Generative AI strategy for Australia’s largest supermarket chain
Conversational commerce allows a shopper to find what they need by asking for it using natural language, rather than browsing a site or traipsing down an aisle. Woolworths had built a strong set of digital tools, but the question we needed to answer was how AI could connect them, and what that should feel like for half the country’s weekly shop.
Making the solution real is always a big help in demonstrating intent.
The ask
Work with a group of the most senior Woolies execs to define how conversational commerce could transform customer experience and improve operational performance. We needed to come up with a vision and principles to guide the ask, define a set of experiences to build, map the journeys for each use case and a author roadmap to deliver them. Four weeks, one cross-functional team onshore, and a design team in the UK to work overnight.
Retailing at its best is human, conversational and easy. Ecommerce traded that for a catalogue.
What I found
Retail used to be truly personal. You interacted with the server behind the counter, they remembered what you bought last week, and you left with what you needed or something new to try. Ecommerce traded that for a searchable catalogue that scaled beautifully, but turned the weekly shop into a chore you do alone, hunting specials one at a time across tools that don't necessarily talk to each other.
Most of that responsibility still lands on the one person in the household who remembers that one child won’t eat tomatoes, another is anaphylactic, and that her partner will eat leftovers once, but not twice. She’s the one scrutinising the ingredients on a product label, because a wrong choice might need an ambulance. “What’s for dinner?” is a question she would rather never, ever hear again. For her, magic isn’t ‘delight’, magic is not having to hold all of that in her head.
So we set the north star: ‘Making shopping feel like magic’. Magic is asking for something and getting it instantly. That phrase set a lofty benchmark to measure every feature, every decision against.
The north star.
Help wherever and whenever you need it.
What we did
Using extensive research we commissioned for the project, we ran the Woolies leadership through what we thought this should be, then in the next session what it should not be. That produced six experience principles and the magic north star.
Then we found where it applied. Five foundational experiences across the shopping cycle, from planning at home to sorting out what went wrong after delivery. Then the stages in which it would arrive: chat first, then voice, search, interface and camera, so it would never be just a chatbot bolted on the side. The result was ‘AI in the flow’ through the entire experience, rather than inside an agent. Could you swap the items in your usual weekly shop for the same basket built from this week’s specials, without hunting out a single one? Snap a photo of your handwritten shopping list and turn it into a checkout-ready shop? Build a meal plan based on your macros and swap ingredients for home brand varieties? Yes. All of this magic and more.
The last week was dedicated to creating a working prototype of one journey, so Woolies could socialise the idea and we could pressure test the outcome.
Meal plans made easy: made from weekly specials for the cost-conscious.
Where it landed
In the end we had a proposition people could argue with, one MVP chosen against explicit criteria rather than by enthusiasm, a sequenced roadmap, and something stakeholders could put in front of real customers. The solution is now live, having been built in collaboration with Google.
Seven illustrated journeys in total were created to support the use cases (detail shown).
What I’d do again
Despite being the least magical-seeming of the five features, Basket Builder was the recommendation for MVP.
Basket Builder came first because it sat on features customers already used, so it would allow customers to experience the tech at an organic-seeming way, and the client could ship something faster. We got the basics right as a solid foundation to build on, rather than overwhelming customers by completely reimagining the experience all at once.
Client
Woolworths
Role
STRATEGIC CREATIVE DIRECTOR
responsibilities
STRATEGY INITIATIVE NORTH STAR WORKSHOP DESIGN AND FACILITATION JOURNEY MAPPING USE CASE DEFINITION EXPERIENCE DESIGN GLOBAL TEAM OVERSIGHT
DURATION
SEVEN WEEKS