How E.l.f. Beauty is building AI into its community management

E.l.f. Beauty, a cosmetics company, is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance its community management on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. These platforms often receive hundreds to thousands of comments per post, with users typically asking about product launches, comparisons, and suitability for different skin or hair types.

To efficiently respond to these queries in real-time, E.l.f. developed an AI tool named E.l.f.luencer. This tool is trained on the company's style guide and extensive human-written social media comments. The generated responses are approved by human community managers before being posted onto social media.

According to Ekta Chopra, E.l.f.'s chief technology and AI officer, the tool has significantly improved response rates from a previous range of 30%-40% to above 80%. Moreover, over 90% of the comments generated through AI adhere to E.l.f.'s brand tone and utilize the company's signature emojis. Chopra emphasizes that the AI is used to augment productivity, with all outputs thoroughly reviewed by human employees to ensure accuracy and appropriateness.

As the person leading E.l.f. in AI implementation, Chopra has established a cross-functional AI steering committee comprising members from legal, marketing, and research and development departments. This committee aims to integrate most agentic AI pilots into full production within six months while minimizing associated risks. Under her guidance, the company is currently piloting 85 different agentic AI use cases.

Internally, Chopra has developed various AI tools to streamline processes and disseminate information across the company. One such tool is "B.F.e.l.f," an internal chatbot utilized by more than 80% of E.l.f. employees. Additionally, there is an IT help desk assistant called "e.l.f.line" that can perform support tasks equivalent to one human help desk employee.

Other applications include tools that enable products to be surfaced by large language models during internet searches, as SEO increasingly yields limited returns. To facilitate this, Chopra created a secure internal AI platform accessible to all employees, providing approved connectors and APIs that allow non-technical staff to build and deploy their own agents or applications without depending on a central tech team.

Among the internally developed tools is a dashboard that monitors social sentiment across campaigns and products, further demonstrating E.l.f.'s commitment to enhancing its community management through AI technology.