- TOPS launches AI-powered chatbot, advancing customer experience with 24/7 utility and seamless omnichannel capability
TOPS, the food business under Central Retail Corporation PCL (SET: CRC), today announced the launch of its next-generation AI chatbot, developed in continued collaboration with Google Cloud.
Built on Google Cloud’s Conversational Agents technology (formerly Dialogflow CX), this advanced system marks a major upgrade in TOPS’ AI innovation journey, introducing a breakthrough feature that enables real-time stock checking inside stores.
Customers can instantly check product availability at their nearest TOPS location through the chatbot before visiting the store. The new chatbot provides 24/7 intelligent customer support and represents a decisive step toward realizing a truly seamless omnichannel shopping experience.
Mr. Stephane Coum, Chief Executive Officer of Food Group, Central Retail, said: “AI is now a vital force reshaping the global retail landscape, redefining how brands connect with customers and deliver personalized experiences. At Tops, we have continuously embraced and developed AI-driven innovation to enhance every aspect of the shopping journey — creating greater convenience, smarter engagement, and more pleasure for our customers.
This direction aligns with the Deloitte 2025 Global Retail Outlook, which highlights hyper-personalization and omnichannel enhancement as defining trends for the industry. It also reflects the broader market momentum, with the Asia-Pacific region showing the fastest growth in the AI-in-retail sector, projected to expand at an 18.9 percent CAGR through 2030, according to Mordor Intelligence (2024).”
“Building on the success of our generative AI-powered TOPS Chef Bot, this second major collaboration with Google Cloud focuses on utility and efficiency. The new conversational agent delivers actionable, real-time data—such as order tracking, stock availability and store guidance—fundamentally elevating online, pre-store and in-store customer experience while boosting operational performance.”
Mr. Annop Siritikul, Country Director, Thailand, Google Cloud, said: “Our collaboration with TOPS demonstrates exactly how Google Cloud’s Customer Engagement Suite elevates the omnichannel customer experience. By using AI agents to drive real-time utility—like instant stock verification—TOPS is moving beyond basic automation to deliver the speed, intelligence, and hyper-personalized support today’s consumers expect.
These agents are transforming stock availability from simple data points into a tangible consumer benefit, bridging the gap between digital and physical interactions. Building on this latest project, as well as the success of the TOPS Chef Bot, we look forward to continuing to partner with TOPS to set new benchmarks for AI innovation and ROI in Thailand’s retail sector.”
Leveraging Google Cloud’s Conversational Agents platform, the new AI Chatbot is seamlessly integrated into the TOPS mobile app and TOPS ONLINE platform. It introduces several game-changing features that guide customers before and during their store visits:
- Real-Time Stock Checking: The pivotal new feature allows customers to verify product availability before visiting stores, streamlining shopping journeys and reducing unnecessary trips.
- 24/7 Intelligent Customer Support: Provides instant responses to common queries, order status tracking, and policy guidance—ensuring minimal wait times and uninterrupted service.
- Smart Store Navigation: Helps customers get directions to specific stores and find the nearest TOPS location.
- Natural Thai Language Understanding: Offers multi-language capability and is optimized for casual Thai conversation and regional dialects, enabling context-aware, human-like interactions.
Mr. Ashish Arora, Head of Data Analytics & AI of Central Food Retail under Central Retail, elaborated on the technological breakthrough behind the platform: “Our deployment of Google Cloud’s Conversational Agents focuses on delivering intuitive, human-centric assistance at scale. We have engineered an architecture that not only masters the complexities of natural Thai speech and regional nuances but also delivers faster responses for data-heavy tasks like order tracking and real-time stock checks, By bridging our backend systems with this advanced conversational layer, we are removing friction from the customer journey—handling thousands of concurrent interactions instantly while ensuring the experience feels helpful and human.”
By offering convenient stock verification and round-the-clock assistance, the chatbot delivers tangible benefits to customers while creating strategic business value for TOPS. It enhances operational efficiency, reduces customer-service costs, and generates data-driven insights into shopper behavior—further reinforcing TOPS’ competitive advantage in Thailand’s evolving retail landscape.
“This launch marks only the beginning of our journey to transform retail in Thailand. The next phase will introduce Personalized Shopping Intelligence, integrating predictive capabilities to anticipate customer needs, tailor promotions and product recommendations based on shopping history, and fully connect with our loyalty program. Our goal is to create a truly bespoke shopping assistant that understands every customer best.” Mr. Coum concluded.
