Clarins introduces CLARA, the very first generative AI powered customer care bot in the prestige beauty industry

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May 21, 2024, 08:35 ET

PARIS, May 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarins, the family-owned global cosmetics Group established in Paris in 1954 has continuously championed entrepreneurial spirit and innovation throughout its 70-year history. Dedicated to pioneering responsible beauty, Clarins is committed to providing exceptional customer service, attentively addressing and prioritizing the needs of its customers with innovative solutions.

To offer the best service to online customers, Clarins jointly leverages human expertise and technology through a comprehensive range of services including live consultations, beauty classrooms, live streaming and of course a best-in-class customer care. It also provides a conversational bot as an alternative contact option. The bot enables customers to receive immediate responses to their urgent inquiries when the customer-care department is closed (e.g. late evening or nighttime). It also helps optimize the availability of customer care agent, during daytime, allowing them to respond swiftly to more complex inquiries that cannot be handled by a conversational bot.

A milestone in top-tier customer care service

Clarins offers a cutting-edge customer-care bot, CLARA, powered by Microsoft secure and Enterprise-grade Azure OpenAI Service, a true milestone in the prestige beauty industry. This bot, unlike more traditional bots, integrates natural language interactions, ensuring much better understanding and resolution of customer requests.

The bot is now live on Clarins USA website www.clarinsusa.com
It leverages Clarins proprietary data, including content from the Clarins website, Clarins customer care pre-defined questions & answers, and Clarins beauty coaches product training content.

Clarins is currently conducting tests on several variants of the bot in order to assess and optimize the overall customer experience, before implementing CLARA in the rest of the world.

Jessica Hawk, Corporate Vice President, Data, AI and Digital Apps at Microsoft: "Clarins is a leader in the beauty industry, and we're excited they are using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to help reimagine what's possible with their customer care bot. This approach reflects Clarins' deep commitment to offering its customers an innovative, high-quality experience."

Corine de Bilbao, President of Microsoft France: "I'm proud of this excellent collaboration between Clarins, a long-standing French customer, and our teams. This French success story is a perfect illustration of Clarins' determination to remain at the forefront of innovation in the prestige beauty sector, by relying on our cutting-edge technological solutions."

Clarins CEO, Jonathan Zrihen: "We are proud to introduce CLARA, a pioneering customer care bot powered by the cutting-edge generative AI capabilities of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. This is a significant milestone for Clarins as we continue to set the standard in delivering exceptional service in the prestige beauty industry. CLARA is designed not just to meet but exceed the sophisticated expectations of our customers by providing tailored, instantaneous responses at any time. This innovation highlights our commitment to blending human expertise with state-of-the-art technology to enhance the beauty experience for every Clarins customer we serve."

Clarins Chief Digital & IT Officer, Laurent Malaveille: "Having an outstanding customer satisfaction has always been a priority for Clarins. While we highly value human interactions with customers, we have naturally seized the opportunity offered by generative AI to go one step further and improve the quality of service of our customer care".

About Clarins

A family-owned global cosmetics Group founded in Paris in 1954 by Jacques Courtin, Clarins has been innovating for 70 years to promote responsible beauty.

A result of ongoing research, its plant-based products formulated and manufactured in France are sold in over 150 countries through 20,000 points of sale. With nearly 95% of its sales going to export, Clarins is the No.1* skincare brand in Europe and a major player in beauty (skincare and make-up), spa and wellness worldwide.

The Group has also developed the myBlend brand focusing on the concept of global beauty, based on the synergy of targeted skin care, nutri-cosmetics and beauty tech.

The Clarins Group has over 8,000 employees spread across its Paris head office, 28 subsidiaries worldwide, two R&D Laboratories and two industrial sites in France.

Jonathan Zrihen, President and CEO, and two General Managers, Dr Olivier Courtin and his niece Virginie Courtin, representing respectively the second and third generations, jointly run this French family Group whose raison d'être is: « Making life more beautiful, passing on a more beautiful planet ». A commitment embodied by products made with over 80% ingredients of natural origin and driven by numerous initiatives to preserve nature and care for people.

https://www.groupeclarins.com/
*Source: NPD BeautyTrends^®, Europe 5 (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain), luxury Skin Care market (products sold in perfumeries and department stores), value sales (€), for the period 3rd January 2022 to 1st January 2023.

Press contacts

France

Image Sept – Marie Artzner - Anne Auchatraire – Caroline Simon - [email protected] - +33 1 53 70 74 70

USA

Melissa Reidhead – [email protected] and Lucas Petry – [email protected]

SOURCE Clarins USA