UK-based ethical flower business Arena Online has made a significant leap in customer service with the launch of Daisy, the country’s first generative AI-powered florist. The digital human, a fully interactive avatar with a virtual nervous system, will provide customer service support to Arena’s half a million customers, 24/7, 365 days a year. The technology has been developed in collaboration with Trulience, Arena’s partner in “true likeness science”.
Daisy is a super-realistic, fully interactive avatar that responds to customer questions in real-time via computer or mobile. This new technology will be a key part of Arena’s market-leading customer experience and support, helping to answer customer queries quickly and efficiently. Daisy is designed to make information about Arena available to everyone, even those with difficulties reading or writing, and customers can choose whether to hear or read responses. The technology is a testament to Arena’s commitment to accessibility and its goal of making its services as accessible as possible to all its customers.
The launch of Daisy builds on Arena’s best-in-class fulfilment and technology platform, Hyperion, which was launched in January 2023. The 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.
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The launch of Daisy follows Arena’s acquisition of Patch, the UK’s leading plant delivery business, in January 2023. The acquisition 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. The acquisition of Patch was a strategic move by Arena to expand its offerings and bring more value to its customers.
John Hackett, CEO at Arena, said that Daisy’s integration into the Hyperion platform was a major milestone for the company. He said that Daisy would reduce wait times for customers whose questions require technical assistance and ultimately allow Arena’s specialist team to invest more time and knowledge in providing expert solutions where they’re needed most. Hackett said that Daisy was a testament to Arena’s commitment to using technology to make its services even more accessible to customers.
Marek Zwiefka-Sibley, Founder of Trulience, said that Daisy was an industry first and he expected to see similar technologies become the norm over the next few years. He said that agents like Daisy would be transformational for ecommerce businesses, giving users a better shopping experience and increasing accessibility while also freeing up businesses’ customer experience teams to handle more complicated queries.
Richard France, CTO at Arena, said that developing state-of-the-art technology to put customers at the heart of the user experience was key. He said that by automating the simple stuff, Arena’s customer experience teams could focus on helping customers with the harder, more detailed queries that an interactive avatar could not handle. France said that Arena was the first flower delivery business to offer this service to its customers and that Daisy would be a continuously evolving part of the Hyperion platform going forward.
