Very links with US firm to add AI to product discovery experience

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 14, 2023

The Very Group’s very.co.uk brand is taking a deep dive into artificial intelligence (AI) in a deal with US-based tech platform Constructor.

It’s all about product discovery and the first phase will see it implementing new search, browse and autosuggest tools across its website and app. Using AI, natural language processing, machine learning and data, the company said “these tools learn from anonymous individual interactions and collaborative behaviours to optimise the product discovery experience and provide customers with faster, more personalised results”.

Longer term, it’s also rolling out other tech from the US firm, including its personalised ‘quiz’ functionality. The aim here is to help shoppers find the right products but asking them quiz-style questions linked to their preferences, interests and goals.

It all comes as the company continues to invest in technology to boost its e-tail ops. It said it’s making “significant progress with its multi-year tech investment roadmap, moving towards a flexible, cloud-based architecture that will enable it to deliver faster, more frequent customer experience improvements”.

Other specialists it has linked up with include commercetools to provide personalised size and fit guidance via True Fit; Amplience to create “engaging content”; and Modiface and Benefit to offer virtual make-up try-on.

Very Group’s digital customer experience director Paul Hornby said: “Finding the right products quickly is a vital part of the overall digital customer experience, and we’re excited to be taking product discovery to the next level by partnering with Constructor.

“Ultimately, we want every customer to have an increasingly personalised experience of shopping with Very. The opportunities that AI and machine learning open up in this space are endless, and tapping into that via product discovery is a major step forward in our tech transformation journey.”