B&Q brings AI-powered sales coaching to the showroom floor
How the UK’s largest home improvement retailer is bringing AI conversations to build confidence at scale.
With more than 300 stores and the UK’s largest product range for home improvement, B&Q has always been about helping people take on projects big and small. Now, their showroom division is taking on a project of its own – becoming the first retailer to roll out Attensi RealTalk to 2,500 of their colleagues.
B&Q’s Jacy Stanhope, Stuart Mold, and Lee Spooner explain what drew them to AI-powered conversation training, and what they expect it to change.
Why confident selling is essential for B&Q’s showrooms
B&Q is the largest UK home improvement retailer, operating over 300 stores across the UK and Ireland as a part of the Kingfisher Group. Their mission works on two levels.
- For customers, it’s about inspiring, encouraging, and enabling people to create homes they love.
- For employees, it’s building a strong sales culture by equipping colleagues with the tools, skills, and confidence to make their mission real.
Nowhere is that more important than in the showroom division.
B&Q’s showrooms are where customers make some of the biggest decisions about their homes: kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms. These are high-stakes, personal purchases. Showroom colleagues guide customers through design, planning, and buying — and their ability to listen, advise, and build confidence directly drives conversion. That places enormous importance on the quality of every customer interaction.
“Our colleagues are so important to B&Q’s success and how we support our communities to create better homes and better lives. It’s our colleagues who greet our customers, create those positive interactions, help them with their projects, and ultimately create a great experience for them.” Jacy Stanhope Head of Talent & Learning at B&Q
What wasn’t working with traditional training?
B&Q’s existing training approach combined digital modules with face-to-face sessions. It worked well for delivering knowledge about product specification, processes, and service standards.
“One of the biggest challenges we have when it comes to providing great training and learning experiences is where we close the gap between knowing and doing, and what we been exploring recently with Attensi is the new virtual role play, empowered by AI, that really will help us with closing that gap.” Jacy Stanhope Head of Talent & Learning at B&Q
“Traditionally, training is done through digital or face-to-face learning. But as human beings, we naturally forget what we learn unless we put things into practice. That’s usually where we fall down.” Lee Spooner Development Manager
But there was a persistent challenge: The gap wasn’t in what colleagues knew. It was in how confidently they could apply it when sitting across a customer making a major purchasing decision.
Closing that gap required something more than traditional training alone: embedding the knowledge through realistic practice, with quality feedback.
There was also the question of scale. With 2,500 showroom colleagues, it simply wasn’t realistic to rely on managers to observe every interaction and give consistent, high-quality feedback at any time.
B&Q needed a solution that could do both — build real confidence at scale, without adding more pressure on managers. They found it in RealTalk.
“What we struggle with – as human beings – is to be there at the right time, all the time, to listen, observe and give feedback.” Stuart Mold Service and Selling Lead, Showrooms
Why B&Q chose RealTalk
Build confidence before real interactions
Colleagues practice sales conversations in a safe environment, building confidence before meeting real customers.
Scale feedback without adding workload
RealTalk delivers consistent coaching — always available, always aligned, and not dependent on manager capacity.
Embed behavior, not just knowledge, at every level
Active practice ensures training sticks. Colleagues don’t just know what to do — they’ve rehearsed it beforehand.
First reactions to Attensi RealTalk
When Mold first experienced RealTalk, the reaction was immediate:
“I was absolutely blown away. The interactive nature, the collaboration between myself and the character – it was really cool.”
What stood out wasn’t just the engagement factor, it was how real it felt. The AI-character listens, responds naturally, and provides you’d expect from a great manager. Except it’s available to every colleague, at any time, without adding managers’ workload on the showroom floor.
“The thing I like most about RealTalk is its interactivity. It’s forgiving, it listens, it understands exactly what I’m saying — and it feels like a real conversation with a real person.” Stuart Mold Service and Selling Lead, Showrooms
For Spooner, the value was more strategic. B&Q already excelled at the knowledge transfer, but RealTalk offered the bridge between training and real-world application. He said:
“This is an AI tool that can revolutionize the way we train within B&Q. We’re really good at giving people skills and knowledge — but RealTalk will help us embed that across all of our colleagues.”
What’s ahead for B&Q & RealTalk
“I’ve had the chance to use RealTalk a few times. It’s been fun, challenging, and it has really allowed me to practice and hone my skills, so I’m really excited to be able to test it out with our colleagues.” Jacy Stanhope Head of Talent & Learning at B&Q
B&Q is rolling out RealTalk across its entire showroom division. All 2,500 colleagues will practice their selling skills through AI-powered conversations, while managers receive dedicated modules to sharpen their coaching skills.
The ambition links directly back to B&Q’s dual mission: better-equipped colleagues, and better customer experiences. Mold has seen it in action:
“What I love most about RealTalk is that it’s like having a conversation with somebody who listens to your every word, converses back, gives you feedback and tells you how to improve. Managers today don’t always have time to do that — so it’s perfect that we now have RealTalk.”
Or as he puts it more simply:
“It’s like having a digital coach.”
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