Online card service Moonpig reported an increase in sales, in part due to increased use of AI to help design cards, personalize customer messages and answer questions.
The company said sales rose 6.7% to £169m in the six months to October 31, and has remained strong in subsequent weeks, mainly due to higher orders and spend per order under its flagship Moonpig brand.
“AI is now designing a lot of cards for us,” said Nikkil Raisata, the company's chief executive officer. He said technology has helped him create everything from baby and birthday cards to corporate greeting cards related to a specific business.
“The site is still managed by our in-house team. We make sure it's relevant and exciting for our customers when someone sees it. We don't want to clutter the site with generic designs. We're being careful.”
The company, which also operates Greets in other parts of Europe and sells vouchers for experiences such as spa days and cinema trips, returned to profit for the half year with a pre-tax profit of £26.6m, compared with a loss of £33.3m in the same period last year, thanks to strong sales.
Almost half of shoppers are using AI-driven features to add a creative twist to their messages, such as stickers, photos, and personalized handwriting, up from just about 2% two years ago.
Recent developments in technology allow shoppers to automatically adapt a wide range of designs to suit specific requirements, such as targeting a specific age or relative.
The company said its new AI chat system already resolves about a third of all queries, and that “customers consistently rate these interactions much more highly than human-handled interactions.”
Raisata said the company “doesn't see this as a threat or a job loss,” but that instead of designing just one or two cards a day, it could improve productivity by offering 50 or more designs that people can edit, adapt and curate.
“We still need that creativity,” the CEO said. The CEO will step down at the end of this month and be replaced by Catherine Faires, chief operating officer of used car market Autotrader.
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Mr Raisata said that while the tax and spending changes announced in the Chancellor's Budget last month had not led to any noticeable change in customer behavior, recent trading had been “very encouraging” and had been a “great start to peak trading” over the Christmas period.
He added that with the measures announced “we hope there will be less uncertainty”, which will “make it easier for businesses to make decisions”.
