The Home Depot announced on Apr. 22 that it is replacing traditional phone menus with an artificial intelligence-powered voice agent for customer calls to its U.S. stores. The new system, built on Google Gemini for Customer Experience and using the latest conversational AI audio models, allows customers to state their reason for calling in their own words instead of navigating through a list of options.
This change aims to improve efficiency and provide faster solutions for customers who often need quick answers while working on projects or jobs. By grounding the AI system in The Home Depot’s product catalog and proprietary knowledge, the company said it can move away from “listening to options” toward offering real solutions, freeing up store associates to focus more on helping customers in person.
A pilot program conducted at 50 stores demonstrated that the AI agent can understand a customer’s reason for calling in less than ten seconds and helps them reach a solution four times faster compared to traditional phone menus. The system can build ready-to-buy digital shopping carts based on project descriptions, initiate service requests, send product links via text message, help complete purchases over the phone, answer common inquiries about orders or product availability, and provide multilingual support through real-time translation. Customers always have the option to speak directly with a human associate if needed.
Jordan Broggi, executive vice president of customer experience and president of online at The Home Depot said: “Using customer service AI voice agents, we’re moving away from ‘please listen to these options’ and toward ‘how can I help?’ AI does a tremendous job at recognizing customer intent and taking direct action to help complete a purchase or even start a service request. And of course, if they need to speak with an associate, we’ll quickly connect them.”
Pilot stores reported higher job satisfaction among associates as they were able to spend more time focused on shoppers inside the store rather than answering routine calls.
The Home Depot plans to expand this AI-powered voice agent system across all U.S. stores over the coming year.
