Naver is strengthening support for small and medium-sized businesses through its "on-service AI" strategy, which integrates artificial intelligence across major services including shopping and Place. Some services have achieved merchant satisfaction rates as high as 97%.
Naver announced Thursday the release of its "AI Case Study Report," which analyzes how AI technology has contributed to improving business operation efficiency and customer experience for small merchants. The report is the first compilation of results from Naver's ongoing on-service AI strategy.
The Smart Place Review Management Solution, a flagship AI support feature highlighted in the report, recorded a 97% merchant satisfaction rate. When customer reviews are posted, the AI analyzes the tone and context, sending Smart Place notifications to business owners when reviews are negative or involve sensitive issues. The system then generates natural-sounding draft responses tailored to the review content when merchants write replies.
"We enhanced the AI's sensitivity to expressions so it can accurately understand review content, identify negative-toned reviews, and suggest appropriate responses," Naver said. "This is a case where time burden and emotional labor in reputation management have been significantly reduced."
TalkTalk AI FAQ, which automates frequently asked questions, was also introduced as an example of reducing repetitive work for merchants. The feature automatically generates common customer questions and suggests accurate answers based on product data, representing an upgrade from the existing Clova LiveChat service. Naver analyzed that the AI effectively understands customer shopping intent and context through data, generating store-specific FAQs and providing highly reliable and up-to-date answers.
"With AI FAQ adoption, 24-hour customer service becomes possible, and customized marketing assets based on customer data accumulate in the process," said Choi Bo-reum, a professor at the University of Seoul's College of Business Administration. "AI FAQ functions not as simple customer support, but as a sales-boosting tool through AI."
AI has also been applied to related product recommendations, increasing purchase conversion rates. The AI product recommendation feature analyzes user interests, search and purchase history, and product attribute data to suggest appropriate products to users with high purchase potential. Naver developed its proprietary foundation model "e-CLIP" to recommend the most suitable products from the hundreds of millions of items in Naver Shopping's database. The "Products Good to Buy Together" section provided through this system has recorded high purchase conversion rates among product detail pages, according to Naver. One merchant noted that "even first-time customers often bundle shipments, showing the positive impact."
Naver currently provides this feature free of charge to all Smart Store sellers.
"Through this report, we confirmed that on-service AI is permeating daily life and providing practical help to businesses within the Naver ecosystem," said Lee Kyung-ryul, Naver's Corporate Agenda Leader. "We will continue to broadly share the value of AI as Naver envisions it, our technological foundation, and actual implementation cases to help businesses grow further."
