ANZDiscount department-store retailScale · $100K
Wesfarmers (Kmart Group)

Everyday low prices need everyday low cost-to-serve — agentic order and product care for Kmart Group

Kmart Group wins by engineering cost out of everything — Anko products, supply chain, store operations — while its service estate still answers order, delivery, returns and product questions at full Australian labor cost; an agentic frontline that resolves online-order exceptions, guides returns and answers product questions in-conversation extends the cost-engineering discipline that built the model to the one operation it hasn't reached, protecting margins the low-price promise leaves no room to waste.

Entry use case
Online order, delivery and returns service desk
Expected outcome
Resolve routine order, delivery and returns contacts in-conversation with policy-bounded remedies, cutting cost per contact toward the model's economics.
Recommended next step
Workshop with Kmart Group digital leadership: baseline contact volumes per online order and store-call loads, then scope a Scale pilot on the order-and-returns desk.
What we understand

Wesfarmers (Kmart Group)'s operating reality

Kmart Group (Kmart and Target) is a leading profit contributor within Wesfarmers, built on the Anko own-brand model and relentless low-cost operations.

Public fact

Anko has become one of Australia's biggest product brands, with international ambitions, anchoring a direct-sourcing model that keeps prices low and margins engineered.

Public fact

Wesfarmers' OnePass subscription and OneDigital data capability tie Kmart Group into a group-level digital and loyalty ecosystem.

Public fact

Cost-of-living pressure drives trade-down traffic into Kmart, growing transaction and service volume at the value end.

Reasoned inference

Low price points make per-contact service economics brutal: a single human service call can exceed the margin on the basket it concerns.

Reasoned inference

Online order growth and marketplace-style range expansion likely multiply delivery-exception and product-question contacts faster than revenue.

Seller hypothesis — validate

Validate with the account team before outreach: Actual service contact volumes across Kmart and Target and per-order rates · OneDigital/OnePass governance and where service automation decisions sit · Existing chatbot and CCaaS estate · Store-call volumes that could shift to the platform

Build vs buy

Why we have a right to win here

Partner-led target

Technically capable but needs industry workflows, integration, acceleration, or managed operations

Evidence: Wesfarmers built real digital capability through OneDigital and Kmart Group runs sophisticated retail technology, but the build focus is data, loyalty and merchandising — conversational service infrastructure is adjacent ground where the group buys proven platforms and integrates deeply, needing a partner for workflows and delivery.

Why they won't build the full stack: Group digital investment is aimed at data and personalization economics, not LLM voice infrastructure; a partnered deployment delivers engineered service cost this year and fits the group's disciplined build-vs-buy record.

What management is signalling

Kmart Group has been repeatedly highlighted in Wesfarmers results as a standout profit and return-on-capital performer, with Anko central to the low-price model and cost-of-living trade-down supporting volumes.

Reported factFY25 annual results · Aug 2025

GTM implication: Service-cost engineering extends the exact discipline the market credits Kmart for — pitch it in the group's own cost-obsession language.

Online share and digital engagement through OnePass continue growing across the group's retail portfolio.

Inferencerecent investor communications (validate) · 2025-2026

GTM implication: Per-order service economics scale with digital share — validate contact-per-order rates with the account team.

What already exists (don't pitch this)
  • Kmart and Target apps and online stores with high traffic
  • Anko own-brand model with direct sourcing
  • OnePass subscription across group banners
  • Contact centers and basic chatbot deflection
What customers still can't do end-to-end (pitch this)
  • →In-conversation order remedies and returns guidance at policy tiers
  • →Product Q&A that converts instead of deflecting
  • →Store-call absorption so floor staff serve the floor
  • →Cross-banner member context for OnePass households
Opportunity map

Where agentic communications pays off first

WorkflowWhy it matters hereValueComplexitySpeedChannels
Online order, delivery and returns desk
Status, remedies and returns guided in-conversation within policy; cost per contact drops toward model economics.
Delivery exceptions and returns are the dominant contact classes, and each human touch can exceed basket margin.
Friction today: Order-status and returns questions queue for human agents; remedies inconsistent across channels.
App chatWebVoice
Product availability and Anko product Q&A
Grounded product and stock answers in-conversation; store phones quiet, conversion measured.
Product questions (stock, sizing, assembly, safety) drive store calls and abandoned online carts.
Friction today: Stores field phone calls staff can't leave the floor to answer; online product answers live in unsearched FAQ pages.
App chatWeb
OnePass member service
Membership service resolved in-conversation with cross-banner context; churn on the subscription measured.
Subscription loyalty economics depend on frictionless membership service across the group's banners.
Friction today: Membership, billing and benefit questions route to generic queues without group context.
App chatVoice
Watch the change

Online order, delivery and returns service desk: today vs the agentic model

Scenario: A shopper's bulky-item delivery misses its window and the assembly instructions are missing a part; the agent reschedules delivery in the logistics system, orders the spare part shipped free within policy, and answers the assembly question from the product knowledge base — one chat, no store call, no return.
Today
same interaction, two worlds
Agentic layer
Contacts per delivery incident
3–4 across channels
1 proactive thread
Platform capability
Cart abandonment context
~70% average
recoverable via consent-based outreach
Benchmark
Cost per contact
$13.50 median assisted
$1.84 median self-service
Benchmark
QA coverage
1–2% sampled
100% scored
Platform capability
Sources & assumptions
  • · Contacts per delivery incident: Process design: exception detected before contact
  • · Cart abandonment context: Baymard Institute meta-analysis
  • · Cost per contact: Gartner customer service cost benchmarks, 2024
  • · QA coverage: Platform capability: every interaction logged and evaluated
  • · Gartner, customer service cost benchmarks (2024): $13.50 median assisted vs $1.84 self-service per contact
  • · McKinsey, digital-first collections research: 20–25% NPL reduction among leaders; up to 40% opex reduction with gen AI
  • · Baymard Institute: ~70% average cart abandonment (meta-analysis)
  • · IAMAI–Kantar via IBEF (2025): 900M+ Indian internet users; 98% consume Indic-language content
  • · LeadSquared and vendor funnel studies: 78% of students choose the first institution to respond (directional, vendor data)
  • · HDI / ITSM operator benchmarks: $15–25 per L1 ticket; 40–60% of L1 volume is resets/status (validate per customer)
  • · Conventional-flow wait times and volumes are typical operator patterns — assumptions to replace with the customer's own baseline
  • · Agentic-flow behaviors (context retention, 100% logging, in-line policy checks) are platform capabilities, not projections
Recommended solution

One integrated stack, opinionated for this account

Channels · Tilicho Labs
App chatWebVoice

Voice & channel orchestration, telephony, conversational execution, session/state, routing, integration build. Capability coverage validated during implementation.

Intelligence · Google Cloud
Gemini reasoningEnterprise groundingWorkflow agentsMulti-agent orchestrationGoverned actionsEvaluation & analytics
Systems · Wesfarmers (Kmart Group)
OMSLast-mile logisticsReturns systemsPayments/refundsInventory systemsProduct catalogKnowledge baseOnePass platformBillingCRM

API access to these systems is the critical-path dependency.

Trust & languages
English

Identity-bound sessions, policy-bounded actions, 100% audit logging, human approvals at defined points, in-tenant intelligence.

Business case

The economics, with your numbers

Addressable monthly interactions1.0M
Seller assumption — replace in discovery
Current cost per interaction ($)$6.0
Industry benchmark scale — validate
Automation / assistance rate (%)55%
Seller assumption — pilot proves this
$6.0M
Current operating cost / mo
$37.3M
Modelled gross benefit / yr
0.0 mo
Payback on Scale
1590%
3-yr ROI (modelled)
Automated/assisted interactions per month550K
Modelled AI run-cost per month (usage + cloud, system estimate)$193K
New monthly operating cost$2.9M

All figures are modelling estimates from the labeled inputs above — nothing here is customer-provided yet. The pilot's first job is replacing these assumptions with Wesfarmers (Kmart Group)'s measured baseline. Package price covers implementation only; recurring usage billed separately.

Recommended package

Scale — $100K implementation

Scale · $100K · A multi-channel production deployment10–14 weeks to production across priority workflows

Why this package for Wesfarmers (Kmart Group): Order care plus returns guidance plus product Q&A across Kmart and Target are multi-workflow scope over shared OMS and fulfilment infrastructure — Scale-grade breadth with clean boundaries.

Included
  • 4–6 channels
  • 2–3 priority workflows
  • Multiple enterprise integrations
  • API credential & security setup
  • Advanced orchestration
  • Multilingual support
  • Agent Assist / human escalation
  • Production analytics
  • Expansion roadmap
Not included
  • ✕Usage & consumption (billed separately)
  • ✕Enterprise-wide governance build-out
  • ✕Multi-BU rollout
Recurring costs (separate from the package)

Packages cover implementation and integration only. Recurring costs are billed separately: Tilicho Labs platform usage (~$0.15/call-min indicative, usage only), Google Cloud consumption, telephony/carrier charges, managed operations, and support & optimization. No package includes unlimited usage.

Customer resources required
  • · API access + credentials for: OMS, Last-mile logistics, Returns systems
  • · A named business owner for online order, delivery and returns service desk
  • · Security review counterpart and policy sign-off (OMS scope)
  • · Baseline metrics for the pilot's success thresholds
Executive messages

What to say to whom

CEO (Kmart Group MD)

“The model's genius is engineering cost out of everything customers don't value; nobody values hold music — the service estate is the last unengineered cost pool in the group.”

CIO / CTO

“A governed agent layer over OMS, returns and catalog APIs matches the group's platform-buying discipline — proven capability, deep integration, no speculative build.”

COO

“Trade-down traffic is lifting volumes at the value end where service cost per contact hurts most; elastic capacity absorbs growth without linear service hiring.”

Head of Digital / Online

“Every product question answered in-conversation is a conversion; every delivery exception resolved instantly is a repeat customer — both measured, both attributable.”

Chief Risk / Compliance Officer

“ACL-consistent returns and remedy handling, policy tiers with human gates, product-safety questions escalated properly, 100% logging.”

CFO / Procurement

“Kmart Group's return on capital leads the group because cost discipline never sleeps; measured cost per resolved contact is that discipline applied to the service line.”

Outreach

Pre-built offer emails for Wesfarmers (Kmart Group)

Written from this account's own research — the strategic signal, the capability gap, the entry workflow, and the modelled economics — not a mail-merge template. Pick the moment and the persona, edit anything, then copy or open in your mail client.

Moment in the deal
Cold outreach — no prior conversation
Who it's addressed to
Cares about: The workflow itself and its daily failure modes
Register
Length
Draft — edit freely before sending
Open in mail client

Customer-safe by construction: drafts are composed only from customer-facing fields. Account tier, build-vs-buy classification, priority score, internal routing, and partner-commercial detail are not inputs to the composer, so they cannot appear in a draft. Money figures are always framed as modelled from the customer's own volumes. Read before sending — you own what goes out.

The pursuit

Tier 2 — high-potential incubation

Why this tier

Kmart and Target under Wesfarmers' most celebrated turnaround — the Anko own-brand engine, huge store traffic, growing online share and a low-price positioning that makes Australian-labor service cost per contact structurally at odds with the model.

Recommended next step

Workshop with Kmart Group digital leadership: baseline contact volumes per online order and store-call loads, then scope a Scale pilot on the order-and-returns desk.

Entry: Online order, delivery and returns service desk · Scale package · 10–14 weeks to production across priority workflows. Human fallback throughout; success thresholds agreed before build.

Start the pursuit

Research-based priority-account universe assembled from public information, market scale, communication volume, and solution fit. This is NOT an authoritative list of top Google Cloud customers; existing Google Cloud relationships are noted only where publicly reported. Validate every account with the account team before outreach.