The US department store brand and household name, Macy’s, has rolled out a AI-powered chatbot in the shape of a shopping assistant for its online customers.
The company had been working on a bespoke AI agent for nearly six months, in line with PAYMNTS [account wall] before changing the technological basis of the project to Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience. Speaking on the time, Chad Westfall, SVP, Technology Product Development, said that Macy’s internal development was too slow to maintain up with “the pace of change and innovation in AI…we […] forwent a few of our usual processes so as to go after this with all deliberate haste.”
The shopping assistant, Ask Macy’s, created 4.75 times higher revenue per visit amongst users through the beta testing phases, fairly than a reduction in abandonment, in line with Google Cloud. Now live, when shoppers seek for an item or category, Ask Macy’s scans the complete back catalogue of products after which can ask supplemental inquiries to focus in on particular decisions, increasing engagement and a customer’s time investment on the platform – lowering the speed of cart abandonment.
For example, queries for items of clothing are answered by Ask Macy’s asking about a customer’s preferences as to color, cut, and cloth before they’re shown a range of possible options. A virtual try-on feature can superimpose items onto an uploaded picture of the consumer and place the avatar in several settings equivalent to a restaurant, workplace or outdoors. “We wanted to indicate [customers] haw technology can remove friction and elevate retail shopping […] to assist them feel guided, understood, and assured,” Westfall said.
The joint project between Google Cloud and Macy’s internal development team began early February this yr, with the initial beta version of the AI-powered chatbot going live to check shoppers and Macy’s employees just 4 weeks later. The production version was offered to half the location’s traffic initially, with general release a week later.
Although the goal of Ask Macy’s is customers close to creating a purchase – increasing total spend – the problem of cart abandonment shouldn’t be directly affected. Here, retailers have a alternative of tactics powered by technology, including the offering of attractive options equivalent to split payments, time-dependent price reductions, membership schemes, discounts and discounted shipping, and virtual vouchers, amongst others. Statista puts the worldwide cart abandonment rate for online retailers at 70.22%.
Macy’s 2024 business consolidation project has led to several hundred separate physical store closures alongside store expansions at more popular sites. At nearly 160 years old, Macy’s is an American institution in retail, growing from its Manhattan roots to 432 stores across the country, as of Q1 2026. The company also owns the Bloomingdale’s and luxury cosmetics company Bluemercury brands.
Although Macy’s doesn’t publish separate figures for brick-and-mortar and online sales, the corporate has projected a 1.2% growth in sales (+/- 0.5%) over the remaining of 2026.
(Image source: Pixabay, under licence.)
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