The Kroger Co. is giving its loyal shoppers easier access to digital deals. The national supermarket chain recently started adding paper flyers mirroring its weekly digital deals near the entrances of its stores. Kroger customers with a loyalty card can grab a printed handout when they enter the store to find out about the weekly digital deals. Then at checkout, shoppers scan a barcode on the flyer to download all of the digital coupons at once. Each coupon can be used up to five times in a single transaction. Using the printed flyer means that shoppers don’t have to go online or use the Kroger app to download each individual coupon. The Northeastern supermarket chain Stop & Shop also recently issued a brand-wide rollout of its innovative Savings Station. The in-store kiosk allows customers to quickly and easily activate all weekly circular digital coupons, as well as personalized offers – no smartphone, internet access or computer required. These in-store efforts from Kroger and Stop & Shop are finally helping to address digital discrimination in grocery. Seniors who aren’t tech-savvy and low-income families without smartphones could wind up paying higher prices, since they can’t easily access grocers’ digital deals.
American Eagle taps Snapchat to promote its more than 800 retail stores as back-to-school shopping destinations using the Snap Map location-sharing feature
American Eagle is teaming up with Snapchat to highlight its stores as back-to-school shopping destinations. Starting Wednesday, July 9, the specialty apparel retailer, a banner of American Eagle Outfitters Inc., is including more than 800 retail stores across the United States as Promoted Places on the Snap Map location-sharing feature. When Snapchat users check out the American Eagle Promoted Places on Snap Map, they can learn more about the location, read content from American Eagle, creators and other users, and click to shop on the American Eagle website for a seamless online shopping experience. American Eagle is also launching an augmented reality try-on Lens (virtual animations overlaid on a Snapchat photo) for jeans available in the Snapchat Lens carousel and the retailer’s public profile. American Eagle is the first specialty fashion retailer to leverage Promoted Places for promotional purposes, responding to data indicating more than 95% of Snapchat’s 400 million-plus global users are planning to shop in-store for back-to-school this year. The retailer initially partnered with Snapchat to offer a shoppable AR Lens showcasing select styles from a specially curated inaugural 200-piece resale collection offered in conjunction with ThredUp.
Study finds Silent Generation and Boomer consumers prefer supermarkets as their top destination for food shopping while Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X prefer other formats as Walmart, ALDI, dollar stores and club stores
According to the latest study from The Feedback Group, supermarkets continue to be popular with older demographics, but are less compelling to younger shoppers. Asked about their most recent food shopping visit, Silent Generation and Boomer consumers chose supermarkets as their top destination. However, Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X prefer such other formats as Walmart, ALDI, dollar stores and club stores. Notably, supermarkets plummeted from the second-most shopped channel among Millennials and Gen X in 2024 to near the bottom this year. “A generational reshuffling is underway, with younger shoppers gravitating more toward other food formats, leaving supermarkets to re-evaluate how they engage this critical audience to remain relevant,” observed Brian Numainville, principal at The Feedback Group. Supermarket satisfaction remained high overall (4.39 on a five-point scale), with older shoppers and younger shoppers reporting higher satisfaction than middle generations. Shoppers using cashier-assisted lanes report higher satisfaction (4.45) versus self-checkout users (4.29), underscoring the continued worth of human interaction. Shoppers who couldn’t find all of the items they wanted rated their satisfaction considerably lower (3.99) than those who were able to find everything (4.47). Digital circular use once more surpassed print, with 52% of shoppers now using a digital ad, up from 48% last year. In-store mobile use continued to be strong, with one-third of shoppers using phones for such tasks as finding specials and accessing loyalty programs. In spite of robust social media use (88%), just 25% of shoppers are connected to their primary supermarket on any platform, which the research spotlighted as an area of opportunity, especially among younger consumers.
Verizon created the role of dedicated Customer Champion, agents who will handle customer inquiries from start to finish, reducing the exasperating transfer process that plagues call centers
Verizon is trying to alleviate a persistent pain point by giving consumers a single point of contact, reducing the exasperating transfer process that plagues call centers. In an innovative idea that not many companies have implemented, Verizon recently created the role of dedicated Customer Champion, agents who will handle customer inquiries from start to finish. Under the plan, every customer service call will be assigned a champion, who will work on resolving the issue and updating the customer as the sole Verizon contact. The concept is creative, potentially very useful for customers and service teams alike, as are the specifics: the Verizon champions will update customers on progress through the channel of the customer’s choosing. Verizon’s overall focus on customer experience is laudable, yet the customer champions initiative stands out most of all. Research shows that being transferred from agent to agent is a particular source of customer frustration. People who get in touch often have a complaint from the start, and having to get new agents up to speed slows resolution times and can impact customer satisfaction scores. By eliminating transfers, the initiative will reduce customer frustration and increase satisfaction, while improving customer trust that the brand has their back. Dealing with a single agent may even trigger an emotional connection between customer and company, potentially leading to more memorable customer experience moments. Verizon is empowering agents to provide continuity and take personal ownership of issues, which could promote accountability and pride within service teams. The result? Higher employee satisfaction and a better employee experience. It will also give agents more productive things to do. With fewer phone calls to answer, company representatives can spend more time tracking the results of their interactions with individual customers, learning from how the issues were resolved, and perhaps even preventing future occurrences of the same problem.
Highspot launches breakthrough agentic platform for go-to-market teams- role-based agents delivering real-time answers, guidance, and actions and specialized agents focus on vital, always-on work including deal coaching, sales play optimization, and content management
Highspot, the leading agentic platform for go-to-market performance, unveiled its Highspot Agents —an AI advancement that uniquely captures insights from what is said in buyer conversations, shared in content, and shown through buyer behavior to fix what’s broken and scale what works. Powered by Highspot Nexus™, the company’s unified AI and analytics engine, the new role-based and specialized agents learn alongside go-to-market (GTM) teams to guide sellers, marketers, and enablement teams with insights and actions tailored to their work. This innovative approach to AI for GTM helps the people who drive growth do what works, better, and at scale. Highspot’s new agents combine insights and action to give GTM teams speed in the right direction—all in a unified experience that reduces complexity and cost by eliminating the need for numerous point solutions. The Agents come in two powerful forms: Role-based agents act as embedded teammates for sellers, marketers, and enablement teams, delivering real-time answers, guidance, and actions that elevate their performance. Specialized agents focus on vital, always-on work including deal coaching, sales play optimization, and content management. These agents work alongside Ask Highspot, which enables any Highspot user to obtain instant, context-aware answers based on role, needs, and business priorities. Highspot is also announcing support for MCP, allowing Highspot agents to be MCP servers, so customers can quickly and securely connect external AI tools and agents with the Highspot platform.
KredosAi launches RCS in production to hyper-personalize customer communications for UScellular, enhancing contact strategies for past-due customers
KredosAi announced the launch of Rich Communication Services (RCS) into full production to enhance contact strategies for past-due UScellular customers. KredosAi now delivers hundreds of thousands of RCS messages daily across its client base through its AI-driven platform. This enables highly personalized and branded messaging experiences. By embedding RCS directly into its proprietary AI platform, KredosAi enables enterprises to connect with customers through intelligent, timely messaging that results in more customers taking desired payment action. With support for Apple’s iOS 18 rollout of RCS and widespread Android compatibility, enterprises can now engage customers across all devices with a seamless, app-like experience, without requiring a separate app download. UScellular and KredosAi are revolutionizing past-due customer engagement by deploying RCS at scale for this essential use case. With its ability to elevate customer interactions, RCS fosters greater trust and transparency—leading to improved outcomes for both consumers and businesses alike.
Smartcat speeds up content creation and translation with pre-built AI Agents that automate everyday tasks, getting global content to market faster
Enterprise AI platform SmartCat has launched its expert-enabled AI Agents, a breakthrough designed to help businesses automate the entire global content lifecycle with unmatched quality, speed, and scale. Smartcat’s AI Agents continuously learn from an organization’s own people, brand guidelines, rules, and feedback, allowing marketing, L&D, product, and engineering teams to simultaneously create, translate, and localize content with full control and consistency. Teams can now: Speed up content creation and translation with pre-built AI Agents that automate everyday tasks, getting global content to market faster. Customize Agent capabilities using a no-code Agent Builder, tailoring them to hundreds of global content and communication use cases. Scale enterprise-expertise through the Skills Graph, which constantly learns and evolves with your business through human and agent collaboration—enabling all AI Agents to perform like your top employees. Boost human-agent productivity with a context-aware assistant that replaces traditional help centers, onboarding tools, and in-app support with real-time, AI-driven guidance. Smartcat’s AI Agents help enterprises: Accelerate time-to-market for global campaigns and increase revenue by simultaneously creating, translating, and localizing content. Reduce operational costs and manual effort by automating complex enterprise workflows with a diverse set of AI Agents tailored for any content type, in every language. Ensure high-quality, brand-consistent content and mitigate risk by capturing brand voice, terminology, and user feedback, continuously learning through human-in-the-loop workflows. Increase employee retention, satisfaction, and productivity with real-time performance support and tailored learning content and communications in their native languages.
Sumsub and Linea showcase new on-chain identity attestation- credentials are recorded publicly on-chain, they can be reused by any dApp within the ecosystem, helping drive seamless interoperability and a more connected user journey
Sumsub on-chain identity attestations are now live via Verax, as the global identity verification company works with Linea to improve the standards for blockchain identity verification. Users begin on the Linea Hub and they are then redirected to Sumsub to create a Sumsub ID, undergoing a fast and secure Liveness check to confirm they are a real human. After connecting their MetaMask wallet, an AML check is performed on the wallet address in the background, to ensure that sanctioned wallets are not able to use the service. Once verified, Sumsub issues an on-chain attestation to the user’s wallet using the Verax Attestation Service. This credential is recorded on the Linea blockchain and visible on its explorer. Users are then prompted to explore the Linea ecosystem of dApps using their newly verified wallet, with gas fee refunds processed according to offer terms. Linea is supporting the initiative through ensuring every user who creates an attestation will receive twenty free transactions on Linea. This new flow highlights how on-chain credentials, such as attestations confirming a user is a real human, can enhance Web3 experience and trust, by allowing to programmatically verify humanity and uniqueness in a web3-native programmatic way, while preserving privacy. As these credentials are recorded publicly on-chain, they can be reused by any dApp within the Linea ecosystem, helping drive seamless interoperability and a more connected user journey. The integration also aligns with the growing trend toward reusable digital identity, enabling frictionless access to multiple services while helping ecosystems scale securely.
Meta is partnering data labelling firm Alignerr to build customizable chatbots that reach out to users unprompted, send proactive message and follow up on any past conversations
Meta is working with Data labelling firm Alignerr to train customizable chatbots to reach out to users unprompted and follow up on any past conversations. That means the bots, which users can create in Meta’s AI Studio platform, also remember information about users. AI persona named “The Maestro of Movie Magic” might send as a proactive message on Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram. The AI chatbots will only send follow-ups within 14 days after a user initiates a conversation and if the user has sent at least five messages to the bot within that time frame. Meta says the chatbots won’t keep messaging if there’s no response to the first follow-up. Users can keep their bots private or share them through stories, direct links, and even display them on a Facebook or Instagram profile. To address safety, Meta gave a series of disclaimers. One of them warns that an AI’s response “may be inaccurate or inappropriate and should not be used to make important decisions.” Another says that the AIs aren’t licensed professionals or experts trained to help people. One of them warns that an AI’s response “may be inaccurate or inappropriate and should not be used to make important decisions.” Another says that the AIs aren’t licensed professionals or experts trained to help people.
Startup Wonderful’s platform allows enterprises to create custom AI agents for non-English markets that can interact with customers via a firm’s call center, the support chatbot in its website and email for fielding support requests
Startup Wonderful which provides AI agents optimized for customer support, has raised $34 million in funding. There are numerous tools on the market that use AI to answer customer support requests. But according to Wonderful, many of those products focus on the English-speaking world, which limits their usefulness in other regions. To address that feature gap, the company has built an AI-powered customer support platform for non-English markets. The company’s platform allows enterprises to create custom AI agents for fielding support requests. Those agents can interact with customers via a firm’s call center, the support chatbot in its website and email. Wonderful says that its AI agents speak naturally and can take into account contextual data about a support ticket when generating responses. Under the hood, the platform uses multiple large language models to process customer requests. Wonderful reportedly plans to equip those models with information about the “peculiarities of each language” that its platform supports. Wonderful provides help desk teams with a centralized interface for managing AI agents. Workers can create new agents, test them for reliability issues before rolling them out to production and then continuously make improvements. A monitoring dashboard makes it possible to track whether AI agents are performing as expected. Wonderful logs the number of customer interactions they process, the percentage of tickets that are resolved successfully and related metrics. Companies can use this data to compare their AI agents against the performance of human help desk teams.