Quick Facts

• Olive, the AI culinary assistant on the Williams Sonoma site, has seen engagement grow 700% and associated revenue rise 620% year to date in 2026.
• Otto, the Pottery Barn AI shopping assistant launched in August 2026, resolves more than 70% of customer engagements without a human representative.
• Williams-Sonoma reported $1.96 billion in Q2 net revenue, up 6.7% year over year, with e-commerce comparable sales rising 6.5%.

Williams-Sonoma is posting measurable returns on its AI investments, with two branded shopping assistants now driving higher conversion rates and autonomous customer service across its portfolio of home brands.

The retailer launched Olive on its Williams Sonoma site last year as an AI-powered culinary companion. Olive builds customized menus with recipes, shopping lists, and kitchen tool suggestions, including items a customer already owns based on past purchase history. Since January 2026, engagement with Olive has grown 700%, and revenue tied to the assistant has risen 620%. Customers who use Olive convert at three times the rate of other shoppers.

In August 2026, Williams-Sonoma extended the same approach to the Pottery Barn family with Otto. The assistant helps customers select furniture for specific spaces, matches items like sofas and rugs, and understands outdoor materials and rug sizing the way an in-store associate would. When needed, Otto books a design appointment or transfers the customer to a Pottery Barn designer. More than 70% of customer engagements with Otto are resolved without human intervention, according to Chief Technology and Digital Officer Sameer Hassan.

Both assistants run on the Salesforce Agentforce 360 Platform. Williams-Sonoma is also using the Salesforce Data 360 data engine to unify customer and product data across its nine brands, which include West Elm, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teen, Rejuvenation, Mark and Graham, and GreenRow. That unified data layer gives AI agents real-time customer context to personalize responses without routing to a human.

Hassan pointed to first-party data as the key differentiator. ‘AI is the engine that’s driving all this growth, data is the fuel that makes it work, and our CRM and business data is making that engine run,’ he said on the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call.

Personalization tied to AI is also compounding. Hassan said a visit where Williams-Sonoma personalizes the experience now generates roughly nine times the revenue of an average visit. One year ago, that multiple was two times.

CEO Laura Alber framed the AI strategy as an amplifier of existing strengths rather than a replacement for the company’s service model. ‘So many aspects of our tactile and taste-driven business cannot be replaced by AI, but our processes can certainly be enhanced by it,’ Alber said. The company owns design, sourcing, manufacturing, and last-mile delivery, giving it the infrastructure to apply AI across the full value chain.

The financial results support the strategy. Williams-Sonoma reported $1.96 billion in net revenue for the fiscal quarter ended Aug. 2, up from $1.84 billion a year earlier. Q2 comparable brand revenue growth accelerated to 6.2% from 4.8% in Q1. Operating margin came in at 17.3%, and diluted earnings per share reached $2.10, up 5% year over year.

By brand, the Williams Sonoma nameplate comped 7.6%, West Elm comped 6.4%, Pottery Barn comped 5.1%, and children’s businesses comped 3.5%. The company’s B2B operation, which serves commercial clients and design professionals, grew 14.5%.

Williams-Sonoma plans to roll AI agents across each brand in its portfolio, with every site integrating AI assistants alongside human experts. The company anticipates that more than 60% of chat inquiries will be resolved autonomously as the program scales.

Read more: Williams-Sonoma AI assistants drive customer engagement