Japanese home-appliance retailers struggle to provide expert sales support outside store hours due to staffing shortages. avatarin, an AI customer service company spun out of ANA Holdings, partnered with Yamada Holdings to build a 24/7 multilingual shopping agent using OpenAI’s GPT‑Realtime.

The agent, named Kurashi-Marugoto AI Agent, supports natural voice conversations and guides shoppers from product discovery to purchase decisions. It uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to ground responses in accurate product data while GPT‑Realtime keeps the interaction fluid and low-latency. Unlike conventional chatbots that wait for keywords, the agent listens for context, asks follow-up questions, and adapts when shoppers change preferences or go off topic. avatarin incorporated Yamada Denki’s sales expertise into conversation design, translating the knowledge that sales associates use for different product categories into the agent’s prompts and flows.

In a two-week public campaign on Yamada Denki’s online store, approximately 30,000 people used the agent; 92% of survey responses were positive. Customers described the agent as “easier to talk to than an actual sales associate” and appreciated being able to ask questions without feeling sales pressure. Each conversation ended with a short voice survey, making feedback a natural part of the experience. The conversations also revealed insights about what shoppers cared about and why they hesitated—data that was difficult to capture with conventional online shopping.

Beyond the pilot, avatarin envisions a single AI agent serving customers seamlessly across web, phone, and physical stores, carrying context forward across channels. That vision is summed up as “One Intelligence. One Brand. Every interface.” For Yamada Holdings, whose businesses span home appliances, housing, and financial services, the goal is to create AI that embodies the company’s brand and hospitality. avatarin’s CEO Akira Fukabori noted that the era of single-purpose AI is over, and that OpenAI’s technology is accelerating the shift toward general-purpose, multimodal intelligence.