{"id":14907,"date":"2026-04-24T01:33:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T01:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/14907\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T01:33:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T01:33:16","slug":"home-depot-says-bye-to-a-traditional-customer-service-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/14907\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Depot says &#8216;bye&#8217; to a traditional customer service feature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Home Depot is letting go of a traditional store feature and introducing a new customer support system.<\/p>\n<p>The retailer is replacing their old-school phone menus with an AI-powered voice agent to provide support for customer calls four times faster, according to the company.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSay \u2018bye\u2019 to the traditional phone menu,\u201d Home Depot wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/corporate.homedepot.com\/news\/company\/say-bye-traditional-phone-menu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">news release<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Rather than waiting through a list of options, customers can now state why they\u2019re calling in their own words to be redirected.<\/p>\n<p>Home Depot noted that they\u2019re making this change because \u201cnobody likes being trapped in a phone menu when they have a project or job to finish.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The new system reportedly takes less than 10 seconds for the AI agent to determine exactly why a customer is calling.<\/p>\n<p>Customers will apparently reach a solution four times faster with this new AI-powered support compared to traditional phone menus.<\/p>\n<p>Home Depot noted that the system is grounded in The Home Depot\u2019s product catalog and proprietary knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>Using customers\u2019 project descriptions, the AI voice agent will be able to build a ready-to-buy digital shopping cart based on real-time inventory with all the necessary items they would need for their project.<\/p>\n<p>The system can initiate service requests, text product links to pre-filled cars and help complete purchases over the phone.<\/p>\n<p>The agent is trained to resolve common inquiries from start to finish, such as checking an order status, confirming product availability and providing store information. It also provides real-time translations for multilingual support.<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:1.46704871;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-modal-image=\"39176434\" width=\"866\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/general-view-home-depot-store-110411881.jpg\" alt=\"The exterior of a Home Depot store in Paterson, NJ, with plants and patio furniture displayed outside.\" class=\"wp-image-39176434\"  \/>Home Depot is ditching a traditional customer service feature in favor of AI. Christopher Sadowski<\/p>\n<p>Home Depot noted that there will always be a \u201cdirect path\u201d to a human associate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUsing customer service AI voice agents, we\u2019re moving away from \u2018please listen to these options\u2019 and toward \u2018how can I help?\u2019 \u201d Jordan Broggi, executive vice president of customer experience and president of online, said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAI does a tremendous job at recognizing customer intent and taking direct action to help complete a purchase or even start a service request. And of course, if they need to speak with an associate, we\u2019ll quickly connect them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The new AI voice agent is built on Google Gemini for Customer Experience and powered by the latest Gemini conversational AI audio models.<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:1.33333333;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-modal-image=\"39176433\" width=\"787\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/126245089.jpg\" alt=\"Interior view of a Home Depot store aisle with orange signs indicating &quot;Electrical&quot; and &quot;Bath&quot; sections.\" class=\"wp-image-39176433\"  \/>The new system is reportedly going to provide support to customers four times faster. Jammer Gene \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Home Depot is a prime example of how retailers and large enterprises can use AI to move beyond automation and deliver real customer value at scale,\u201d Darshan Kantak, vice president, Applied AI, Google Cloud, <a href=\"https:\/\/corporate.homedepot.com\/news\/company\/home-depot-delivers-customer-store-phone-support-four-times-faster-using-google-clouds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">said<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy integrating Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience capabilities, The Home Depot isn\u2019t just directing traffic or routing calls\u2014it is instantly understanding a customer\u2019s true intent and applying the reasoning of an expert associate to find solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Home Depot put a pilot program in 50 stores that proved the system\u2019s efficiency and success. Pilot stores reported higher job satisfaction as associates were able to spend more time focusing on in-store shoppers, the company said.<\/p>\n<p>Over the coming year, the company plans to expand the AI customer service voice agent system to all U.S. stores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Home Depot is letting go of a traditional store feature and introducing a new customer support system. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[405,25,7537,7135,132,11224,1251,781],"class_list":{"0":"post-14907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-agentic-ai","8":"tag-ai-agents","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","11":"tag-customer-service","12":"tag-google","13":"tag-home-depot","14":"tag-lifestyle","15":"tag-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}