Carrefour Connects with More Customers Using Tech for People

The challenge

Benoit Couderé is a renowned sommelier that worked as head sommelier at a three stars Michelin restaurant for many years. He is now in charge of the wine selection for Carrefour Belgium. Every Christmas season, sommelier Benoit visits stores all over Belgium to help customers find the best wine to go with their delicious meals.

Given the fact that there are only a few sommeliers at Carrefour that can assist customers personally at the stores, it’s impossible to reach the 800+ stores Carrefour has. 

Having a solution that was scalable, where the knowledge of sommelier Benoit Couderé could be shared more easily with customers across the stores of the group was the challenge.

The solution

In a three week period, Carrefour Belgium and partner Devoteam G Cloud launched an Alpha version of virtual assistant Sommelier Benoit in three Carrefour stores. With this Alpha version, customers were able to start a conversation with the Sommelier Benoit virtual assistant, made available on a Google Nest Hub device that they could find at the wine section of their Carrefour store.

In only 10 days, the virtual wine assistant Sommelier Benoit that was present in the three Carrefour stores received 600 interactions from customers. This was achieved even without additional marketing around the virtual wine bot. Virtual Sommelier Benoit managed to answer accurately and give the right wine advice in 90% of the interactions.