Very Launches AI-Powered Personalisation to Boost CX

What happened

UK online retailer Very has introduced an AI-powered personalisation capability designed to improve how it serves shoppers, according to Retail Week. The move adds Very to the growing list of retailers embedding artificial intelligence directly into the customer journey rather than treating it as a back-office tool.

Details of the specific features, rollout timeline and underlying technology partner have not been disclosed in reporting so far. The core announcement centres on using AI to tailor the retail experience more closely to individual customers, positioning personalisation as a strategic priority for the business.

Why it matters

Personalisation has moved from a marketing nice-to-have to a competitive necessity in retail, where customers increasingly expect recommendations, offers and site experiences to reflect their own behaviour rather than generic merchandising. By building AI-powered personalisation into its customer experience, Very signals that it sees relevance and tailoring as a differentiator in a crowded online retail market.

For experience and transformation leaders, the launch is another data point in a wider shift: AI is no longer confined to chatbots or internal efficiency gains, but is being positioned as the engine behind how customers discover products, receive offers and navigate a retailer's digital estate. That raises the bar for rivals and puts pressure on data quality, governance and measurement as prerequisites for credible personalisation claims.

The Renascence take

Announcing "AI-powered personalisation" is easy; proving it changes customer behaviour and loyalty is the harder, more interesting test.

Most retailers launching AI personalisation focus on the technology story — the model, the engine, the capability — and underplay the much harder behavioural question: does the experience actually feel more relevant to the customer, or just more automated? Personalisation only pays off when it reduces friction and decision effort at the moment a customer is choosing, not when it simply recycles past purchase data into louder recommendations. A customer-obsessed retailer should be measuring whether this shift changes conversion, returns and repeat-purchase behaviour — not just whether the AI is live.