Colgate-Palmolive Piloting Generative AI Chatbot With Potential To Shape Product Development
Colgate-Palmolive is piloting a generative AI-enabled chatbot that marries digital shelf data curation with content creation, and it’s developed a cross-functional team for the closed-beta test.
The consumer goods company is extending its relationship with Profitero as an early partner for its Ask Profitero assistant, which collects data on pricing, in-stock levels, product detail page (PDP) content, paid and organic search placement, ratings, reviews, and competitors across global retailers, Todd Hassenfelt, global digital commerce director, strategy and execution at Colgate-Palmolive, tells CGT.
Employees will be able to ask the bot conversational questions, such as: “How are my sales on total whitening toothpaste in mint across all brands?” It can also retrieve out-of-stock data, including identifying out-of-stock frequencies down to the product level at a single retailer, and the number of days the product was out of stock over the course of a month.
The tool also leverages generative AI to produce relevant and optimized content that Colgate-Palmolive can use on retail websites, and it has the potential to help shape everything from the manufacturer’s PDPs to product development ideas, Hassenfelt says. For example, employees can ask the AI assistant about optimal title lengths that drive category sales, receiving back the ideal length of characters for the category on that merchant’s website.
The pilot is a cross-functional initiative with the hope that faster, easier access to insights will help generate incremental revenue, Hassenfelt notes. The company expects to have about 10 U.S. employees working on the pilot, and they’ve added an additional seven to 10 employees from global functions including marketing, branding, customer service, and logistics.
“We are always keen to democratize our data and action quicker insights across our org,” he says. “Opening things up to a nearly unlimited range of verbal queries should help.”
Colgate-Palmolive currently uses Profitero’s commerce analytics to help manage 1,000 online PDP for dozens of SKUs across more than 10 retailers, including Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Walgreens.com, Instacart.com, and Kroger.com. The company may potentially expand its use of the AI assistant as the product expands, according to Hassenfelt.
AI Copilots
As excitement and concerns swirl about smart experimentation with generative AI, multiple consumer goods companies are investing in AI chatbots to increase efficiencies across their teams. Johnsonville, for example, recently implemented an AI-powered chatbot to help employees locate internal information across a variety of systems for easy access to data and insights.
Anheuser-Busch InBev and Cereal Partners Worldwide (CPW) — the Nestle, and General Mills joint venture — similarly said they would integrate an AI assistant using OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model to improve access to insights from their own data.
For its part, Colgate-Palmolive is also experimenting with generative AI to develop e-learning content for employees and exploring its use to accelerate new product formulations.
