KARWEI is first Dutch DIY company to launch a voice assistant

INTERGAMMA

The goal: stay relevant in a competitive market

In a highly competitive market Intergamma is continuously looking for new ways to create valuable services for their brands. Exploring new technological possibilities that can express the brand and offers the best possible experience for its customers is a great example of their innovative vision. Exploring innovative opportunities adds to the ambition of Intergamma to become the best omnichannel retailer of the Benelux.

The challenge: explore voice opportunities

KARWEI already uses many different channels to reach their customers. Amongst others their physical stores, paper & digital advertisements, the digital platform and radio and TV commercials are all part of their cross channel strategy and are already being used to reach their audience. However, a fairly new channel has emerged. This is the channel of conversational voice assistants, which is very quickly reaching a high degree of adoption among people.

The question was simple: “How can we harness the potential of voice for the KARWEI brand for our customers and also learn about the possibilities?” To discover the relevance for Intergamma and to experience how a voice assistant works, KARWEI started this project. As this challenge was very much about learning and understanding this potential, we knew we needed to actively work together for highly intensive short periods of time and reflect on the learnings.

Everyone got really excited after these initial explorations; we knew the potential of a conversational voice assistant was worth pursuing Luca Bade, Digital Marketing Manager KARWEI

The approach: feasible results through short iterations

We started with a Design Sprint, developed by GV (launched as Google Ventures in 2009) and defined as ‘a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers’ . At Mirabeau we have already been using Design Sprints for several years now and have seen firsthand to what amazing insights it can lead to. The same was true in our efforts for KARWEI; we managed to unlock several interesting areas to further dive into. After the design sprint we created a proof-of-concept that we were able to test with customers in one of the KARWEI stores. Really valuable to do usability tests like this; they deliver great insights and learnings for the development of the KARWEI Voice Assistant.

The result: the Karwei voice assistant

Everyone got really excited after these initial explorations; we knew the potential of a conversational voice assistant was worth pursuing. While the first demos already looked promising, we needed to mature the concept, enrich the functionality and make it publicly available. The current KARWEI voice assistant helps the customer in three areas; update them on current promotions, provide information and opening hours on nearest stores, and finally help the customer in choosing the right product from the lightning catalogue that fits their personal criteria like budget, color or style.

The details: first step towards a mature voice platform

KARWEI understands that creating valuable services for their customers is an ongoing journey. At the moment this first exploration in the voice channel is available in the Dutch language for the Google assistant. However, just as their presence on the other channels, KARWEI is keen on exploring and developing new and improved ways to create a mature voice platform by continuously improving the experience and developing new and desirable features.

If you have questions regarding the KARWEI Voice Assistant or about the possibilities of Conversational Interfaces or what it can do for your business, please contact Hayo Rubingh via hrubingh@mirabeau.nl.

Hayo Rubingh, Director of Innovation
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