DBT Bureau
Pune, 11 Jan 2026
Today at NRF 2026, Google Cloud unveiled Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience (CX), an agentic solution designed to bring shopping and customer service together on a single intelligent interface for businesses, including retailers and restaurants. The solution introduces new prebuilt and configurable agents that are developed using Google’s latest Gemini models and can be quickly deployed in days. With Gemini Enterprise for CX, businesses can manage agents across the entire customer lifecycle, from initial product discovery to post-purchase resolution.
Today, customers expect a seamless purchase journey and instant resolutions, yet traditional chatbots for shopping and customer service are often static and disconnected. Customers are frequently forced to repeat information as they move between a business’s website, mobile app, or phone support.
Gemini Enterprise for CX solves this by acting as a proactive digital concierge that connects the entire process, from initial discovery to post-purchase support. It allows businesses to deploy agents that use complex reasoning to understand intent and execute multi-step tasks on behalf of a customer taking into account their preferences and consent. Whether it is an agent cross-referencing a kitchen’s electrical specs to source a compatible induction range or an agent resolving a fulfillment error and issuing a real-time refund, the solution maintains continuous context across every touchpoint, creating a more seamless experience for consumers. For businesses, it enables satisfaction at scale, helping to drive loyalty and bottom line growth.
“With Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, we are combining the best of Google Cloud’s AI and infrastructure with a business’s own institutional intelligence to power a truly agentic commerce journey,” said Darshan Kantak, Vice President, Applied AI, Google Cloud. “By bridging the gap between sales and service, businesses can deliver premium, personalized experiences from initial discovery to post-purchase support—driving the customer delight that scales long-term loyalty and value.”
New Shopping agent with complex reasoning
Gemini Enterprise for CX includes a new Shopping agent that delivers a complete end-to-end solution, connecting frontend interfaces like chat and voice, directly to backend tools. It expands beyond simple chatbots by handling complex requests through:
- Complex reasoning: Instead of having shoppers manually search for every single item, the agent acts like an expert who understands their specific needs based on an individual shopper’s consent. For example, if a shopper says, “I’m looking for a velvet sofa in emerald green that can withstand pet hair, but it needs to be under 90 inches” the agent can filter for specific fabric durability ratings, cross-references the exact dimensions against the room’s constraints —all while staying within the shopper’s budget.
- Multimodal interactions: The Shopping agent is able to understand image, video, and voice inputs without shoppers having to type what they are looking for into a search bar. For example, shoppers can take a photo of a handwritten recipe and share it with the agent. The agent reads the handwriting, figures out what ingredients are needed, and puts them in the shopping cart while applying their member discounts.
- Executing consented actions: Most chatbots can only give shoppers information or links to follow. This agent takes consented action. If shoppers are indecisive about a product, the agent can provide options based on past shopping history from their local stores, take into account real-time product availability, and upon consent, add items to their cart and even handle checkout.
Businesses including Kroger, Lowe’s, and Woolworths, will be using these agentic capabilities to deliver personalized experiences across the entire shopper journey.
“Home improvement is inherently complex, so we’re using AI to simplify and personalize the experience,” said Seemantini Godbole, chief digital and information officer, Lowe’s. “With Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, we are enhancing our AI-powered home improvement advisor, Mylow, to provide guidance personalized to a customer’s home, their project, and where they live, bringing new levels of confidence to every decision.”
“By bringing together Kroger’s long-standing food expertise and Google Cloud’s agentic platform capabilities, we’re creating a simplified shopping experience for our customers that fits into their day,” said Yael Cosset, executive vice president and chief digital officer, Kroger. “We’re inspiring our customers with meal and shopping solutions that feel truly personalized. Whether it’s building a basket for dinner or planning for the week ahead, we’re helping customers find the items they love, compare products, and deliver the value they expect, so there is more time for real connections made by sharing food.”
“Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience is a global game changer for retail,” said Amanda Bardwell, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director – Woolworths Group. “As the first Australian retailer to partner with Google’s agentic platform, we are evolving our digital shopping assistant Olive into an intuitive partner that won’t just answer questions, but actually anticipates your needs—planning meals based on what you love and spotting the specials that matter to your budget. This is a practical innovation that’s all about us doing the heavy lifting for you, making shopping that little bit easier to give you time back in your day.”
Turning every customer interaction into an opportunity to inform, delight, and drive loyalty
Google Cloud is also introducing Customer Experience Agent Studio, which allows businesses to build, test, and deploy personalized multimodal support agents at scale. Customer Experience Agent Studio is part of Gemini Enterprise for CX and connects directly with the Shopping agent, to ensure every support interaction is informed by historical context. For example, Kroger is using Customer Experience Agent Studio to analyze interactions and intent on calls made by customers to stores to proactively identify and resolve issues earlier, enhance associate productivity, and deliver a more seamless, ‘white-glove’ experience across its stores.
Key support agents built Customer Experience Agent Studio and additional support capabilities of Gemini Enterprise for CX include:
- Active problem solving: These agents go beyond sharing information to orchestrate complex actions across internal systems. For instance, if a customer is dissatisfied with a beauty purchase, the agent can perform a shade-matching assessment, trigger a replacement from local inventory, and apply a goodwill credit—all in one interaction. This automation frees human representatives to focus on the most nuanced cases.
- Intuitive multimodal interactions: Agents deliver natural language support across phone, mobile, and web in over 40 languages, switching between them effortlessly. With visual processing capabilities, they can “see” what a shopper sees—such as a photo of a damaged appliance—to resolve issues instantly.
- Human-assisted support: Designed to empower human agents, the platform provides real-time contextual guidance to live representatives to accelerate resolution. Additionally, personalized simulations allow businesses to rapidly onboard and upskill staff through AI-driven training.
- Real-time analysis and quality assurance: New features enable businesses to uncover customer service trends with natural language like “What is causing the spike in handle time for billing inquiries?”. To ensure quality, a new feature can also auto-score customer conversations with conditional scorecards that adapt to conversation context, ensuring agents are graded accurately and fairly.
Businesses can rapidly deploy these agents by using new AI-builds-AI capabilities that turn existing chat transcripts and documents into functioning agents. With a visual “drag-and-drop” canvas to build and launch support workflows in just a few days, employees of any skill level can launch sophisticated AI with near-zero human engineering.
Transforming restaurant operations
Building on its drive-thru success with fast food retailers, Google Cloud’s enhanced Food Ordering agent is also now part of the Gemini Enterprise for CX. For restaurants seeking to elevate customer experience, the multimodal and multilingual Food Ordering agent offers conversational AI capabilities across multiple channels including mobile apps, websites, telephone, kiosks, and in-car systems.
Papa Johns, the world’s third-largest pizza delivery company, is the first customer to deploy these omnichannel capabilities. Beyond taking orders, the agent intelligently upsells based on menu context to boost order value while actively seeking the best deal for the customer. It also acts as a business analyst, providing restaurant operators with insights into performance data and simplifies operations, allowing brands to instantly update complex menus and pricing across thousands of locations without manual intervention.
“Our partnership with Google Cloud is helping Papa Johns harness the power of AI to bring back the feeling of ‘being known’ to the pizza ordering experience,” said Kevin Vasconi, chief digital and technology officer, Papa Johns. “We’re working together to personalize every interaction, simplify every decision, and remove friction within customer touchpoints, so that Papa Johns again becomes the technology leader in the pizza industry.”
With Gemini Enterprise for CX, Google Cloud is helping brands unlock new levels of efficiency and increase revenue by turning high-friction moments into effortless, conversational opportunities. In line with Google’s commitment to responsible AI, Gemini Enterprise for CX is built with rigorous safety and compliance standards. Customer data is not used for model training, and the system includes built-in mechanisms to ensure agents adhere to strict brand policies and legal requirements.
SOURCE Google Cloud
