Philippe Muhr, Intersport: “GenAI at the start of the chatbot funnel, helps us better assess consumer’s needs and boosts conversion”

Philippe Muhr : With partners like Google, we know how many visitors we generate for the store based on keywords from Google searches. Today, if a customer is authenticated via Gmail, and if he accepts a geolocation option and clicks on a query such as “Intersport Lyon”, we are able to know that this customer left from point A to go to a store. This enables us to find out how many online visits generated business for the store.

Philippe Muhr : With this acquisition almost 12 months ago, in April 2023, we have almost 900 French stores. It was a unique opportunity that we had to seize, with the chance to create a new network in the Paris region where Intersport had few locations. We worked with the Board to propose to our store owners, who are also our shareholders, who would takeover these 69 stores. This happened naturally, via people who already had several stores in these specific catchment areas, and who decided to take over these Go Sport outlets. We are now in the process of addressing the IT and supply-chain issues. The transformation has been fairly rapid.

Philippe Muhr : At this pivotal moment with AI, we’re also working a lot with Google on product sheets. We’re also looking at the creation of Web pages generated by AI (landing pages) and the creation of e-mails. On the marketing side, we’re also questioning ourselves about how to create images and creative content. Bringing generative AI up to customer service level is also something we’re looking at: we’re working with call centres on this. We are also working with partners who are developing their solutions to provide better customer service.

At the store level, what are the next steps for GenAI at Intersport?

Philippe Muhr : In flagship stores, which will soon open in the Paris region, sales assistants will be equipped with smartphones with very powerful tools. These include mobile stock checks, simplified customer data and help functions. Ultimately, through this device, we want to put GenAI in the hands of in-store sales assistant. The dream would be to base our stores’ teams on this Ibbu area of expertise, using AI at the start of the discussion to fully qualify a customer’s needs and respond more effectively.

At Intersport, more and more store owners are equipping staff with “connected sellers” devices, through us, to improve their value proposition (loyalty, customer, sales, care…). In a few stores, we are also testing Zebra and Samsung smartphones equipped with the “push to talk” function, which replaces the walkie-talkie, in order to put everything on a single device. At Intersport, store owners do pay for vendors’ equipment, but there are no obstacles on their side. With a central office, we work at their service, to offer them the best solutions to improve their performance. Once we prove our service, digital maturity evolves rapidly in a cooperative group like us.

At Intersport, e-commerce is first and foremost a way of driving store traffic. What KPIs do you measure?

Philippe Muhr : Our strategy is based on the complementary of offline and online channels. There are no longer any customers who are solely online or solely offline. We measure that 70% of our in-store customers have already visited the website. In some categories such as outdoor, 90% of in-store visitors researched a visit on the Web beforehand. We are measuring a growing proportion of visits to the website whilst in a store.

Philippe Muhr : With partners like Google, we know how many visitors we generate for the store based on keywords from Google searches.