Story Behind the Brand
TFG (The Foschini Group) is the largest fashion, lifestyle, and specialty retail group in South Africa, with a growing presence in the UK and Australia. The group has a portfolio of 37 brands across over 4,800 outlets on 5 continents. With brands like Foschini, Markham, Sportscene, @home, and Jet, TFG’s vision is to create the most remarkable omnichannel experiences for their customers. To support this vision, TFG has launched Bash, a lifestyle ecommerce offering, where the Group’s sought-after retail brands and loyal customers come together seamlessly in one virtual platform.
Challenge
TFG has always had a customer-first approach, which is why it wanted to find new ways to create personalized experiences for its customers without being intrusive. The company was aware of recent advancements in AI technology that would open up new ways to connect with customers. In particular, the organization wanted to explore using conversational shopping as a solution.
However, since conversational AI is still a new technology, TFG had concerns: What would it be perceived as assisting with? Would the solution just provide stock answers (that any algorithm could spit out)? Would it hallucinate and provide inaccurate results? Would it be a closed system?
TFG needed a solution that could properly address these concerns while also driving consequential business impact.