Coats Digital launches AI assistant in just six weeks using Azure OpenAI Service

For more than 20 years, Coats Digital has dedicated itself to digitally transforming fashion supply chains worldwide. The company’s innovative software as a service (SaaS) solutions help apparel manufacturers significantly improve efficiency, reduce costs, and drive profitability.

Coats Digital maintains a vast knowledge base of product documentation and training materials, known as Docs, and the company saw an opportunity to harness this information to enhance customer self-service and productivity, especially for new customers. However, with content dispersed across multiple sources, customers faced challenges finding the exact information they needed efficiently.

Drawing on its strong working relationship with Microsoft spanning numerous projects, Coats Digital explored innovative ways to tackle this challenge. The Microsoft team proposed an eight-week innovation sprint focused on emerging Microsoft Azure AI technologies, including Azure OpenAI Service. Excited by the potential to transform its knowledge management using intelligent solutions, Coats Digital eagerly took on the sprint challenge.

Launching an Azure AI-powered assistant in six weeks

In just six weeks, Coats Digital developed a solution using Azure AI services to improve the customer experience. Azure AI provided capabilities for robust natural language queries across Coats Digital’s knowledge repositories. A customer can discuss their needs conversationally with a customer-facing virtual assistant within Docs, which responds with the most applicable training materials or documentation from the company’s extensive catalogs. By understanding user intent, Docs delivers highly relevant results—a vast improvement over traditional keyword searches.

Azure OpenAI Service supported the rapid development and deployment of the company’s AI-enhanced solution. With guidance from Microsoft on best practices and Coats Digital’s .NET development expertise, the company focused fully on elevating the customer experience, and the aligned skills made innovating at speed possible. “We’re very proud of our agility, and part of that agility comes from mastery of the Azure services and great relationships with Microsoft,” says Jonathan McCormack, Director of Software Engineering at Coats Digital.

Improving customer satisfaction and opening new opportunities

The AI-powered assistant immediately benefited customers by making Coats Digital’s knowledge base more accessible and user friendly. By simplifying exploration of its knowledge base, Coats Digital increased engagement with its tools and features. Customers could fully use resources that they had underused before. The assistant unlocked capabilities that were easily missed in extensive documentation, guiding users to maximize Coats Digital’s reference materials.

Customers enjoyed gains in productivity as they accelerated their proficiency in accessing information across all products. For Coats Digital, the AI assistant also reduced the burden on human agents by intelligently handling many routine inquiries. “Docs is our first port of call when dealing with customer inquiries. We can repeat customer questions directly to the AI to get quick access to the wealth of knowledge available or encourage customers to do the same themselves,” says Steve Ede, Director of Customer Support at Coats Digital.

Customers are embracing the AI assistant as their preferred source for information access as opposed to contacting a live agent. The self-service experience saves Coats Digital support time while increasing customer satisfaction. “We have a cognitive service that takes all of that load off and presents us with mountains of opportunities to do other things, like sentiment analysis and content moderation, for some of our customer portals, where they suggest ideas to improve our software,” says McCormack.

Expanding AI across operations

Spurred by the overwhelmingly positive customer response to the AI assistant, Coats Digital plans to expand AI capabilities across the business. Next on the road map is employing similar strategies to enhance the internal experience from production systems and sales channels.

Azure AI will continue serving as the launchpad for rapid innovation. Coats Digital can build on robust, enterprise-grade AI services while exploring bold new scenarios tailored for the apparel industry.

Above all, the collaboration with Microsoft has helped Coats Digital to shape AI solutions that specifically address fashion sector needs rather than conforming to a one-size-fits-all approach.

“Coats Digital’s strategy around creating an ecosystem has become infinitely expanded with the use of AI tooling, the Azure infrastructure, and the support that we’ve been getting from the Microsoft team,” says John Powell, Senior Director of Software Engineering at Coats Digital.

Coats Digital is helping to write the next chapter in AI-driven digital transformation across the entire retail value chain. The company is designing a future where productivity gains and customer delight are business as usual and where companies across the industry view aligned technology collaborations not as a bonus, but as an indispensable growth strategy.

“The most compelling thing is that the AI revolution is in full flight at the moment,” says Powell. “By coupling the capabilities of Microsoft with Coats Digital’s knowledge and skills in the apparel industry, we’ve been able to bring AI’s benefits directly to shop floor workers.”