Batteries Plus just released its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) with the goal of supporting franchise development and improving the customer experience.
Three separate tools will assist the retailer with finding new franchise owners, answering store phone calls, and helping associates and customers find the right product faster, Batteries Plus said.
The rollout, announced Aug. 31, is underway across all Batteries Plus locations. The retailer expects full deployment by the end of September. It built the tools through a combination of vendor partners, consultants and in-house development. They’re part of a larger effort from Batteries Plus to embrace agentic AI.
“This is not creating AI for the sake of breaking into the world of AI, said Scott Williams, CEO, in a statement. “This is creating tools that genuinely assist our entire proprietary business model, so that everyone from the corporate level to our store associates can work efficiently and confidently as the experts in charge dedicated to serving our customers.”
Batteries Plus is No. 956 in the Top 1000 Database. The market research tool tracks North America’s largest online retailers, ranking them by annual e-commerce sales and more.
Batteries Plus is also No. 892 in Digital Commerce 360’s new AI Rankings. That set of rankings is available in the Top 1000 Pro with AI Database.
What are Batteries Plus’ 3 new AI tools?
1. Savannah: SMS Voice Agent
Savannah is Batteries Plus’ SMS voice agent to facilitate franchise development. Potential franchise owners can call Savannah and ask questions about the business opportunity.
After the call, Savannah sends the prospective franchisee a follow-up email that includes more information about Batteries Plus’ history and business model, a franchise application, and a scheduled franchise discovery call with a member of the team.
“By the time we get on a discovery call now, we’re speaking with someone who genuinely understands the Batteries Plus franchise opportunity, changing what our team spends its time on and who ultimately ends up in our system,” said Joe Malmuth, chief development officer. “The result has been a dramatic increase in overall engagement and franchise development activity.”
Savannah also has SMS and prospecting capabilities.
2. Edison: AI Voice Assistant
Edison answers customer calls to Batteries Plus stores. It’s equipped to handle common questions including hours, directions, battery advice and other inquiries, according to the retailer.
Each of Batteries Plus’ more than 700 stores receives an average of 30 calls per day, the retailer said. With the help of the answering voice assistant, employees are freed up to pay attention to customers currently in the store. It can also filter spam calls and escalate calls to human employees when certain keywords are used.
3. Wattson: AI-powered search
Wattson is connected to the Batteries Plus point-of-sale (POS) system and is designed to help store associates find the right product quickly. Previously, finding the right automotive battery could be a convoluted process that involved considering engine size, sub-model, and other details.
Batteries Plus also applied this technology to its website to simplify customer searches. It started with automotive technology, and has since expanded to other product categories, with plans to continue expanding based on sales volume.
Batteries Plus prioritizes AI at scale for enterprise use cases
This rollout is the result of work Batteries Plus has been doing for years.
As Digital Commerce 360 reported in July, senior director of enterprise architecture Karthik Jambulingam described the company’s approach as building a “knowledge-centric architecture” to invest in structured, semantically rich data rather than just raw systems upgrades. That was specifically done so that AI tools would have the foundation to reason accurately when deployed.
The approach appears to be working. Batteries Plus reduced failed searches by 25% and achieved a 35% to 40% customer inquiry containment rate, meaning that more than one-third of customer service interactions were resolved by automated self-service channels without escalating to a human.
These tools are all part of what Batteries Plus calls its Enterprise AI strategy, with plans to continue implementing cost and time-saving tools across its fleet of stores.
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