CRM & Customer Experience Archives • SAP.iO

Kelli Kohout In CRM & Customer Experience, Munich

parcelLab Launches ‘Retain’ to Empower Brands to Recover Revenue and Make Returns More Sustainable

New Product Offers Digital Returns Portal and End-to-End Post-Purchase Communications

parcelLab, the premier global provider of post-purchase customer experience software, announced the launch of Retain. The new product provides the uncomplicated returns experience today’s consumers expect, while providing brands with the flexibility and customization options needed to reduce costs, recover more revenue, and make returns more sustainable.

Retain uplevels the returns, warranty, and exchange process from paper to digital, featuring a digital returns portal as well as tracking and communications to enable customers to effortlessly register their returns, get a label or QR code, and track returns. Personalized emails and a customized Returns Status Page deliver end-to-end post-purchase communication to drive web traffic and repeat purchases.

Returns remain an untapped part of the post-purchase experience and the next revenue retention opportunity for brands. A recent parcelLab study found that brands’ return policies influence 92% of consumers – and 54% of consumers expect access to the return process status at any time. To meet this overwhelming market demand, parcelLab developed Retain to empower retailers to deliver their customers the tools and transparency they require while ensuring personalized journeys that build and sustain customer loyalty over time.

“Retailers have an opportunity to turn potential customer dissatisfaction into opportunities for revenue retention”

How Tech Makes Shopping Quick and Easy for Bosch Customers

Benefits of e-commerce include reaching new customers and better personalizing service. But what if your customers need – and have spent decades relying on – the in-store expertise of your associates? To find a very specific product? For use with another very specific product? To accomplish a very specific task?

“More and more of our users are coming online…[and] they still want to have the similar guidance and the systems they had in-store,” Ganna Lobachevska, the touchpoint owner of Product Finder and Product Guidance at Bosch Power Tools Accessories, told SAP at NRF 2023 for a new video. “Our overall goal is to make it easier for our users to find the right accessory for their job.”

Of course, making something easy to do on the front end is seldom easy to build on the back end. And that was Bosch’s challenge when helping online shoppers narrow their search for the perfect jigsaw blade, drill bit, or abrasive wheel from a truly massive accessory portfolio.

“Any company with a wide range of products has to think how they can simplify the user journey…and how they can make it easier for the customers to find the right product,” Lobachevska said. “With the Bosch Accessory Advisor, we provide a solution that makes it easier and faster.”

Building that easier, faster solution meant finding a high-tech way to satisfy a peculiar demand by online shoppers.

When Brick-and-Mortar Set the Bar (Almost) Too High

Selecting a specific power tool accessory for a specific job – and ensuring it’s compatible with your specific power tool – are big reasons that people historically shopped at brick-and-mortar stores, according to Lobachevska. It makes sense, right? You can consult with a knowledgeable human sales associate.

But Bosch’s e-commerce customers expect the same in-store-style expertise via a quick and painless online exchange, according to Lobachevska. And she doesn’t seem worried.

“The Accessory Advisor guides the user through a series of very simple questions,” Lobachevska said. “In the end, they have three perfect recommendations for the work they want to do.”

It’s pretty much an online conversation that yields the right product, according to Lobachevska. And Bosch found the right tech – and partners – to make these virtual dialogues happen.

Tech to the Rescue

“We realized that there is a need for a better user guidance,” Lobachevska said of Bosch’s decision to go with Zoovu, a Boston-based digital commerce search platform and partner solution in SAP’s industry cloud. “It offered us the best.”

Zoovu’s Semantic Studio translates technical jargon into e-commerce-friendly prose, which saves time for both Bosch data managers and shoppers. A few artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted questions later, and these accessory hunters have enjoyed a smooth, seamless customer experience.

“This means that our customers spend less time searching for a product,” Lobachevska said. “And when they purchase the product, it’s the right one and they are more satisfied.”

This increases efficiency, according to Lobachevska. It also cuts down on returns and poor online reviews.

5 companies leveraging startup innovation to improve their customer experience

To provide exceptional customer experiences, companies are turning to startup innovation. By partnering with startups, established organizations can tap into novel technologies, fresh perspectives, and agile methodologies to revolutionize how they engage and delight their customers.

SAP.iO simplifies the collaboration between SAP customers and cutting-edge enterprise software startups by facilitating seamless integration with SAP solutions. Our portfolio of 150+ enterprise-ready startup solutions integrated with SAP Customer Experience enables customers to drive innovation.

This roundup showcases five companies that have embraced startup solutions to elevate their customer experience.

Adverity & Ikea: How IKEA uses data to identify the best paths to success

IKEA worked with Adverity’s data analytics platform to consolidate and analyze vast amounts of marketing data from various sources. By leveraging Adverity’s solution, IKEA gained valuable insights and improved the efficiency of their marketing campaigns, ultimately leading to better decision-making and enhanced marketing performance.

Adverity works with SAP Industry Cloud, SAP Integration Suite, and SAP Marketing Cloud and is available on the SAP Store.

Jebbit & NHL: How the NHL Scores Authentic Fan Engagement

The NHL worked with Jebbit to improve its user acquisition and engagement strategies. The NHL used interactive experiences and personalized content powered by Jebbit’s platform to drive user engagement, increase fan loyalty, and ultimately grow their user base.

Jebbit works with SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement and SAP Customer Data Platform and is available on the SAP Store.

LISNR & Jaguar Land Rover: Jaguar Land Rover Drives Connectivity with LISNR

Jaguar Land Rover worked with LISNR to overcome connectivity challenges in linking passengers with their mobile devices and vehicles. By leveraging LISNR’s secure ultrasonic data transmission technology, they improved connectivity, enabled authentication, and delivered personalized in-car experiences, surpassing their implementation goals.

LISNR works with SAP Customer Data Cloud and SAP Commerce Cloud and is available on the SAP Store.

Mercaux & Holland & Barrett: Launching a Digital Transformation Project

Holland & Barrett collaborated with Mercaux to launch a new pilot digital transformation project. Using Mercaux’s digital retail solutions, Holland & Barrett aimed to enhance the in-store customer experience, improve product visibility, and drive sales through personalized recommendations and interactive features.

Mercaux works with SAP Industry Cloud and SAP Commerce and is available on the SAP Store.

Yellow.ai & Sephora: Embracing Digital Experiences Powered by Conversational AI

Sephora wanted to adopt an omnichannel approach to providing a best-in-class retail experience across both offline and online channels to their customers at any hour of the day. They worked with Yellow.ai to introduce a virtual assistant that provides personalized beauty consultations and can help customers with checking product availability, reserving products, managing in-store pickup, and facilitating product returns.

Yellow.ai works with SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP CRM Sales, and SAP CRM Service Manager and is available on the SAP Store.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Kelli Kohout In CRM & Customer Experience

The SAP Store Now Offers yellow.ai’s Generative AI-powered ChatBots and VoiceBots for Employee and Customer Experience

Yellow.ai, a global leader in Conversational AI announced that its generative AI-powered ChatBots and VoiceBots solution for customer and employee experience automation are now available on SAP Store, the digital marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. Both solutions are built on SAP Business Technology Platform using SAP Integration Suite. While the customer experience (CX) solution integrates with SAP Commerce, SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP CRM Sales, and SAP CRM Service Manager, the employee experience (EX) solution integrates with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central.

“Leveraging multi-LLM architecture, our generative AI-powered Dynamic Automation Platform is helping enterprises redefine how they connect with both customers and employees, giving them a competitive advantage and valuable ROI at scale,” said Raghu Ravinutala, CEO & Co-founder, Yellow.ai.

Available on SAP Store for a free trial.

Jebbit Launches AI-Powered Interactive Digital Experiences

Jebbit, the provider of the world’s first zero-party data and customer experience platform, announced the launch of its new AI-powered Experience Generator and Language Translation capabilities, accelerating the ability for businesses to build meaningful connections with audiences across all channels. The innovative features allow marketers to build Jebbit experiences – personalized interactive quizzes, trivia and surveys – in seconds, then translate them into multiple languages with the click of a button, enabling brands to quickly scale globally.

Generative AI has dominated 2023, with Forrester reporting that the global artificial intelligence software market is expected to reach $126 billion by 2025. As with disruptive consumer data privacy regulations in the past, and industry-shifting technology like AI, Jebbit always strives to remain on the right side of marketing; that is, prioritizing consumer trust and experience. Jebbit’s new AI-powered experiences strategically balance intelligent technology with human judgment to edit, analyze and personalize data in a way that improves online experiences, while improving speed-to-market. In contrast, many companies leverage AI in data targeting small population sizes and then extrapolate that to the masses without deeper insights.

Jebbit’s AI-powered Experience Generator and Language Translation capabilities have been extensively beta-tested by customers and volunteers in order to provide real-world feedback and to inform future capabilities. One such future capability is AI-Assist, coming soon across the Jebbit platform, to equip users with AI-powered assistance in creating content such as informed product recommendations, question generation, guidance on rephrasing questions, and the ability to automatically leverage design elements from a website (text, colors, images).

Zoovu Chosen as Lead Partner in SAP’s Industry Cloud to Help Customers Digitize their Sales Environments

Zoovu, the AI-powered product discovery and e-commerce experience platform leader, announced it has been selected by SAP as its recommended industry cloud solution for manufacturers looking to accelerate their digital transformation in product sales and self-service procurement.

The partnership is expanding as global companies increasingly look to unlock new revenue streams and lower direct selling costs through more automated and intelligent e-commerce platforms. Until now, given the complexity and number of products offered by most manufacturers and large-scale B2B organizations, deeply knowledgeable sales teams were required to educate customers and convert inquiries into sales. By harnessing the power of SAP and Zoovu technology, customers can easily transform large, complex product catalogs into highly accurate and continuously optimized digital selling environments.

Zoovu was invited last year to join the SAP.iO Acceleration Partner Program and the platform quickly jumped to within the top 2% of performers in the SAP^® Store. Building upon this strong market demand, Zoovu has been elevated to an SAP partner for SAP’s industry cloud portfolio.

“Our customers are realizing significant cost savings and revenue growth by bringing their complex product offerings into a digital commerce environment powered by Zoovu,” said Stephan G. Braun, Executive Industry Advisor, SAP. “We look forward to continued collaboration with the Zoovu team to help customers with this business transformation,” he added.

“We are excited about deepening our SAP partnership and helping global B2B customers create significant business value with our AI-driven platform,” said Lamees Butt, Senior Vice President, Global Alliances & Channels, Zoovu. “SAP is the leader in helping companies drive business transformation and we are honored to have been chosen as their lead partner in solving these sales-enablement problems, especially for the manufacturing sector,” she added.

The no-code Zoovu cloud platform integrates seamlessly with the SAP Business Technology Platform, allowing B2B and D2C customers to automate product data cleansing, standardization, solution bundling, and intelligent product searches from disparate data sources, including PDFs, PIMs, CRMs, even YouTube product videos. Zoovu’s AI-driven platform then applies its product ontology, syntax and sales insight gleaned from more than 70,000 product categories to ensure buyers are always presented with exactly the right product. It’s guided selling tools, assistants, and product configurators can then create powerful self-service customer experiences at scale.

SAP Startup Spotlight Series: Velou

In today’s installment of e3zine’s SAP Startup Spotlight Series, we’ll be taking a look at Velou, an SAP.iO Rising Stars startup which improves the online retail shopping experience.

Sadee Gamhewa is the Founder and CEO of Velou, an AI-powered retail technology startup. He has 22 years of industry experience in product and engineering with expertise in data science, AI/ML, and ecommerce. Sadee previously led product, innovation, Machine Learning, AI strategy, and engineering at multiple startups and Fortune 100 companies, including Sysco, Accenture, and Fujitsu. He holds patents in ecommerce and has published research papers on Machine Learning and AI. He received his BSc in Computer Science with First Class Honors from Edith Cowan University, Australia.

1. What is Velou and what do you offer?

Velou is an AI copilot tailored for brands and retailers that automates ecommerce functions, all backed by industry-specific data. Ecommerce teams lose precious time, incur significant expenses, and miss opportunities due to the inefficiency of manual reviews of product catalogs, and blindspots created by lack of access to retail data and analytics. Velou’s AI is fine-tuned for ecommerce to offer industry-specific solutions. It reviews a retailer’s entire product catalog, identifies missing metadata, auto-generates product descriptions, and enriches and standardizes ecommerce data. Velou increases productivity for ecommerce teams and revenue through powerful analytics so retailers know how they’re converting and losing customers.

Our services are available globally with offices in San Francisco, Munich and Paris at Station F through the LVMH accelerator.

2. How does your solution work?

Velou applies three AI technologies to automate and optimize online retailers’ ecommerce business. Velou’s Computer Vision Models automatically analyze product images to identify the product attributes related to things like color, style, fabric, and shape that resonate with shoppers. Combining this technology with our proprietary industry-specific data sets, which serve as the foundational models, Velou’s Product Data Enrichment builds out online retailers’ product pages, automatically creating product descriptions and feeding discovery features. Finally, Velou’s Natural Language Processing uses all this information to understand search phrases that convert more customers, while taking the stress off ecommerce teams.

3. Do customers need special technology/devices to access your service?

Velou is already tightly integrated with the largest ecommerce platforms. Velou does all the work while retailers have full control, so no special technology or expertise is required.

4. Why did you start Velou?

AI in online retail is exciting because it can be applied today. We want ecommerce teams to have control over how it’s working while boosting their efficiency. Velou believes online retail is an ideal application for AI because it addresses two crucial challenges for online retailers: manual management of product catalogs and the need to analyze and optimize conversions and retention.

5. How are you connected to SAP? Can your solution be integrated in SAP systems and if so, how?

Velou is a SAP.iO Rising Stars startup and our solution is available through the SAP Store. You can visit us at the SAP Experience Center in Paris and play around with our demo store!

We work closely with SAP engineering to make the SAP Commerce Cloud + Velou integration seamless. Velou is a one-click deployment. This makes using Velou on the SAP platform super easy!

SAP Startup Spotlight Series: Mention Me

In this installment of e3zine’s SAP Startup Spotlight Series, we’ll be taking a look at Mention Me, a referral engineering platform which integrates first-party advocacy data directly into your SAP ecosystem.

Kat Wray is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Mention Me. As Director of Strategic Partnerships, Kat oversees the SaaS company’s strategic partnerships, working with leading partners to identify opportunities to accelerate growth for their customer base of over 600 clients. With a career spanning sales, business development, and partnerships, Kat has honed deep expertise into how brands can harness the power of customer advocacy to exponentially grow their business.

1. What is Mention Me and what do you offer?

Mention Me empowers businesses to turn word of mouth and brand advocacy into an unstoppable driver of sustainable, organic growth. Using cutting-edge technology and expertise gathered over 10 years in referral marketing, we’ve built the world’s first Advocacy Intelligence Platform that identifies, recruits, nurtures, and activates loyal brand fans. Established in the UK with offices in London and Boston, we’ve so far delivered more than 1.8 bn USD in revenue for 500 brands globally, including ASOS, PUMA, Charlotte Tilbury, ManyPets, and Nutmeg.

2. How does your solution work?

While your fans have always been the most authentic and trusted promoters of your brand, until now it wasn’t possible to harness their potential. And so while they were busy recommending your brand and products in the background, you weren’t able to target, nurture or reward them so they advocate more often and more loudly with everyone they meet. For the first time, Mention Me’s Advocacy Intelligence Platform and technology changes that.

3. Do customers need special technology/devices to access your service?

In order to track earned acquisition and gather the first-party data required to fuel the Advocacy Intelligence Platform, you’ll need to deploy a high-quality referral program with Mention Me.

Mention Me’s Advocacy Intelligence Platform integrates first-party advocacy data directly into your marketing automation and personalization platforms (including, of course, Emarsys and SAP). Aside from integrating our platform into your martech infrastructure, no special devices or tech is required.

4. Why do you believe thinking advocacy-first is so important for brands in 2023?

Business reliance on digital marketing today is at an all-time high. In the US, Google, Meta and Amazon now account for 64% of all ad spend. Meanwhile, acquisition costs are rising, iOS changes are ramping up the pressure, and we’re in an economic downturn. All that makes it no easy feat to acquire high-quality customers.

Winning in the times ahead requires a different approach: earning growth instead of paying for it. By taking an advocacy-first approach that prioritizes your existing customers—and delighting them enough to share your brand with friends and family—you’ll drive organic, sustainable growth without busting your marketing budget.

5. How are you connected to SAP? Can your solution be integrated in SAP systems and if so, how?

Integrated with Emarsys, Commerce Cloud, and CDP, Mention Me delivers the best Advocacy Solution for the SAP CX portfolio. Our solution equips brands to leverage referral as a sustainable growth channel while gathering rich first-party data that enhances performance across marketing channels. These unique advocacy insights integrate across the martech stack, enabling brands to identify current and future advocates and serve personalized omnichannel experiences that keep customers coming back, spending more, and bringing their friends.

6. How has SAP.iO’s involvement impacted your journey?

With SAP.iO, we’re maximizing the joint value we’re delivering to clients, while educating more CRM and CX leaders on the power of brand advocacy. Looking ahead, we’re excited to build on the success we’ve achieved so far as a recently appointed SAP Spotlight partner.

SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco Kicks Off B2B Innovation in Sales & Service Program

May 11, 2023 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today launched the 2023 program focused on innovation in B2B Sales & Services at SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco. The 11 startups have been selected by a jury of SAP experts, partners, customers, and investment funds to join the program.

This program is for startups with innovative solutions for B2B sales and service processes and experiences to help improve the customer journey. Customer Experience (CX) is SAP’s largest addressable market with a strong demand for more CX partner solutions that SAP customers can leverage.

During this 5-month program, the selected startups will build and develop long-term partnerships with SAP by defining joint use cases, product integration and various business development opportunities. SAP customers have been involved in the cohort selection and will be supporting by evaluating opportunities for proof of concepts.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco 2023 program:

Aisera is a leading provider of ChatGPT and Generative AI solutions for customer and employee experiences covering IT helpdesk, customer service/support, HR, sales, and finance.
Ascendo connects human and machine to achieve proactive support.
AmplifAI is the AI-driven performance enablement platform for employee-centric enterprises, helping hybrid teams maximize business outcomes, boost productivity and improve engagement.
Bounti AI-driven growth operating system turns customer data into real-time alerts and hyper-personalized actions for sales and customer experience representatives to drive customer expansion and retention.
InsideBoard is a digital success platform powered by AI, which brings business value to digital transformation programs. InsideBoard engages users to adopt digital solutions and processes, while also making sure they continue to perform optimally over time.
Knowmax works with Fortune 500 brands to help improve knowledge management capabilities for customer experience organizations by moving knowledge from being static to a guided-assist based approach, helping create a single source of truth.
Lucy serves as an ultimate AI Answer Engine℠ across the enterprise—getting users the right answer, at the right time, no matter where they sit in the organization.
Neuron7 provides AI-generated resolution intelligence for complex service organizations that need fast, accurate issue resolutions at scale.
Pryon rapidly transforms organizations’ untapped wealth of approved content into AI-powered experiences that greatly increase the productivity of customers, employees, and partners. By leveraging proprietary computer vision and large language models, the company fuses disparate sources to then deliver fully attributed and trusted answers that accelerate workflows.
Quiq helps enterprises deliver great digital customer experiences using its asynchronous messaging platform to automate 30-80% of customer issues with AI and handle the remainder with human agents working in Quiq’s digital contact center.
Salesroom is an AI-based meeting intelligence platform that gives customer-facing teams real-time coaching cues, suggests meeting agendas, automates note-taking, and generates highlights so sellers stay present, creating a lasting impression with buyers.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO curates a relevant and diverse startup ecosystem that extends the value of SAP solutions and meets the continuously evolving needs of our customers. Our programs provide dedicated support to the most promising startups as they launch and scale relationships with SAP and our global network of customers, partners, and employees. Since 2017, we have connected thousands of SAP customers with innovative enterprise software startups, helping them find solutions to their unique needs. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

Kelli Kohout In Interview, CRM & Customer Experience

SAP Startup Spotlight Series: parcelLab

E3zine has selected the most exciting companies to showcase in our SAP Startup Spotlight Series. In this article, we will take a look at parcelLab, an ecommerce post-purchase experience and returns management platform available on the SAP store.

Anthony Young is a partner and alliances professional with fifteen years experience in the enterprise commerce space. He specializes in developing thriving strategic partnerships that drive mutual success. Anthony has direct experience with SAP having been a member of the Hybris team at the time of their acquisition. He not only helped build out the SAP CX partner ecosystem but spent several years expanding it. In addition to his direct experience with SAP he has also run partnerships at several mid-sized SIs who were focused on the SAP ecosystem.

What is parcelLab and what do you offer?

ParcelLab is a global enterprise post-purchase software provider, we enable brands to increase top-line revenue, decrease operational costs and optimize customer experiences. Our award-winning post-purchase platform powers leading brands like IKEA, Chico’s, H&M, and Yeti to transform mundane operational touchpoints into differentiated and personalized experiences, creating moments of joy for their customers.

Where is parcelLab available?

ParcelLab actively manages the post-purchase experiences across 175 countries and tracks shipping data from more than 350 carriers worldwide. More than 700 brands worldwide across the fashion and apparel, cosmetics, furniture and home goods, electronics, luxury goods, D2C, pharmacy and medical and B2B eCommerce trust parcelLab to deliver superior post-purchase experiences to their customers.

As a digital-first company, parcelLab provides flexible working options to 150+ employees across the globe in over a dozen countries. I am currently based in Montreal, Canada. We have offices in Boston, Munich, London, and Paris.

How does your solution work?

ParcelLab enables brands to deliver unique and personalized customer experiences. Our solution allows brands to have complete control over the post-purchase experience and to leverage existing communications channels to drive further engagement, build stronger communities and do more with data.

The customer journey does not end at checkout. Our solution stays in touch with customers through the entire sales journey, with branded communications that maximize every customer touch point. Whether brands want to provide proactive notifications when there are delivery delays or make it easier for consumers to check order statuses, parcelLab delivers personalized experiences at every touch point.

Zoovu Doubles Down on SAP Commerce Partnership in 2023

Following an incredibly successful 2022 with the Zoovu + SAP Partnership that included participating in the Spring 2022 SAP.iO accelerator program, becoming the first technology partner to hit #1 in the SAP Store history within 2 months of launching, and presenting a keynote at TechEd, 2023 has started out equally as strong. In January, we had the opportunity to not only exhibit in SAP’s Partner Village at NRF, but also presented alongside joint customer, Bosch Power Tools, to tell their story of combining Zoovu’s Product Discovery Platform with SAP’s Enterprise technology to fuel a global digital transformation.

As Q1 comes to a close, we wanted to take some time to reflect on the value of technology partners, why SAP & Zoovu complement each other, and what “doubling down” on partnerships means to us. Zoovu’s new CMO, Ken Yanhs, sat down with Lamees Butt, our SVP of Channel Partners & Alliances to discuss the partnership as of today and what the future of the partnership looks like.

Read Q&A Here…

Kelli Kohout In Tel Aviv, CRM & Customer Experience

Brand Advocacy: Your Secret Weapon for Sustainable Growth & Customer Retention

When do you start building loyalty? Some might say it starts after the second purchase, or when a customer joins a loyalty program. However, I want to challenge you to think differently: the potential for loyalty starts from the first moment your customer hears about your brand. Better still, there’s a way for you to find customers who, right from their first experience with your brand, are more likely to become high-quality customers. By “high quality,” I mean they’re more likely to engage with you repeatedly and have a higher customer lifetime value.

Kat Wray, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Mention Me, the brand advocacy intelligence platform empowering businesses to turn brand fans into unstoppable growth talks about what brand advocacy means, the results that marketers can achieve with it, and even some practical tips to help you foster advocacy with your existing customers. Mention Me participated in SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv’s customer engagement program in 2021.

How is AR/3D Technology Driving Next-Gen Ecommerce Best Practices?

Retailers that prioritize ecommerce recognize that the end-to-end user experience is more important than ever. Consumers expect convenient, interactive shopping experiences, from online to in-store and everything in between. This year, 3D and AR adoption is expected to be one of the biggest trends for providing next-gen ecommerce experiences, especially for apparel and footwear brands looking to bring the physical world to digital shopping.

As a result, more brands need to look for ways to incorporate 3D and AR tech into their omnichannel strategy.

Where Does AR/3D Currently Stand?

As with all next-gen tech, there have been some early adopters, especially in the realm of fashion, footwear and accessories, that are already employing 3D and AR to enhance the ecommerce experience. For example, Nike now has Nike Fit, a mobile shopping feature that helps customers find their perfect shoe fit using their smartphone camera. Utilizing 3D scanning tech, the app is then able to create a 3D model of their feet to help them better find the right shoes to fit their desired style and function.

On the B2B side, Merrell is using 3D and AR tech to sell their products via digital showrooms, prior to manufacturing and shipping, to increase speed to market, reduce costs and lower their carbon footprint.

The furniture and home goods space is another sector of the market that’s seeing increased applications of this technology. Brands like Wayfair and Ikea offer their mobile users an AR feature that allows them to use their phone’s camera to virtually preview how an item would look in their home, true to size.

Outside of day-to-day consumer uses, many brands, especially luxury labels like Gucci, Hermès and Balenciaga, are experimenting with 3D and AR tech to engage with consumers in the metaverse. In 2021 Balenciaga dropped a digital collection for Fortnite, an online video game by Epic Games, which featured digital outfits inspired by some of their real-life designs and products. Fans who purchased the physical product could then unlock the digital versions or choose to purchase the digital versions with virtual currency to use as clothing and skins for their Fortnite avatars. $50 billion was spent on in-game purchases in 2022 and this figure is expected to continue to grow, so every brand should be looking at ways to have a presence in virtual worlds like Fortnite and Roblox that have large user bases.

No matter the use case, these brands are bridging the gap between the digital and physical shopping experience to meet potential customers wherever they may be — at home, on the go or engaged with the metaverse. These early adopters are already reaping the benefits of using 3D and AR tech as part of their omnichannel strategy.

What Are the Benefits to Brands that Implement 3D and AR Tech?

In today’s digital age, customers expect a seamless and engaging experience when shopping online, and brands that fail to deliver risk losing customers to competitors that are delivering more innovative approaches in their ecommerce strategy. Though 3D and AR implementation is still in its earlier stages, it is a great way to stand out in today’s crowded marketplace. Additionally, there are other benefits of utilizing 3D and AR tech

Yellow.ai launches Dynamic Automation Platform (DAP) with Generative AI

Yellow.ai, a global leader in Conversational AI, announced the launch of its Dynamic Automation Platform (DAP), powered by generative AI, that enables enterprises to automate customer and employee experiences at scale with 60% reduction in their operational costs. The company also revealed a new logo as part of a rebranding strategy that reflects its vision of delivering human-like conversational experiences to accelerate enterprise growth.

With a 4X growth rate in North America and an established market presence in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East markets, Yellow.ai has emerged as an industry leader since its inception in 2016. The rebranding marks a crucial milestone in the company’s growth journey and reinforces its commitment to using technology, such as generative AI, to fuel innovative solutions for enterprises across its Conversational Service Cloud, Conversational Commerce Cloud, and Conversational EX Cloud product suites.

“At Yellow.ai, we strongly believe in the potential of generative AI to enhance our capabilities, foster innovation, and drive business growth. We are investing heavily in domain-specific LLMs to facilitate dynamic content creation, providing our customers with a comprehensive experience through our enterprise-grade Dynamic AI agents. Our customer-centric approach and our strong focus on generative AI are reflected in our rebranding efforts, as we remain committed to delivering the best next-generation Conversational AI solutions.”

The company is combining generative AI technology with DAP which runs on its proprietary and multi-Large Language Model (LLM) AI engine, DynamicNLP™. With 100+ integrations, 150+ pre-built marketplace templates, and the recently launched Dynamic Conversation Designer, businesses leveraging DAP for Yellow.ai’s suite of solutions can go live with their deployments 2X faster.

Obsess unveils Carbon Emissions Calculator for brands evaluating construction of new physical stores

Obsess has launched a Carbon Emissions Calculator for brands to analyse the energy output for bricks and mortar retail stores in comparison to their virtual counterparts.

The company has created 200+ virtual stores for brands including Ralph Lauren, Coach, NBCUniversal, American Girl, and Charlotte Tilbury.

Retailers can input into the tool flexible values for physical store estimates, including store square footage, daily foot traffic, and number of employees.

Based on these inputs, Obsess calculates the average output for store construction (including material production and transportation, and construction activities) and the average output for store operations (including employee labor, commute and store electricity).

Carbon emissions calculations are based on initial construction and one year of operations for both brick sand mortar and virtual stores. Outbound product shipments are not included in the calculation. Corporate employee and office operations have also been excluded.

Check out the calculator here.