Happy Friday! ‘This week in CX’ brings you the latest roundup of industry news.
This week, we explored the push for the revolution of in-store retail, the need for AI in customer-centric organisations, and how helping customers is the priority now more than ever.
We’re also discussing new updates from The European Parliament, Ikea, and more.
Key news
- The European Parliament and EU governments have agreed to extend new microplastic pollution rules to maritime freight, in a bid to curb plastic pellet spills. Logistics companies must prove that pellets shipped in containers follow safety guidelines at all stages of the supply chain, both on land and sea. The lawmakers overruled the European Commission, which hadn’t included maritime freight in its original proposal. Up to 184,000t of plastic pellets, or nurdles, are spilled annually. They are used as raw materials in manufacturing plastic products like bottles. The new rules still need formal adoption.
- The EU has unveiled an action plan to boost its artificial intelligence credentials, including the building of 13 AI factories and up to five “gigafactories”. These sites should help companies develop the most complex models and create “moonshots” in the fields of biotech, healthcare, industry, robotics and scientific discovery. The bloc will also simplify existing AI rules in a nod to European business leaders who have expressed concern that too much regulation will hinder innovation. Catching up in the AI race will support the continent’s competitiveness and security, said EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen.
- Getting an Ikea parcel home without a car is generally a good fitness exercise, or a way to throw out your back. That’s why the retail giant is trialling new do-it-yourself delivery options for customers who don’t have a car at their disposal. Customers in Stockholm, Utrecht and Vienna can now rent electric cargo bikes, trolleys and trailers that can be attached to bicycles in order to bring furniture home without breaking a sweat. The company is also expanding pick-up lockers in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands as a more affordable alternative to home deliveries.
CXM news stories
Here’s the full news stories that CXM have reported on in the past week. Learn all about the latest news about retail, consumer-centric revolution, and AI-driven grocery shopping.
Amazon’s new ‘Buy for Me’ feature helps customers find and buy products from other brands’ sites
Amazon offers very broad selection, carrying hundreds of millions of products, including 300 million items available with fast, free Prime delivery across more than 35 categories including home, apparel, electronics, media, beauty, grocery, sports and outdoors, automotive, and everyday essentials.
While we already offer vast selection, we want to make it even easier for customers to find any product they want and need, so we’re testing a new feature, Buy for Me, in beta in the Amazon Shopping app. Buy for Me helps customers discover and seamlessly purchase select products from other brands’ sites if those items are not currently sold in Amazon’s store.
Buy for Me is currently live in the Amazon Shopping app on both iOS and Android for a subset of U.S. customers. We will begin testing with a limited number of brand stores and products, with plans to roll out to more customers and incorporate more brand stores and products based on feedback.
How does it work?
Buy for Me is integrated into Amazon’s shopping experience so customers can quickly and easily discover additional selection. When customers search for branded items in the search bar in the Amazon Shopping app, they’ll see relevant results from Amazon and third-party sellers in our store, and in some cases, additional relevant products from other stores in a separate section of search results labeled ‘Shop brand sites directly.’ Customers can link directly to these sites, or in some cases, customers will see a link to Buy for Me.
Leveraging AI to make customers’ lives better and easier
Buy for Me is enabled by AI. The experience runs on Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that offers a choice of high-performing foundation models. Amazon Nova and Anthropic’s Claude models support the Amazon Shopping app’s agentic capabilities to complete the purchase from start to finish on a customer’s behalf.
Agentic AI is capable of performing specific tasks with minimal human intervention at the direction of and on behalf of a customer. Earning trust is a cornerstone for the success of AI agents, and we’ve designed this experience to operate transparently in its interactions with customers and brand stores. The customer is in control of the AI agent acting on their behalf, and brands have the choice if they want to participate and benefit from the increased brand visibility, customer engagement, and sales.