Wine & Spirits
Nio walks a shopper through pairing a Cabernet for a holiday dinner, then suggests a value-tier alternative for the everyday bottle.
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Multi-location aisle advisory
Protect high-intent sales when your floor team is stretched.
AskNio puts your best product expert — multilingual and always on — in every aisle, every shift. Kiosk or QR. Voice or text. No app, no login, no Phase 1 IT project.
Built for specialty retail chains where buying decisions are complex, information-led, and staff knowledge makes the sale.
Request a pilot review
2026 Design Partner Cohort · 5 chains
The Problem
The Expensive Questions
A premium case selection. The right plant for a full-sun, clay-soil spot. The right food and gear for a new puppy. A first serious cookware-set decision.
These are the questions that decide a high-intent sale.
When your floor is stretched — or the nearest associate is new — the shopper can't get a confident answer. So they give up, walk out, or Google it. And it rarely shows up in your POS data.
“
Product expertise is uneven across locations, shifts, and seasons.
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Saturday is when buying intent peaks and expert coverage thins.
AskNio protects the moment before the sale is lost.
Nio answers the question in the aisle, within approved boundaries, and flags the revenue-risk signal before the shopper walks out.
For regulated categories, Nio educates and compares — and routes age-, safety-, or policy-sensitive decisions to your team.
+34%
productivity lift for less-experienced staff using a conversational AI assistant. The gains land on your newest sellers.
Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2025
2×
Lowe’s reports shoppers who engage its AI advisor online convert more than twice as often. AskNio brings that guided-assistance pattern into the aisle.
Lowe’s CEO, Q3 2025 earnings call
71%
of shoppers want generative AI built into their shopping experience.
Capgemini Research Institute, 12 countries, 2024
External studies and retailer disclosures shown as category proof points, not AskNio performance claims.
The Pattern Is Already Proven
The biggest retailers already moved this way
For Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, and Bunnings, AI assistance on the retail floor is a multi-year build with dedicated AI teams. AskNio brings the same guided-assistance pattern to multi-location specialty chains — live in days, not years.
WalmartFor associates
Ask Sam
A voice assistant rolled out to 5,000+ U.S. stores to give associates instant answers on the floor.
TargetFor team members
Store Companion
A generative-AI assistant in nearly 2,000 stores, built to make team members’ jobs easier, not replace them.
The Home DepotFor shoppers
Magic Apron
Generative AI that answers project questions and points shoppers to the right products and add-ons.
Lowe'sFor shoppers
Mylow
An AI advisor built with OpenAI for real-time project guidance. Engaged shoppers convert more than 2×.
BunningsFor shoppers
Buddy
An agentic AI shopping assistant rolling out as Australia’s first major retailer to do so.
The common thread: technology to back staff, not replace them. AskNio is that pattern, built for chains that can't spend years building it themselves.
See Nio in Action
Demos
Hear how Nio handles everyday questions and keeps context. A few store types shown — the same advisory works across specialty retail.
Cookware & Home
Nio compares knife sets, cookware materials, induction compatibility, appliance features, warranties, and care items.
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Specialty Pet
Nio explains novel proteins to help a puppy with sensitivities.
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Nursery & Garden
Nio helps a customer pick the perfect drought-tolerant plant for California's full-sun summer heat, and walks them through soil, watering, and fertilizer.
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How it works
Multi-Location Aisle Advisory
AskNio is a voice product expert that lives in your aisle. Not a chatbot bolted onto your website. Shoppers talk to it the way they'd talk to your best floor associate. Nio answers in their language, within your brand boundaries, and hands the decision back to your team when judgment is needed.
Brand-Aligned Product Advisory
Grounded in your training playbooks, catalogs, and brand voice. Not a generic search tool.
Intelligent Floor-to-Staff Routing
Sends the remaining decision point and prior context to your team. Nobody starts over.
Built for Weekend Surges
Absorbs the repetitive demand that hits your floor during seasonal peaks and Saturday rushes.
Backs your team
Is AI replacing your staff? No.
It makes your newest, least-experienced sellers as good as your best ones — and keeps your experts free for the conversations that actually need them.
Day-one competence
A new casual hire can answer like a veteran from their first shift. Nio carries the product knowledge it takes years to build.
Your newest staff gain the most
In the largest field study of a workplace AI assistant, the whole team got +14% more productive — and the least-experienced workers far more. It lifts the bottom, not the top.
The human still closes
Nio hands the decision and full context to your team at the counter, where the upsell, the loyalty points, and the relationship happen.
Field study: Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond, “Generative AI at Work,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2025 (5,000+ frontline workers).
Hearing your category? The 2026 cohort is capped at 5 chains.
Request a pilot reviewAccess
Two Access Points,
One Knowledge Layer
Both surfaces support voice and text. Same brand voice. Same staff handoff destination.
Endcap Kiosk
A purpose-built touchscreen kiosk at high-traffic zones. Voice for hands-full consultation. Text for quieter moments. Staff handoff with full conversation context.
AskNio Go (QR)
Scan, talk or type. Private help in the aisle, on the customer's phone. No app, no account. Staff handoff with full conversation context.
Built for the Floor
Engineered for the Floor
Designed for loud aisles, seasonal peaks, and consistency across stores.
Acoustic Noise Isolation
Tuned for the noise floor of a working specialty store. Music, conversations, foot traffic. Voice falls back to text when needed.
Session Continuity
One conversation, every aisle. A shopper scans at the entrance, asks a question, walks to the back of the store, asks another. Same conversation, all the way through. No restart, no rescan.
Multilingual by Default
Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and more. Same store, same Nio, whichever language the customer brings. Configurable per location.
On-Screen Presence
Optional per store. Shoppers won't talk to a screen. They will talk to a person. When enabled, Nio appears on the kiosk as a friendly, on-brand presence, not a chatbot box.
Deployment
Multi-Location Deployment
Three phases. From signed agreement to first live aisle.
New stores live in two business days. No custom model training required. No integration sprint for Phase 1. No six-week deployment.
The big chains spend years and a dedicated AI team building this. You go live in days, with near-zero IT lift.
01·
Ingest
Your product catalog, care guides, and brand rules.
02·
Tune
Answer boundaries, escalation rules, regional voice.
03·
Activate
Kiosks mounted, QR codes live, reporting on.
Phase 1: in-aisle product expertise. Phase 2: integrations mapped from pilot data.
Kiosk or QR · Text or talk · 2026 cohort opening
Privacy
Privacy Snapshot
Here’s what we keep (and what we don’t).
No Audio Retention
Voice is converted to text in real time. We don’t store raw audio recordings.
Session Context
We keep only what’s needed to keep the conversation smooth, then use anonymized patterns for reporting.
Opt-in
Turn conversations into follow-ups, only when shoppers opt in.
No Mandatory Login
No account required to start.
We don't sell data. No ads. No creepy tracking.
FAQ
Operator FAQ
Built for operators who need controlled rollout, clear boundaries, and measurable pilot learning.
“Is this just a chatbot?”
No. Nio is an in-aisle advisory layer with kiosk and QR access. Voice and text, grounded in your product knowledge, with built-in staff handoff.
“How is customer data handled?”
Conversations are processed live, then aggregated into anonymized patterns for your insight reports. No audio stored. No individual tracking. Your catalog and brand knowledge stay scoped to your tenant.
“What's the IT lift on our side?”
None for Phase 1. We handle ingestion, tuning, kiosk provisioning, and QR rollout. Phase 2 integrations are scoped from pilot data, with no surprise infrastructure asks.
“How does Nio handle regulated or sensitive questions?”
Nio follows retailer-approved boundaries. Product education stays with Nio. Age verification, medical questions, and policy exceptions route to staff.
Pilot Review
Request a pilot review
2026 Design Partner Cohort · 5 chains.
“Technology shouldn't replace the human touch; it should protect it. I built Nio so expert staff can stay focused on the high-value relationships that make specialty retail worth visiting.”
— Bhaskaran Devaraj, Founder, AskNio
15 years of engineering leadership at LinkedIn. Co-founder and CTO at Omlet Stack. Connect on LinkedIn →