U.K. grocer Ocado tests machine learning to better manage customer emails

Using a system built in house, Ocado is in the process of eliminating manual review and sorting of the more than 2,000 daily customer service emails it receives. British web grocer Ocado Group Plc. receives about 2,000 customer service emails a day on average. That number can easily double or triple during the holiday season or when other issues come up such as bad weather that may delay a customer's order, says Dan Nelson, head of data for Ocado, No. 23 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Europe 500. Nelson says the problem until recently is that retailer, which sells solely online and was launched in 2000, used to task its customer service staff with going through and sorting each email that came in. "A lot of customer service reps' time was spent filtering emails," Nelson says.