BRICO IO enhances the in-store experience with Tooli's conversational AI
With the support of Go Reply, BRICO IO has introduced a Virtual Expert capable of guiding customers in the store, improving purchase assistance and optimising in-store resources.
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The challenge
Rethinking in-store assistance through conversational AI to make the point of sale more efficient and customer-centric.
Scenario
Enhancing the in-store shopping experience and providing personalised and ongoing support to customers
BRICO IO, an Italian chain of reference in proximity DIY, has embarked on a transformation journey aimed at profoundly innovating the shopping experience within its stores. The goal was to respond to the growing need of customers to receive immediate, qualified, and accessible support even without direct interaction with staff, especially in departments characterized by a high variety of offerings and complexity in purchasing choices.
BRICO IO has thus launched the TTX – Tech Touch Experience project, in collaboration with major suppliers, to offer customers personalised, quick, and timely support directly in-store.
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A guided, smooth, and always available shopping experience
As part of the TTX – Tech Touch Experience project, BRICO IO in collaboration with Go Reply, has chosen to introduce an intelligent Virtual Assistant, positioned near the shelf, capable of offering pre-sale advice and guiding the customer towards a more informed choice, even through simple and non-technical language.
Tooli, the Virtual Expert, presents itself as a true digital assistant, based on generative AI technologies, supporting the customer in-store. It is accessible via touchscreen kiosks located near the shelf and guides the customer, like a real expert, in choosing the products best suited to their needs, improving the quality of the shopping experience and operational efficiency in-store. The solution also allows for optimising in-store resources, providing a point of contact that is always available even during peak times, and personalising the customer experience, thanks to a conversational interaction that replicates the expertise of a real consultant.
Barcode
scanning
Identify the product and immediately access detailed sheets with description, technical features, instructions for use, and demonstration videos.
Comparison of
products
Help the customer evaluate alternatives, including different brands, based on specific needs
Smart
suggestions
Tooli formulates targeted questions to understand the client's needs and propose the most suitable solution through a natural dialogue
Visual indication
on the shelf
Once the ideal product is identified, Tooli activates the corresponding electronic label to facilitate its physical retrieval
Extended access
to the catalog
Allows you to view the products along with their status, specifying whether they are available on the shelf, in stock, or not available.
Product
reminder
In case of unavailability on the shelf, the customer can print the details to request support from the staff.
Integration
mobile
Through QR code, the customer can continue the interaction directly on their smartphone, both in text and voice mode.
HOW WE DID IT
A scalable, cloud-native, and AI-powered architecture on Google Cloud
The solution, designed and implemented by Go Reply entirely on Google Cloud, consists of a web app integrated into physical totems and a powerful AI infrastructure. The architecture is made up of two main components: data management and artificial intelligence.
The entire system has been designed to continuously collect feedback, improve the performance of the language model, and easily adapt to new product categories and sales points.
Data Management
For data management, the solution relies on Firestore for storing metadata related to products and for keeping a history of conversations between the user and the Virtual Expert. The management of active session states, essential for ensuring continuity in interaction across different devices, is instead entrusted to Memorystore, which allows for maintaining consistent sessions in real-time.
The aggregated analysis of events and the monitoring of interactions are supported by BigQuery, which enables the generation of strategic insights useful for the continuous optimisation of the service.
Completing the data architecture, Vector Search serves as the semantic knowledge base of the virtual assistant: an advanced vector database, powered by optimised embeddings, capable of enabling contextual and relevant searches based on the needs expressed by the customer.
AI & orchestration
The artificial intelligence and orchestration component is based on Vertex AI Pipelines, used to manage the entire lifecycle of the knowledge base: from the content preprocessing, to the semantic indexing, up to the continuous updating of information, thus ensuring always accurate and up-to-date responses.
The central element of the solution is Gemini, the next-generation language model that allows the virtual assistant to produce natural, coherent responses aligned with the brand's communication tone.
In addition to generating responses during customer interactions, Gemini is also used in the data enrichment, to enhance and improve the data before it is entered into the vector knowledge base.
Finally, to provide an even more intuitive and accessible interaction mode, the solution integrates the Speech-to-Text API from Google Cloud, which allows for the real-time transcription of voice requests from users, facilitating use even via smartphones or voice commands directly at the kiosk.
The results
Personalised experience, continuous support, enhanced sales
The TTX project has allowed BRICO IO to introduce an innovative concept for in-store assistance management, transforming the interaction with the physical shelf into an enriched digital experience thanks to the introduction of the interactive totem with the Virtual Expert Tooli.
BRICO IO
Brico io S.p.A. is the leading Italian chain of proximity DIY stores, dedicated to people who love taking care of their home and garden. Founded in 1986 by a group of private entrepreneurs, experts in large-scale distribution, today our reality counts over 120 stores, both direct and affiliated, throughout Italy. Among our strengths is the ability to select and organize the display of a complete commercial offer suitable for the Italian market, even in limited spaces. Through an innovative layout, increasingly widespread within our network, we aim to offer customers, in a single store, everything they need to take care of their home and garden, to enjoy them to the fullest. To make our retail offer even more complete, we pay great attention to the training of our collaborators, whom we consider the most important distinguishing element: people who are always motivated to establish a positive relationship with the customer through kindness, availability, and competence.
Go Reply, a Reply group company, is the trusted partner for embracing digital transformation with the power of Google Cloud. Our specialization translates into a wide range of cutting-edge services: cloud transformation - we guide companies in the digital age, successfully migrating workloads to the cloud; modernization of applications - we optimize existing applications for better performance and greater agility; cloud data & AI - we exploit the power of data and artificial intelligence to generate strategic insights; Machine Learning and Generative AI - we bring AI to the heart of business processes to improve efficiency and stimulate innovation. As Google Cloud's official Managed Service Provider, we have partnered with leading companies in various sectors. This allows us to offer comprehensive and proactive support to accelerate digital transformation and business success.