Pets at Home has developed an AI agent for its profit protection team using technology from Microsoft.

The agent aims to compile cases more efficiently for skilled human review.

The pet care retailer is an early adopter of Microsoft’s Copilot Studio, where a business can create agents to support different areas of a business.

Agents are AI tools that can work on behalf of an individual or team to operate and orchestrate business activities. They range from simple prompt-and-response agents to fully autonomous agents, while Microsoft's Copilot is how people can interact with these agents. 

Pets at Home currently has around 450 stores, an e-commerce site, 450 veterinary practices which are run independently, and grooming services which style as many as 17,000 pets every week.

“The agents solution allows the profit protection team to more effectively assess cases for potential profit loss and dedicate more of their time to skilled analysis, rather than simply information gathering,” said William Hewish, Pets at Home chief information officer.

The news comes as Microsoft announces the ability to create autonomous agents to help build capacity for sales, service, finance and supply chain teams.

With early access to agent-building features in Copilot Studio, Pets at Home also created an agent to help its retail fraud detection team investigate suspicious transactions as part of a trial.

Additionally, it has been testing a customised version of a transcription tool using copilot components to transcribe during some clinical consultations and operations.

"The recent AI scribing trial is very exciting because it will enable clinical colleagues to spend more time seeing patients and doing the things they do best; caring for our nation’s pets," said Dr Sam Butler-Davies, veterinary service director, Vets for Pets and Pets at Home. "Having notes ready to review as soon as a consultation or procedure has started completely revolutionises how veterinary colleagues plan their time.

"We’re not suggesting this will fully replace human notes or the need for expert clinical reviews, it’s a useful tool to help our colleagues use their time to provide care, where and how it is most needed”.

The company may also explore how this technology can help with scheduling and planning.

Beyond its use of AI for profit protection, fraud, and scribing, Pets at Home plans to expand Microsoft's technology to other areas of the business.

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