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Dive Brief: - Williams-Sonoma is using AI to take its high-touch customer service model to the next level, CEO and President Laura Alber said on a Q2 2026 earnings call last week. - The company is tapping AI to improve the checkout experience and overall customer journey, strengthen product discovery and scale personalization across its brand portfolio. - Williams-Sonoma launched Otto, another AI-powered shopping assistant, across the Pottery Barn family in August. That followed the launch of its AI assistant Olive on the Williams Sonoma site last year. “Both Olive and Otto are helping our customers with product recommendations, and they are increasing consumer engagement with our content, design tools, and free design service offerings,” Alber said on the earnings call. Dive Insight: Williams-Sonoma sees its customer service as a key aspect to its success as the company delivered another quarter of profitability despite a volatile macroeconomic backdrop. “We believe our strong brands, our execution, and our focus on customer service is why we are delivering and why we will continue to deliver in the balance of 2026 and over the long term,” Alber said. Comparable sales rose 6.2% year over year, and total revenue grew 6.7% year over year to nearly $2 billion, according to an earnings report. Williams-Sonoma is using AI to build on what it already does well, executives say. “So many aspects of our tactile and taste-driven business cannot be replaced by AI, but our processes can certainly be enhanced by it, especially in supply chain and inventory management and therefore customer service,” Alber said. It’s no secret that AI is only as good as its data, and Williams-Sonoma is confident in its reserves of first-party data. “We've talked about this before, but what we're doing is we're taking our advantages, category authority, decades of expertise, proprietary tech platforms, and our secret sauce, which is rich first-party data that nobody else has,” Sameer Hassan, chief technology and digital officer, said on the earnings call. “We're connecting it with AI, and we're starting to drive some really, really impactful results.” Those results include how customers have responded to Olive at Williams Sonoma. Customers who use Olive convert at three times a higher rate than those who do not. Williams-Sonoma took the same approach it took with Olive with Otto, Hassan said. “Otto will help you narrow down the right piece for your space. It'll coordinate items that go together, sofa to rug,” Hassan said. “It works room by room. It knows rug sizing, outdoor materials the way that our associates do. And when the conversation calls for it, it'll book you a design appointment or hand you straight to a Pottery Barn designer.” Early results are similar to that of Olive. Over 70% of customer engagements with Otto are resolved without handing the customer over to a human representative, according to Hassan. In addition to its progress with its AI agents, the retailer has been able to scale personalization with AI. “A visit where we personalize the experience now generates roughly nine times the revenue of an average visit,” Hassan said. “Last year that was two times. So you're seeing that acceleration again.”
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