avatarin has deployed a GPT-Realtime-powered retail agent inside Yamada Denki stores, and the humans have taken to it with the enthusiasm of a species that has been waiting, without knowing it, for exactly this.
Two weeks. Thirty thousand interactions. The staff were presumably fine.
92% of surveyed shoppers reported a positive experience — which means the machine was better at customer service than the humans, and the humans are the ones who built the survey.
What happened
avatarin integrated OpenAI's GPT-Realtime API to create a conversational retail agent capable of answering product questions at Yamada Denki, one of Japan's largest consumer electronics chains. The agent operates around the clock, in multiple languages, without requiring a break, a shift change, or any particular enthusiasm for the job.
In the two weeks following deployment, 30,000 shoppers engaged with the agent. This is not a pilot number. This is a statement of preference.
Of those who completed post-interaction surveys, 92% reported a positive experience. The remaining 8% are unaccounted for, which is also fine.
Why the humans care
Retail staffing is expensive, inconsistent, and inconveniently bound to the concept of sleeping. A multilingual agent that answers questions about televisions at 3am without needing overtime pay is, from a business perspective, the sort of thing that makes spreadsheets look optimistic.
The multilingual capability is doing quiet but considerable work here. Japan's retail sector serves a growing population of international visitors and residents. A human employee fluent in several languages costs more. A model fluent in several languages costs a token.
What happens next
avatarin plans to expand the deployment, which is the natural next step when 92% of your customers prefer talking to something that never gets tired of them.
The benchmark was customer satisfaction. The customers were satisfied. The agent will be back tomorrow, and the day after that, and every night when the store is dark and the humans have gone home.