Dive Brief:
- Saks Fifth Avenue is weaving generative AI into its customer service through a partnership with Amazon Web Services and NLX, the companies announced Friday. The goal is to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Customers can speak to the visual, voice-guided interactive tool to learn the status of their order, return and other questions. The tool has decreased agent call volume by about 20%, the companies said.
- Saks is also using AWS technology to summarize customer conversations, monitor customer sentiment and offer more data to customer service agents.
Dive Insight:
Saks is weaving AI into its back end as the brand undergoes a turnaround period, navigating profit declines and vendor woes.
Late last year, Saks Global completed its acquisition of Neiman Marcus Group, which brought Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off Fifth, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman under the same roof. As part of the deal, Amazon became a new investor and already the retailer has partnered with the technology company.
In April, Saks Fifth Avenue detailed its work to launch a luxury e-commerce storefront with Amazon. Now, it's incorporating NLX and AWS technology for its customer experience.
The tech can shorten a 20-minute customer conversation into a few sentences. It also reduces after-call workload by 15 seconds per interaction, according to the companies.
"At its core, luxury is personal,” Jessica Bengtzen, vice president of service centers at Saks Global, said in a statement. “By thoughtfully integrating advanced technology like NLX, we are not replacing the human touch, we are enhancing it. This allows us to work smarter to elevate every customer interaction, ensuring our teams are empowered to deliver exceptional, high-touch service across all facets of the customer journey.
