Editor’s note: Today’s post is authored by Brian Tilzner, Chief Digital Analytics and Technology Officer at Best Buy.

At Best Buy, our purpose is to enrich lives through technology. We do this by focusing on meeting our customers wherever they are in their technology journey and offering a unique mix of advice, products and services. Whether in our stores, on BestBuy.com or in our customers’ homes, we’re here to help people understand all the amazing things that technology can do for them.

Over the last several years, the role that technology plays in our day-to-day lives has become more essential than ever. People need their technology to work seamlessly, wherever they are, 24/7. Best Buy is there to fulfill that need in a way that’s convenient for the customer. It doesn’t matter if that happens to be in the middle of the night or during a busy holiday — our customers can quickly and easily reach us through BestBuy.com, on the phone or through the Best Buy app.

Our new partnership with Google Cloud will help us further unlock the power of people, using generative AI to continue providing our customers with more personalized, best-in-class technology support.

More convenient and personalized support for Best Buy customers

One way this support will come to life is through the ability for customers to use a self-service support option that is anticipated to launch late summer of 2024. The self-service support will allow Best Buy’s U.S. customers to get help from a gen AI-powered virtual assistant. This assistant will allow our customer care agents to better and more quickly help customers troubleshoot product issues, change order delivery and schedules, and even manage their software and Geek Squad subscriptions or My Best Buy memberships. The self-service support will be available while shopping online, through our app or by calling the customer service line directly.

We also know that sometimes customers prefer to speak with an actual person to get the support they need. So in the coming months, we’ll also launch a suite of new gen AI-enabled tools our customer care agents can use while assisting customers over the phone. This new tool will help agents more quickly identify the next best action to take in order to address a wide range of customer needs. It will also assess customer conversations in real time, providing them with in-the-moment, relevant and human-focused recommendations. And it will help automatically summarize conversations, detect sentiment and utilize data from the call to reduce the likelihood a similar issue will occur in the future.

Lastly, we’re working to develop an assistant to help our front-line employees across the country. Powered by gen AI, this assistant would give our employees easier access to things like company resources and specific product guides, allowing them to help customers more efficiently.

As the nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer, we’re proud to offer our customers a more personalized support experience with the help of great partners, and by leveraging Google Cloud’s AI platform Vertex AI and Gemini models. The future of retail is constantly evolving, and we’re committed to remaining at the forefront to serve our customers in ways nobody else can.