Arena Online, the UK’s leading ethical flower business, today announces the launch of the first generative AI-powered florist in the UK, Daisy. She joins Arena ahead of Valentine’s Day to provide customer service support to Arena’s half a million customers, 24/7, 365 days a year. You can ask Daisy a question yourself here: www.arenaflowers.com/pages/help/
Daisy is a digital human, a super-realistic, fully interactive avatar with her own virtual nervous system, capable of responding to human questions in real time via an ordinary computer or mobile. This new technology will be a key part of Arena’s market-leading customer experience and support.
With the integration of generative AI, Arena has introduced another foundational technology to modern retail and ecommerce in the UK. The technology has been built by Arena in collaboration with its ‘true likeness science’ partner Trulience.
This builds on Arena’s best-in-class fulfilment and technology platform, Hyperion, which launched in January 2023. Arena’s Hyperion platform enables household brands to deliver an integrated and frictionless retail experience, providing highly personalised fulfilment of bouquets, plants and other gifts to customers at significant scale and speed. Arena handles the end-to-end fulfilment and technology demands behind the scenes, leaving brands to take care of their customers and keep ahead of customer demand and consumer trends.
Daisy joins the Hyperion platform and is available to all Arena’s fulfilment partners.
Today’s announcement also follows Arena’s acquisition of Patch, the UK’s leading plant delivery business, in January 2023. The acquisition of Patch created a business of unrivalled capability and scale in the delivery of cut flowers, plants and gifts, which is bringing value and choice to customers across the UK.
John Hackett, CEO at Arena, said: “As the UK’s leading ethical flower business, we have been seeking ways to use technology to make our services even more accessible. We’re delighted to have Daisy on board as part of our Customer Experience Team. As Daisy provides assistance to our half a million customers who have their queries quickly answered, it reduces wait times for customers whose questions require technical assistance. Ultimately, Daisy allows our specialist team to invest more time and knowledge to provide expert solutions where they’re needed most.
Accessibility is very important to us, and Daisy allows customers to speak or type any questions, and to choose whether to hear or read responses. The technology is designed to make information about our business available to everyone, even to customers who have difficulty reading or writing.”
Marek Zwiefka-Sibley, founder of Trulience, said: “I am delighted to see Daisy live and helping Arena Flowers customers! Agents like Daisy will be transformational for e-commerce businesses. Giving users a better shopping experience and increasing accessibility while also freeing up businesses Customer Experience teams to handle more complicated queries. This is an industry first that I expect we will see become the norm over the next few years.”
Richard France, CTO at Arena, said: “Developing state-of-the-art technology to put our customers at the heart of the user experience is key. By automating the simple stuff, our brilliant colleagues in our Customer Experience Teams can focus on helping customers with the harder, more detailed queries that an interactive avatar cannot handle. We are the first flower delivery business to offer this service to our customers, and it will be a continuously evolving part of the Hyperion platform going forward.”
