Previously, this work meant stepping away from the customer to consult a screen or a colleague. A customer asking about a diamond’s certification, a stone’s origin or whether a matching piece exists in another store’s inventory used to mean the associate put them on hold. Now the associate gets an answer while the conversation is still happening.
Chow Tai Fook credits the shift with a gain of more than 70% in process efficiency and a sales conversion lift of up to, according to figures Microsoft reported in a retrospective on its 2026 fiscal year enterprise customers.
These agents run across the retailer’s entire footprint, meaning an associate in one store can draw on the same product knowledge and live inventory data as an associate anywhere else the company operates.
67% of CIOs Plan to Increase Investment in Associate-Facing AI
Chow Tai Fook is not an outlier. Gartner’s 2026 CIO and Technology Executive Survey found that 67% of chief information officers plan to increase investment in associate-facing generative AI assistants this year, according to workforce-management firm Quinyx.
Home Depot is one retailer building agents for both sides at once. The retailer’s Magic Apron answers customer questions directly on the company’s site and app, and the retailer has said it also functions as a foundational tool for store and contact center associates, Retail TouchPoints reported.
Separately, Home Depot has also equipped thousands of associates at its Store Support Center with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise, an agentic platform built to automate internal business processes end to end, the company said. At the Store Support Center, that system handles corporate-side work: predicting project bottlenecks, drafting marketing copy and auditing digital designs, according to Home Depot’s own announcement.
Home Depot has said offloading that routine execution lets associates “focus on creative problem solving, high-impact strategy, and long-term growth,” positioning the tool as infrastructure for the people running the business behind the scenes, distinct from the customer-facing advice Magic Apron provides.
45% of Consumers Would Let AI Complete a Purchase
Consumers appear ready to meet retailers partway. Forty-five percent say they would be comfortable letting an AI agent complete a purchase on their behalf, rising to 54% among Gen Z, and 81% of retailers say they trust AI to act autonomously once the right guardrails exist, according to PYMNTS Intelligence research conducted with Worldpay.
Chow Tai Fook built the associate-facing layer first, with no comparable customer-facing tool yet disclosed, while Home Depot is running both simultaneously, betting that consumer trust and retailer confidence will keep converging. But the direction both companies are betting on is not replacing the sales associate. It’s making them faster while consumers get comfortable with the rest. The recommendation still comes from a person who can read a customer’s hesitation, adjust a pitch or offer reassurance an AI system cannot.
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