores. Coop is ranked as Sweden’s most sustainable grocery chain and has the highest percentage of organic sales in the grocery retail industry. For more information, visit www.coop.se
About EBI.AI
Established by EBI in 2014, University of Warwick Science Park headquartered EBI.AI is among the most advanced UK labs to explore the mind-boggling potential of Artificial Intelligence for customer communication. It is changing the ways businesses interact with their customers by providing faster and better resolutions to customer queries using conversational AI technology.
The company has applied its collective 19 years’ experience of working with big data, analytics and systems integration to create a range of innovative and natural tools for all businesses in multiple sectors including Transport & Travel, Property, Insurance, Public and Automotive.
EBI was one of the first IBM Watson Ecosystems Partners and EBI.AI’s core platform was originally based on IBM Watson. This has evolved over 5 years and EBI.AI now selects the best AI and cloud services available from IBM, Amazon, Microsoft and others, combined with bespoke AI models to deliver its EBI.AI communication platform.
For more information, please visit www.ebi.ai
