The Home Depot is Enhancing CX thanks to Google Cloud

Since 2015, Google Cloud and The Home Depot have worked together for the betterment of the latter's associate and user experience – regardless of whether consumers are shopping online, in store or both.

It's a multi-year relationship that continues to flourish as Google Cloud looks to accelerate the world's largest home improvement retailer's technology strategy and assist customers in completing their home improvement projects more efficiently and affordably.

"As one of the first major retailers to migrate our website to the cloud, Google Cloud has been a critical partner as we have built an interconnected shopping experience for our customers," comments Fahim Siddiqui, EVP and CIO of The Home Depot.

"Our technology team looks forward to continuing to work closely with Google Cloud to remove friction for our customers and stay on the cutting edge of retail technology."

Improving operations at The Home Depot

Since their partnership was established, The Home Depot has worked with Google Cloud to introduce several new capabilities to make its customers' interconnected experiences smoother, faster and more efficient and improve its operations:

• Launching The Home Depot's Sidekick mobile app, which uses cloud-based machine learning and computer vision to help associates keep in-demand products stocked, improving on-shelf availability and customer experience.
• The rollout of The Home Depot's enhanced online search experience, Intent Search, which enables customers to find products faster with more relevant search results. The deployment of Intent Search has driven significant improvements in click-through rates, conversion and revenue per search.
• The success of The Home Depot's mobile app, which Home Depot customers use not only to shop on their mobile devices, but also as a tool for wayfinding, account identification, loyalty, order pickup and more.
• Leveraged Google Cloud's BigQuery data warehouse technology to make better decisions like analysing data to make targeted improvements to The Home Depot website and making supply chain improvements based on analysis of years of data.
• Successfully handled an unprecedented surge in online customer demand in 2020 when online sales doubled, leveraging Google Cloud's flexible and scalable technology infrastructure. 

Leveraging ML and GenAI

The Home Depot is set to continue using technological capabilities offered by Google Cloud to enhance customer experience and optimise operations.

This includes leveraging technologies like machine learning, computer vision and generative AI to enhance the retailer's inventory management operations and improve overall supply chain efficiency.

In addition, the business will tap into future e-commerce enhancements to enable greater digital scalability. By harnessing Google Cloud's AI innovation platform, Vertex AI, advanced model training capabilities and advanced data analytics, The Home Depot stands to gain deeper insights into customer preferences and needs.

Matt Renner, President at Google Cloud, adds: "The Home Depot consistently puts customers at the centre of its technology transformation and is redefining what it means to equip employees with powerful tools that get the job done.

"Google Cloud is proud to support The Home Depot's strategic technology initiatives, with projects on the horizon that will help it continue to lead the industry in AI-powered cloud innovation."

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