Coop Sweden starts previewing Cooper – an Artificial Intelligence retail virtual assistant developed by EBI.AI

EBI.AI, an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab in the UK, has announced that Coop Sweden, one of the largest grocery retailers in the country, has successfully started to preview its virtual assistant, Cooper.

This marks the first significant milestone since EBI.AI was chosen by Coop Sweden earlier this year to build the world’s foremost grocery retail AI assistant. When Cooper is rolled out nationwide, it will provide users with a complete concierge service including dietary requirements, suggested recipes, nutritional and loyalty scheme information.

Initially available to a selected number of visitors to the recipe section of the Coop Sweden website, Cooper has been trained on approximately 125 different topics relating to recipes, store information, membership and online shopping. This new service is particularly relevant as more people use the web to shop as a result of the COVID crisis. Even online novices will find their experience enhanced by Cooper’s intuitive natural language which requires little or no technical know-how.

During the preview period, the different topics and type of real customer conversations handled by Cooper will enable additional questions and answers to be added. Therefore, allowing the virtual assistant to be reviewed and rolled out more fully on the coop.se website in the near future.

Matthew Doel, MD for EBI.AI commented, “Moving Cooper into preview is a great milestone. We are already seeing a steady increase in usage and additional ways for Cooper to engage with Coop’s members as a result of actual conversations and questions. This is a brilliant way to create the amazing experiences customers need while rapidly delivering what Coop requested. By only building what members are asking for, we can reduce the timelines and costs of the overall project for Coop. The next steps will be even more exciting as we roll out Cooper to additional web visitors and prepare for the beta launch of the Cooper App.”

EBI.AI is hosting Cooper on its Lobster AI communications platform. This means that ultimately, the virtual assistant will be available on web, mobile app, messaging services, telephone and smart speakers.

Amer Mohammed, Chief Digital Officer at Coop Sweden concluded, “Cooper is so much more than a simple Chatbot. It’s an all-in-one customer engagement tool that will strategically help us to build a level of customer experience that is unparalleled in the Swedish retail marketplace. Working closely with EBI.AI, we aim to transform customer relationships and drive greater membership loyalty by blending customers’ digital and in-store journeys in new and exciting ways. Our vision is for Cooper to lead the way, inspiring other pioneering organisations to transform the way they engage with customers through the power of AI.”

For more information on the Lobster AI communications platform, visit www.ebi.ai