Google Cloud takes aim at verticals starting with new set of tools for retailers
Google might not be Adobe or Salesforce, but it has a particular set of skills, which fit nicely with retailer requirements and can over time help improve the customer experience, even if that means just simply making sure the website or app is running, even on peak demand. Today, at Google Cloud Next, the company showed off a package of solutions as an example its vertical strategy.
Just this morning, the company announced a new phase of its partnership with Salesforce, where it’s using its contact center AI tools and chatbot technology in combination with Salesforce data to produce a product that plays to each company’s strengths and helps improve the customer service experience.
But Google didn’t stop with a high profile partnership. It has a few tricks of its own for retailers, starting with the classic retailer Black Friday kind of scenario. The easiest way to explain the value of cloud scaling is to look at a retail event like Black Friday when you know servers are going to be bombarded with traffic.
The cloud has always been good at scaling up for those kind of events, but it’s not perfect, as Amazon learned last year when it slowed down on Prime Day. Google wants to help companies avoid those kinds of disasters because a slow or down website translates into lots of lost revenue.
The company offers eCommerce Hosting, designed specifically for online retailers, and it is offering a special premium program, so retailers get “white glove treatment with technical architecture reviews and peak season operations support…” according to the company. In other words, it wants to help these companies avoid disastrous, money-losing results when a site goes down due to demand.
In addition, Google is offering real-time inventory tools, so customers and clerks can know exactly what stock is on hand, and it’s applying its AI expertise to this, as well with tools like Google Contact Center AI solution to help deliver better customer service experiences or Cloud Vision technology to help customers point their cameras at a product and see similar or related products. They also offer Recommendations AI, a tool, that says, if you bought these things, you might like this too, among other tools.
The company counts retail customers like Shopify and Ikea. In addition, the company is working with SI partners like Accenture, CapGemini and Deloitte and software partners like Salesforce, SAP and Tableau.
All of this is about creating a set of services created specifically for a given vertical to help that industry take advantage of the cloud. It’s one more way for Google Cloud to bring solutions to market and help increase its marketshare.
