Accenture and French home improvement retailer, Bricorama, have collaborated to develop ‘pAInt,’ a generative AI-powered shopping assistant to help customers with their painting projects.
Available on bricorama.fr, pAInt has been designed to inspire and guide users through each stage of their projects, from inspiration – by suggesting trending styles, to the purchase of materials and best practice guides on the painting process.
This new service aims to offer a unique online experience, assisting users in the successful completion of their ‘Do-It-Yourself’ (DIY) projects.
GenAI has been infused in the conversational tool pAInt so users can interact with it for help with paint colors and finishes, decorating ideas from Bricorama’s video content, demonstrations, paint quantity and accessories. Users are also able to buy the products with a single click.
“We’re proud to offer such an innovative and cutting-edge online service as pAInt. It is further proof of our value proposition: to inspire and pedagogically support our customers in the success of their projects,” said Laurent Pussat, president of Les Mousquetaires Group’s DIY chains.
“Our customers expect a personalized, professional response, whatever the channel they choose. With pAInt, we’re offering a ‘made-to-measure’ online experience, which can then be rolled out in-store, as an extension of its omnichannel purpose.”
pAInt was developed by a close collaboration between Bricorama and Accenture Song, Accenture’s tech-powered creative group aiming to respond to customers’ growing need for DIY and decoration support. The two teams analyzed and mapped the value and opportunities that GenAI could bring to the DIY market.
They then used the information to develop the pAInt tool and services for the Bricorama products. The use of generative AI is set to be extended and at the point of sale, employees will also be able to use the tool to advise customers.
The pAInt tool was built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, to benefit from Azure’s enterprise-grade security, stability and performance, as well as its natural language interaction and context understanding capabilities. It has been trained with patented content produced by Bricorama, which has enabled it to acquire internal expertise.
Laurent Thoumine, senior managing director and Europe lead for Accenture’s retail industry group, said: “Generative AI has the potential to be a real game-changer in retail and is driving companies to reinvent how they run their businesses, serve their customers and get work done.
“That’s why it’s particularly great to see Bricorama lean in strongly on this exciting new technology, and through working closely and quickly with our team, design and deliver a tool that offers hyper-relevant retail suggestions to each customer in each decision-making moment.”
