How Hy-Clor turned the store aisle into its strongest sales channel with an AI pool expert

At a glance

Hy-Clor has served Australian and New Zealand pool owners since 1989 and has grown into Australia's largest distributor of pool chemicals, selling chemicals, equipment, and accessories exclusively through Australia's largest home improvement retailer, across 350 stores. Every store has a free Hy-Clor water testing kiosk, and its app has 140,000 subscribers. While competitors sell through pool shops, Hy-Clor takes the opposite approach, giving pool owners the confidence and tools to look after their own pools.

Uncertainty sent a shopper to a competitor

The most important moment for any brand is when a shopper stands in the aisle with a problem and decides what to buy. Pool chemistry is complex, and floor staff in big box stores rotate between departments, so expert advice was not always there when it counted. Hy-Clor had spent years building a learning center of videos, how-to guides, user manuals, and around 150 pool care articles, linked through QR codes on products and shelves. But for customers to reach an answer meant scanning a code and searching a large library on a phone. Shoppers who gave up often went to a pool shop, paid a premium, and left with a competitor's product.

From an idea to an expert on the shelf

Hy-Clor needed a way to reach shoppers at that moment, and Kapil Vedak (UX designer at Hy-Clor), floated the concept of POOLBERT. a pool technician available whenever shoppers needed him. The infrastructure was already in place, with a Hy-Clor water testing kiosk in the pool aisle of every store and the app. The question was execution. They had important requirements. First, Poolbert had to draw on its existing pool-care content, so every answer would come from the expertise the brand had spent years building. Poolbert would be advising on pool chemicals, so safety had to be built into every answer. Voice also had to be on the roadmap. Kiosk touchscreens are awkward to type on, and eventually the goal was for shoppers to simply speak their questions. The team tested Chatbase and Botpress side by side and chose Chatbase for its product-first approach and clear voice-to-text roadmap.

Years of pool expertise, live in two hours

Hy-Clor had already built a deep knowledge base, so setup was fast. Within an hour or two, Poolbert was answering at about 90% of the level he performs at today. The team trained him on user manuals, around 150 pool care articles, safety information, and its Five Smart Steps guide. He now runs on the website, the water testing app, where users can ask by voice or text, and kiosks in all 350 stores.

Support for staff, trust for shoppers, an advocate for Hy-Clor

Most brands deploy AI agents on their website, and Hy-Clor had a similar expectation for the app and website to lead. But to everyone's surprise the aisle won by a wide margin: three quarters of all Poolbert conversations happen in store, at the moment of purchase. In December, his second month, Poolbert held 6,431 conversations and 51,564 messages. At about eight messages per conversation, shoppers are not asking one question and walking away. They work through the whole problem before they buy. Poolbert solves the problem and recommends the Hy-Clor product that fixes it by name. That is thousands of shoppers getting expert advice at the moment they decide, who might otherwise have taken their question to a pool shop and left with a competitor's product.

What they built

What's next