2 months ago
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The way people shop online and in stores is changing. Large retailers are trying new ways to make search, product discovery and support feel more fluid and more personalised. The Australian retail group Wesfarmers unveiled a partnership with Google Cloud designed to do just that, using advanced AI tools to build a new customer experience model across its retail brands.
Wesfarmers owns several well-known retail chains, including Kmart, Officeworks, Priceline and more, with a customer membership platform called OnePass. The company said it plans to use Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience to build what it calls “agentic shopping” tools.
These are systems that let customers use natural language to find products, receive recommendations and move from discovery to checkout within a more conversational interface. The pilots are already underway on the OnePass platform.
This type of AI goes beyond traditional search bars and simple chatbots. According to press releases around the Gemini Enterprise platform, the tools are built to understand context and assist through multiple steps of a customer’s interaction, from early product questions all the way to post-purchase support.
Businesses using these systems can create AI agents that act on a customer’s behalf to handle tasks across the full journey, not just respond to isolated queries. Examples shared by other retailers working with the same technology show how agents can take consented actions, such as comparing products and even adding items to a shopping cart based on a customer’s expressed preferences.
From conversational shopping to contextual support
Digital shopping tools are one strand of the work. Wesfarmers will also deploy AI assistants aimed at improving customer service response times and the quality of support interactions. These assistants are designed to keep track of conversational context, unlike older, scripted bots that often lose track of what was asked earlier in the same session. This contextual awareness can make support feel more responsive and useful, as it connects questions and answers across the life of a conversation.
There are also internal uses for the AI. Wesfarmers is making Gemini Enterprise available to teams across its retail divisions. Staff from operations, customer service, marketing and finance will be able to use the tools to analyse information, automate routine tasks and support decision-making. Wesfarmers sees this as a way to reduce manual workload on repetitive tasks so people can spend more time on higher-value work like planning, creativity and strategic decisions.
Wesfarmers brings agentic AI into retail enterprise workflows
The move comes in a period where many retailers are exploring ways to make AI more than a novelty or test project. A growing trend in enterprise AI involves the idea of “agentic commerce,” a model where AI does more than recommend products or answer questions. Instead, it performs multi-step activities on behalf of customers, handling parts of the shopper journey that were traditionally handled by people or multiple disconnected systems. Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience is one example of this kind of tool.
For large multi-brand companies like Wesfarmers, the challenges are both technical and organisational. Complex product catalogues and customer data siloes can make it hard to provide consistent, personalised experiences across different brands and channels.
AI agents that can understand intent and context may help bridge some of those gaps, but they depend on good data quality and strong back-end integration. Google’s platform aims to tie these pieces together by allowing brands to connect conversational interfaces with backend systems such as inventory and order management.
Rob Scott, Managing Director of Wesfarmers, said the company was expanding its use of AI across forecasting, design and customer engagement. “It’s important that we do so responsibly, at scale and with the right partners,” Scott said in the announcement about the collaboration with Google Cloud. “Google Cloud’s capabilities will support the development of agentic solutions that enhance customer experiences and enable our teams to focus on higher-value work.”
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, also commented on the partnership’s potential impact. He framed the work as rethinking retail interactions. “By integrating Google’s agentic AI across Wesfarmers’ brands, we aren’t just digitising the storefront — we are helping them reimagine every customer touchpoint and automate their internal processes,” Kurian said.
Integration, training, and enterprise realities
Training is part of the picture. The partnership includes a custom upskilling programme run by Google Cloud to help Wesfarmers team members use the new AI tools confidently and securely. This training will be adapted to different roles, from store teams to support centre staff. How widely AI gets adopted internally will depend on how comfortable employees become with the tools and how well they fit into everyday workflows.
Putting AI into customer experience and internal workflows is not without challenges. Retailers must guard against incorrect responses, maintain strong data governance, and ensure that automated systems do not compromise privacy or accuracy. Many companies start with limited deployments and gradually expand them as they learn what works and where human oversight is still needed.
Wesfarmers’ move is a clear example of how AI is stepping into both front-end customer engagements and back-office functions. A multi-brand retailer is using a broad suite of agentic AI tools to both help customers along their shopping journeys and give staff new ways to work with data and tasks.
The impact of these changes will be shaped by how well the technology integrates with existing systems and how organisations manage expectations around accuracy, privacy and governance.
(Photo by Artem Beliaikin)
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