New Way Now: Smyths Toys automates 60% of customer service with AI

Featured in this video:
Adam Sexton, Head of AI Innovation, Smyths Toys
Michal Bondarowicz, Senior AI Developer, Smyths Toys

Executive summary: Smyths Toys, the world's largest niche toy retailer outside of Europe, wanted to transform into an AI-first business. By partnering with SAP and Google Cloud, the team built a custom AI bot named "Codie" to handle customer service queries directly from its SAP environment. During the peak holiday season, this digital workforce automated 60% of customer service workloads, resolving 10,000 emails for just $1, and reduced response times from up to 72 hours to just 15 minutes, all while maintaining a 90% customer satisfaction rate.

Challenge: To stay competitive in an AI-driven world, Smyths Toys needed to transform into an AI-first organization, starting with its customer service department. Traditionally, responding to customers could take between 48 and 72 hours, requiring the company to hire 50 additional temporary staff members each year just to handle the seasonal Black Friday and holiday surge. Smyths needed a solution that would both manage the massive volume of tickets and prove the value of AI to the leadership team.

Solution: Using its existing SAP ecosystem as the single source of truth, Smyths Toys used the ABAP SDK for Google Cloud to connect SAP directly to Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. The team then seamlessly integrated BigQuery to process complex queries and massive amounts of data without overloading core SAP systems. This powerful architecture enabled Smyths to build and deploy "Codie," a custom AI assistant that intercepts queries directly on the company’s website. Codie handles tasks, such as answering "Where's my order?" or automatically processing refunds and using computer vision to read proof-of-delivery images, without human intervention.

Result: Smyths Toys' AI successfully processed over 300,000 emails, taking over 60% of the customer service workload. What used to take 72 hours for a human to answer is now handled by the AI in 15 minutes — or just 10 seconds on the website. Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform was also a cost-effective choice, allowing the team to resolve 10,000 emails for a single dollar. Ultimately, during the Black Friday peak, human agents dealt with 36% fewer tickets despite a 20% increase in overall interactions, allowing the UK team to finish the week with zero open tickets. Today, Smyths’ customer service staff has successfully transitioned from answering basic queries to acting as strategic bot managers.

Highlights and key takeaways from our interview with Adam Sexton and Michal Bondarowicz:
→ "We're really using AI to challenge the entire business." — Adam Sexton
→ “At Smyths, we develop things super quickly, and Google Cloud was able to provide right people and right solutions very quickly.” — Michal Bondarowicz
→ “With Google Cloud and SAP, Smyths are creating a new way to build a digital workforce.” — Michal Bondarowicz

Google Cloud products used: BigQuery, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Google Cloud

Learn more: https://tinyurl.com/32bdu6w6