Kingfisher, the parent company of Europe’s largest home improvement retailers, including B&Q, Screwfix, Castorama and Brico Dépôt, is already recognised for embedding AI deep into its operations, rather than treating it as a marketing exercise. 

At the centre of that approach is Chief AI Officer Mohsen Ghasempour, whose route into retail began far from the shop floor.

Mohsen holds a PhD in computer science and previously worked on supercomputers, building systems designed to simulate brain activity. His academic background sat in microelectronics and electronic engineering.

From there, he moved into special education, applying eye tracking and computer vision to help children with severe disabilities communicate, particularly those unable to express emotion through conventional means.

The moment that shaped his thinking

Remarkably, the contents of one email in particular from Mohsen’s tenure in special education have stayed with him and shaped his thinking ever since.

Writing to thank the technology team behind the eye-tracking and computer-vision tools, a teacher said it was the first time in 20 years she had evidence that her pupils were learning.

“That has stuck with me,” Mohsen says. “It wasn’t about technology or AI; it was about the impact.”

That principle now underpins Kingfisher’s entire approach to AI is encapsulated in a phrase Mohsen repeats often internally.

“At Kingfisher, our philosophy is always that AI is a tool, not a mission,” he explains. “If you keep saying that to yourself, you don’t get distracted by the shiny technology. You stay focused on solving the right problem for the customer or your colleagues.”

That focus, Mohsen argues, is reflected in measurable business metrics.

He continues: “Last year, we announced £165m (US$220m) attributed to our personalisation engine, which spans a wide range of algorithms from basic to generative AI. We also saw a 15% margin gain from our automated pricing tool and a 12% increase in conversion from our AI agents.”

Rethinking how customers search

Traditional retail search assumes shoppers know exactly which product they need. Mohsen’s experience suggests otherwise, particularly in a project-driven business such as home improvement.

“Our customers often don’t know what product they want,” he explains. “They know what outcome they want, but they don’t know how to get there. Unless it’s something obvious, like needing a drill.”

That insight led Kingfisher to move away from conventional keyword search towards conversational alternatives, resulting in a recently-announced partnership with Google. 

In December 2023 – ahead of the curve – the company launched its first customer-facing AI agent, a piece of software capable of holding a natural conversation to help shoppers find solutions rather than simply matching search terms to products.

Mohsen notes: “We were the first in the industry to put an AI agent like that live on our front end, and we did it in French first, which was even harder.”

The tool, known as Hello B&Q, is now available on B&Q’s website, offering shoppers a similar conversational experience to interacting with Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but tailored to B&Q’s product range.

Learning from the shop floor

Despite his seniority, Mohsen breaks the mould by regularly working on the shop floor in Kingfisher stores, an experience he describes as invaluable, if occasionally uncomfortable.

“It’s very nerve-wracking,” he admits. “Customers come to you with a question and you feel you don’t know the answer. It’s very scary, but it’s the best feedback you can ever get when you’re building a product.”

Those shifts have exposed practical gaps, including how staff respond when a product is out of stock, and have inspired new tools such as handheld devices that suggest alternatives to colleagues in real time.

Kingfisher is also testing an in-ear assistant for store colleagues, built on an internal orchestration system called Athena, which coordinates multiple AI agents across the business.

Mohsen adds: “Our colleagues in store can just talk to Athena and ask, ‘do we sell this?’, or check the nearest store that has it. It removes a lot of friction, though sometimes the fix isn’t AI at all, just common sense.”

Why trust takes longer than tech

Mohsen has previously stated that “technology can be bought, but trust can be earned”, and is unequivocal about what separates the two.

“Complying with what a customer asks is the technology part, and that’s becoming a commodity,” says Mohsen. “Five years ago, only Netflix did personalisation well. Today, everybody does it.”

What is harder to replicate, he states, is consistency – the quality that turns a single successful transaction into lasting confidence in a brand.

“It’s not about one order going right,” Mohsen goes on. “When customers consistently see that whatever they ask for happens correctly, that's when trust builds. If something goes wrong, we have to be accountable rather than blaming the AI agent.”

A different shopping journey ahead

Looking to 2030, Mohsen expects shopping habits to shift significantly, driven partly by generational change.

He reveals his own children, aged four and seven, have long been issuing voice commands to smart home devices.

“Those kids are going to shop very differently,” asserts Mohsen. “They probably won’t look at products at all. They’ll just want something fixed, which means Kingfisher needs to offer not just a product but potentially someone to fix it too.”

He is cautious, however, about how quickly more futuristic ideas, such as smart glasses automatically reordering household items, might reach the mainstream.

“Most of what people imagine isn’t limited by technology – it’s governance and trust,” he concludes. “I’m sure plenty of experimental ideas exist in research labs that won’t reach customers for another decade.”