Andrew appeared on WCR FM and spoke to Jason Forrest about his latest partnership with Kingfisher on the Future of Retail.
Interview Transcript
Jason Forrest
Now, would you trust AI with your shopping? It seems many of us would, even if I do struggle at the moment, the number of times my box in the corner tries to order batteries. However, AI, actually, once governed, can make a huge difference to our lives. Kingfisher, the group behind the likes of being Q, have done some research and to tell us more about it. I’m joined now by leading Futurist, Andrew grill, and also in gas and poor Chief Officer at Kingfisher, good afternoon. So first of all, Muslim, give us a bit of the background to the research itself.
Mohsen Ghasempour
So, I mean, of course, I mean, we’ve been very lucky to partner with Andrew grill grill, which who probably is the best person to actually tell you a bit about
Jason Forrest
it again. I’ll go Andrew. I’ll go. Go. Andrew, I’ll go. Andrew, first, right. Okay, so 321, so, Andrew, first of all, tell us a bit about the research itself.
Andrew Grill
Well, I was delighted to work with kingfisher. They sent me a really interesting task, what is the future of retail? Huge question. So I pulled together a bunch of interviews. I spoke to some experts. We did some consumer research, and looked at five key areas where we think the future of retail will be and not surprising, and we’ll probably talk about this. AI was one of the top things that consumers are talking about,
Jason Forrest
yeah, but as I said at the start, I get requests from my equipment to buy batteries for things I would have a house full of batteries, but AI actually when used properly, and it’s about the algorithms that can make the difference here. So by putting a bit of extra effort in, actually, AI can make a revolutionary change the way we shop.
Andrew Grill
Well, AI is getting smarter and smarter, and those of your listeners that are playing with chat GPT are probably being delighted every day with things that it didn’t know it could do the research bore out some really interesting stats. So for example, Britain’s are happy to make purchases without their approval, having their autonomous or agentic AI work for it, we actually found, and this surprised me, that Britain consumers were happy to spend up to 99 pounds or let the AI buy something with 99 pounds. It’s a bit like in the contactless world, where you’ve got 100 pound limit. Beyond that, you have to actually approve that. But I think what we’re seeing is consumers are saying, take some of that heavy lifting of buying products and services. I’m happy to let ai do that for me.
Jason Forrest
Now Muslim as part of a group, which obviously has real retail stores that is out there providing that part of the customer experience. The fact that we are also looking at AI making sure that you can cover off and give the best value across the board is an important thing to you.
Mohsen Ghasempour
Yeah. I mean, you see huge AI is fundamentally changing the way we operating across our stores, as well as the backup operation, right? So, as Andrew also mentioned, is about, you know, especially in DIY area. So providing the help and advice and supporting people to find what is the right product to do that DIY project is critical. And AI is fundamentally changing the way we build a new customer experience for our amazing customers, yeah.
Jason Forrest
And whilst, at the moment, customers will come along, go to B and Q, buy something, watch a YouTube video on how to use it, or having spoken to the wonderful staff in store these days, AI, you might be able to look at it with your camera on your phone, and it will tell you which bit to do first,
Mohsen Ghasempour
exactly. And that’s one of our initiative you started. And if you go to our bnq store, for example, and watch our colleagues, so you see two interesting patterns. So one is exactly, as you mentioned, customers coming to our stores with a piece of broken part of something, they don’t know what it is, and they really want to replace that. And we have introduced a new piece of technology, access part of our visual discovery. We call it lens that people can use their mobile phone take a photo of that things they don’t even need to take it out to the and bring it to a store. They can do the perform a visual search and find over two point across, or 2.1 million for they can be in Q. They can find the right product to replace that broken piece, for example, right? And another interesting pattern is when people come to a store and they describe their problem, rather than looking for a product, they come in and just say, I want to remove old wallpaper so and that’s again, that’s the technology that these AI agents are quite powerful to providing the help and advice and providing the right product writing structure, how you do that task, which is technically change the way we shopping at the moment.
Jason Forrest
And Andrew, when it comes to the way in which this sort of interaction works, most might, somebody might be saying, Yeah, I need this bit. Ai tells them what they want, and they can wait for it to be delivered, or just nip to be in queue and pick it up. Now they know what they’re looking for, but there’s the whole store concept changes, doesn’t it? And I know that you’ve got in your mind that the phygital store the sort of combination of digital and real world happening together.
Andrew Grill
It’s a funny word, phygital. It’s a combination of physical and digital. And I think in this new AI powered world, the physical stores that being Q and screw fix have become even more important. Because when you’re doing a home improvement product project. Sometimes you found what you want online. You want to go and touch the product. You want to go and look at it. You want to have someone explain how it’s done. And importantly, we’re going to see the stores become that hub where people come and have an experience and maybe even talk to other people in the community that have had similar issues or similar things they want to fix or. Or new kitchen or those sort of things. So what we’re going to see is that online is great, but when you’re in that home improvement world, you’re making an important decision about your new design you want to actually go in there. And what I think AI does next time you hear the word AI, think of augmented intelligence, it’s humans plus AI. It actually means that the store colleagues are even more empowered to give that advice in real time, so not having to wait for someone to find out or look it up. Moss and you might talk about the headsets you’ve got, you can actually AI power those headsets you see people wearing in stores as
Mohsen Ghasempour
well. Yeah. I mean, we do have headset at the moment across our being here, so at all of our all of our stores, but what we try to look in some trials is to connect those stores to our in house power AI agents, we call Latino. And the idea here is how you can actually get real time advice and, you know, searching for product, looking at the availability, just talking, you know, as you walk into the stores. And as you mentioned, is the one of the most important tasks for our colleagues in a store is helping our customer find the right product by removing some of those frictions that our colleagues need to do every day, they’re going to have more time, as you mentioned, to spend with our valuable customer, which is hopefully bring a much better customer experience
Jason Forrest
for us. Yeah. And of course, the next development will be, you know, not having to stock all the parts in stores, because you may well have a 3d printer that can produce what you need for your customers.
Andrew Grill
Yeah, that’s one thing I looked at in the research, because often you don’t have that exact part that you want. But imagine in the future being able to go into a store and say, here’s what I need, and having it 3d printed in front of you. We’re not there at the moment, but I saw in the research that’s where we’re moving towards. So you don’t have to stock everything, and there’s this concept of an endless aisle. So what Kingfisher have also done is evolved their marketplace offering. So it’s not just Kingfisher products, it’s third party, which means if you can 3d print it, or you can get it from someone else, it basically means that the aisle is endless and you can keep getting all the things you need, whether it be products or services from the one supplier. I’ll
Jason Forrest
be looking to AI to help me do the DIY as well. As we’ve said there that those sort of tips are absolutely essential, particularly with me. Where can we go for more information about this report, what the future is going to be like, and, of course, how we can enjoy what we can enjoy now too.
Andrew Grill
There’s a great visualisation we’ve developed, and it’s Kingfisher store of the future.com. Explains what this looks like, how it might evolve, and I think it’ll excite consumers as to what the next evolution of retail might look like.
Jason Forrest
Fingers crossed that we could all manage to get the DIY jobs, didn’t we need to, hopefully, first time around, with the help of the magical team at B and Q hand screw fix for now Futurist, a Futurist for now Futurist, Andrew grill and also moss and guess AI officer at kingfisher. Thank you both for joining us.
