Project Context

Albert Heijn employees manage daily store tasks such as helping customers, restocking shelves and finding product information.

EPAM, together with Microsoft, helped Albert Heijn introduce a conversational assistant that allows employees to ask questions, scan barcodes, find product locations and get practical answers within seconds.

The assistant was already live in 62 stores, with a wider rollout planned for 2025.

The Production Challenge

The main challenge was to create a credible customer story with very limited access to Albert Heijn’s time and locations.

The Albert Heijn manager had only a short time available, so a long interview or full filming day was not realistic. Filming inside a real store was also difficult to organize.

At the same time, the video still had to feel connected to the real retail environment, not like a generic technology demo.

Our Solution

We built the video around a voiceover-led structure.

The voiceover explained the main story: what the assistant does, how it helps employees and how far the rollout had progressed.

The Albert Heijn manager’s interview was used as short customer confirmation, not as the main narrative source. This allowed us to complete the interview in about 20 minutes during an event.

Story Development

Before filming, we held two online sessions with EPAM.

The first helped us understand the project, the solution and the communication goals. The second was a deeper brainstorm about the story angle, key message and practical use cases.

Based on this, our director and copywriter developed the script with EPAM and prepared a production plan that could be completed in one filming day.

Visual Approach

Since filming inside a real store was not possible, we filmed the retail scenes in Albert Heijn’s training center.

The location gave us only a small store-like environment, including one product shelf. We focused on practical close-ups: barcode scanning, shelf work, product handling and interaction with the assistant.

To expand the story visually, we also filmed the EPAM team in their office and requested permission to use existing Albert Heijn video materials from YouTube.

Outcome

The final video gave EPAM a clear customer story about a real retail innovation, without placing a heavy time burden on Albert Heijn’s team.

By combining voiceover, a short customer interview, focused b-roll and EPAM office visuals, we helped present the project in a way that was clear, credible and easy to understand.