Pro Customer Insights for a National Home Improvement Retailer

The client

A national home improvement retailer with thousands of locations, millions of loyalty members, and a Pro program for contractors and professional builders. Pros buy in larger quantities and come back often, so winning their loyalty means capturing every project they take on. The Pro Desk in each store is where that relationship is supposed to live.

The problem

Pro Desk staff are retail employees, not contractors. When a plumber asks about gas line fittings or a builder needs specialty windows, the desk often can't help, and contractors come in despite the Pro Desk rather than because of it. Meanwhile, the data that could make those conversations useful is spread across the CRM, the loyalty program, delivery, online orders, and point of sale, and none of it reaches the person picking up the phone.

What everyone else would try

The obvious AI play is a dashboard for the Pro Desk, with aggregated customer data, suggested upsells, and maybe a chatbot. That makes the existing process a little less painful without asking why it works this way. It still assumes the customer comes to a desk, the employee has to be a product expert, sales are the same for everyone, and the upsell happens at a staffed register.

What we designed

We designed a layer that sits across the existing systems and connects them:

• Project inference. Purchase patterns across every channel show what each customer is likely building. A homeowner buys one PEX elbow, while a plumber buys gas control valves by the box. The same patterns flag likely professionals who never joined the Pro program, including the contractor who only ever uses self-checkout at 6:30 in the morning.
• Guided outreach. Briefs for Pro Desk staff say who to call, what that customer is probably working on, what they'll need next, and what to ask. The employee brings the relationship, and the system supplies the trade knowledge.
• Per-customer offers. Volume commitments for repeat buyers and bundles for identified projects replace the same weekly sale for everyone. A customer who just bought framing lumber and shed siding sees an offer on shingles, with free delivery.
• Offers at every touchpoint. Self-checkout, online carts, delivery emails, and the loyalty app all present the right offer, so the register clerk no longer asks every customer the same question fifty times a day.

Why it works

The retailer's relationship with a contractor doesn't live at the Pro Desk. It lives in the data, and a retail employee with the right brief in hand can serve a pro as well as someone with years in the trade.