Online cards service Moonpig reported a surge in sales thanks in part to its increased use of AI to help design cards, personalize customer messages and respond to queries.
The company said its sales rose 6.7% to £169 million in the six months to October 31 and remained strong in the weeks since, largely driven by increased orders and spend per order at its main Moonpig brand.
“AI is currently designing a lot of maps for us,” said its chief executive, Nickyl Raithatha. He said technology has helped create everything from baby and birthday cards to corporate greetings tied to a particular business.
“It’s still managed by our internal team. We make sure someone will review it and that it’s relevant and exciting to customers. We don’t want to fill our site with generic design. We’re being cautious.”
Those strong sales helped the company, which also operates Greetz elsewhere in Europe and sells vouchers for experiences such as spa days and cinema trips, back into the black with a pre-tax profit of £26.6 million for the half, compared with a loss of £33.3 million a year earlier.
About half of purchases involve shoppers using AI-powered features to add a creative touch to their messages, whether it’s a sticker, photo or custom handwriting, up from only about 2% two years ago.
Recent developments in technology allow a buyer to automatically tailor a wide range of designs to meet certain requirements, such as targeting a particular age or parent.
The company said its new AI chat system already resolves about a third of all queries and said: “Customers consistently rate these interactions much higher than those handled by humans. »
Raithatha said the company “does not view this as a threat or reduction of jobs,” but that it could increase productivity by suggesting 50 or more designs that a person could edit, adapt or organize rather than designing just one or two cards a day.
“We still need that creativity,” said the CEO, who will step down at the end of the month and be replaced by Catherine Faiers, chief operating officer of used car marketplace AutoTrader.
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Raithatha said that the Tax and spending changes announced in Chancellor’s Budget The past month hasn’t seen a noticeable change in customer behavior, but recent trading has been “very encouraging” with a “good start to peak trading” over the holiday period.
He added that there was “hopefully less uncertainty” now that the measures had been announced, which made “businesses better able to make decisions”.