Albert Heijn revolutionizes the store employee experience using Azure OpenAI

Overview

Albert Heijn, one of the largest supermarket chains in the Netherlands with over 700 owned stores and more than 80,000 store employees, built a conversational assistant within its @AH Employee App using Azure OpenAI, hosted on Azure Kubernetes Service with data stored in Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Developed with Microsoft and partner EPAM, the assistant answers store employees' questions about restocking and customer requests, including a barcode scanner and store floorplan. It has been piloted in eight stores with plans to scale to 25 stores in summer 2025 and eventually all 700 owned stores.

The challenge

With a tight labor market and a need to retain young, Gen Z store employees, Albert Heijn needed to make labor-intensive processes like restocking shelves easier, since young part-time staff were often approached by customers with questions or were unsure where products needed restocking, and found it a hurdle to ask management for help.

The solution

Albert Heijn, together with Microsoft and partner EPAM, built a conversational assistant within its @AH Employee App using Azure OpenAI, hosted on Azure Kubernetes Service, with data stored in Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The assistant answers store employees' questions about restocking and customer requests, and includes a barcode scanner and a store floorplan/planogram.

Reported business value

Albert Heijn has started to see improvements in the efficiency of labor-intensive processes such as restocking shelves, and in how employees help customers directly; initial feedback from store employees suggests the assistant is having a positive impact on their daily tasks.