After creating a platform in Azure that unites the data from its various operations, the company is focusing on the potential of AI, he said. Pets at Home is an early adopter of Microsoft Copilot Studio, where a business can create AI agents to act in support of different areas of the business. It coincides with Microsoft’s announcement October 21 of the ability to create autonomous agents to help build capacity for every sales, service, finance and supply chain team.
With early access to agent-building features in Copilot Studio, Pets at Home created an agent to help its retail fraud detection team investigate suspicious transactions. The company is planning on creating other agents to assist its colleagues in other areas.
It’s part of the company’s embrace of a range of AI services across departments. For veterinary colleagues, that means saving time on administrative tasks to be able to spend more time focused on patients. For the business as a whole, that means unifying the data from its different operations to create a better customer experience.
“We have some fantastic data – there are 8 million customers in our Pets Club, with 10 million pets,” he said. “We’re using machine learning and AI algorithms to produce recommendations for next best actions.”
“We can give information to our colleagues in our pet care centers about our customers’ pets, and what they would typically buy or need at their life stage. We can bring that same data to life across our organization so that we’re really relevant to customers, and we’re helping them make the best decisions for their pet, whether they are in a store, online or at the veterinary practice.”