Chewy CEO Sumit Singh said the retailer’s new AI assistant, Cai, is already resolving common customer issues like order status, returns and account membership questions inside the mobile app, with a companion voice tool called Callie handling appointment scheduling for Chewy Vet Care.
The numbers Singh shared are notably modest for a product getting this much attention. Less than 15% of Chewy’s traffic has been exposed to Cai, which has been live for under a month, and less than a third of the issues it sees are being resolved through chat alone rather than a handoff. Singh was explicit that the bar for shipping was not speed: “You can expect that the bar that this product has to meet is exceptionally high,” he said, adding that responses have to stay “true to brand and tone.” Customers who need a person are, in his words, “seamlessly connected to a care team member within seconds.”
The original insight is in what Chewy is willing to measure publicly before declaring victory. Most retailers announcing an AI assistant lead with adoption or satisfaction numbers. Chewy led with a projected cost line instead, low tens of millions in savings in fiscal 2026 scaling to roughly $50 million annually in 2027, against a business that just posted 7.3% year over year sales growth to $3.3 billion in the quarter. That framing treats the assistant as a cost structure change first and a customer experience upgrade second, which is a more honest sequencing than most launch announcements attempt.
For marketing and CX leaders watching from outside pet retail, the useful comparison is the broader convergence of marketing and support into a single AI stack already underway elsewhere. Chewy’s own data, a third of issues resolved and 15% exposure after a month, is a more grounded adoption curve than the industry’s usual AI launch messaging, and a useful benchmark against the wider push to make AI visibility a core measured discipline rather than a press release metric.
Source: Customer Experience Dive
