H&M Integrates Google Chat for Digital Discovery and Support

Need to Know

• H&M customers can now communicate with live chat agents through Google services such as Google Maps or Google Search.
• The store is integrating its Nuance Intelligent Engagement Platform, which guides customers through the digital shopping experience, with Google Business Messages.
• Live and virtual chat will be available 24 hours a day.

Analysis

H&M is adding live chat to its online shopping experience, allowing customers to engage with live chat agents and virtual chatbots through Google services.

The retailer is integrating its Nuance Intelligent Engagement Platform with Google Business Messages in order to execute the live-chat function. Nuance Intelligent Engagement Platform is an AI-driven tool that helps H&M customers while they shop online, providing real-time information on item availability, online order status, and information such as physical store locations and hours.

“With the explosion of digital engagements, especially in the retail sector, we’re hearing from customers more about the need to better optimize and handle consumer engagements and service requests across channels,” Tony Lorentzen, SVP of intelligent engagement at Nuance said in a press release.

“The differentiator with Nuance technology is that we can partner to build one virtual assistant and extend that system to whichever channel an organization wants to leverage for engagement. Google’s Business Messages is one example, where we are further enabling H&M to give customers more convenient options to get their questions answered without ever having to pick up the phone.”

Google Business Messages is a mobile channel that combines data from Google Maps, Search, and brand websites. Combining these two services will allow H&M to offer 24-hour chat service, either via live agents or virtual chatbots, reducing the volume of calls received by H&M’s call centers and increasing the number of overall queries that are able to be fielded.

“We are delighted to work with H&M and Nuance to help H&M customers get answers to their questions, directly from Google Search using Business Messages,” Rob Lawson, head of partnerships for business messaging at Google said of the new chat integration.

H&M has been improving its consumer experience in a variety of ways in recent years, including a partnership with Klarna, the buy now, pay later platform, in January. And the Google chat integration is not the retailer’s first foray into online messaging: H&M was one of three brands to launch a chatbot within messaging app Kik in 2015.