Macy's AI Shopping Assistant Tackles Cart Abandonment Head-On
Seven in 10 online shopping carts are abandoned before purchase. Macy's is attacking the problem differently than most retailers have for decades-by resolving customer uncertainty before shoppers leave, not chasing them afterward.
Ask Macy's, a conversational AI assistant built on Google's Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, launched two months ago and now serves thousands of shoppers daily across Macys.com and the Macy's app. During beta testing, revenue per visit was 4.75 times higher among customers who used it compared to those who didn't, according to Google Cloud.
That metric comes with context: Ask Macy's users tend to be shoppers already close to making a purchase. The 4.75x figure measures revenue per visit among users, not an overall reduction in the abandonment rate across all shoppers.
How the Assistant Works
Ask Macy's handles text and images across a catalog of more than 2.5 million products. Instead of returning a grid of results, it asks follow-up questions to narrow down options.
A shopper searching for office wear that transitions to evening dinner gets asked about fit, fabric, and occasion. Someone shopping for a 10-year-old gets asked whether they prefer bright or muted colors. A virtual try-on feature lets customers upload photos to see how items look on them in different settings-an office, restaurant, or outdoors.
Chad Westfall, Macy's senior vice president of technology product development and customer experience, said the goal was straightforward: "We wanted to show how technology can remove friction and elevate retail shopping for our customers, to help them feel guided, understood, and confident."
From Scratch to Scale in Weeks
Macy's had spent nearly six months building its own internal AI agent before Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience became available. The retailer scrapped that work and pivoted immediately.
"The pace of change and innovation in AI left no room to stand still, so we adapted," Westfall said. "We frankly forwent some of our usual processes in order to go after this with all deliberate haste."
Dozens of engineers from Macy's and Google Cloud began daily standups in early February. Four weeks later, Ask Macy's launched in beta to a small group of users and Macy's employees. Within 24 hours it scaled to 50% of site traffic. A week after that, 100%.
Broader Retail Adoption
Macy's is not alone. A survey of 5,841 consumers found that nearly half used AI during their latest purchase journey, and 64% expect to use it more in the coming year. Forty-three percent of retailers are already piloting AI shopping agents, with the market projected to reach $1.7 trillion by 2030.
Albertsons saw a 10% basket-size increase from its AI shopping assistant. Ulta deployed its own version on the same Google infrastructure alongside Macy's.
For sales professionals, this shift signals a fundamental change in how customer support and product discovery work. Rather than waiting for customers to abandon carts, AI now identifies and resolves hesitation in real time. Learn more about how AI for Customer Support is reshaping retail operations, or explore AI for Sales to understand how these tools apply to your own revenue goals.
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