Tore Ligaard AS has been setting the standard for doors and windows in Norway since 1962. From a small operation in Stjørdal, they have grown into Norway’s largest specialist retailer in their field, with eight locations, over 90 employees, and nationwide distribution to both private and professional customers.

At the heart of Ligaard’s journey is a deep commitment to delivering the best customer experience, not just through quality products but also through smarter, faster, and more intuitive service. Central to this is the deep professional expertise that Ligaard’s employees possess. Their professional knowledge is the foundation on which the entire customer experience is built.

 

Frontkom has been a proud partner in this journey for many years. The company has worked closely with Ligaard to develop and maintain their CMS e-commerce store, ensuring a robust, scalable, and customer-friendly digital shopping experience. This collaboration established the foundation for even more innovation, helping Ligaard stay ahead in a competitive market.

About Frontkom

Frontkom is a digital transformation agency based in Norway, with a team across Europe, dedicated to helping organizations grow and create meaningful impact through digital transformation. Combining strategic insight and technical expertise, Frontkom delivers custom-built digital solutions tailored to drive measurable results. They focus on the commerce, education, and non-profit sectors - helping businesses scale, institutions engage effectively, and organizations advance their missions through impactful digital experiences. Their mission is to empower clients not only to adapt to change but to lead it, designing digital services and experiences that genuinely matter.

A new way to shop

Today’s customers expect more than just a website. They want guidance, simplicity, and accurate answers without the frustration of endless searching.

To meet these new expectations, Frontkom envisioned a simpler, more user-friendly way for customers to find exactly what they need, and partnered with Ligaard to bring that vision to life.

The idea? Let customers describe what they’re looking for in their own words, and instantly get personalized recommendations based on real expert knowledge.

The challenge: Complexity at every turn

Ligaard’s product catalog is vast and varied. With countless product types, sizes, materials, and features, helping each customer find their perfect match isn’t easy. Every project is different. Every customer has unique needs.

Finding the right solution among so many options can feel overwhelming.

That’s where Tore comes in.

Meet Tore: The AI shopping assistant

Built with Frontkom’s AI expertise, Tore transforms the way people shop for doors, windows, and accessories. Instead of clicking through endless menus, customers can now have a conversation. They can ask questions like "What windows are best for cold climates?" and receive helpful, tailored suggestions immediately.

Tore listens, understands, and recommends, making complex choices feel simple.

And the experience goes even further:

• Customers can add products directly to their cart during the chat.
• Tore transfers the conversation to real humans if extra help is needed.
• Behind the scenes, Ligaard’s team gains valuable insights to continually improve the service.

The Frontkom AI Platform dashboard puts teams in full control. They can monitor conversations in real time, fine-tune Tore’s behavior, manage knowledge sources, and update instructions on the fly. Every interaction becomes an opportunity to improve, making the assistant smarter, faster, and more aligned with real customer needs.

All of this happens with full respect for privacy and data security. Customer data remains securely within the EU, fully compliant with GDPR and NIS2 regulations, and adheres to the strictest standards.

With this setup, Ligaard ensures that Tore is always accurate, helpful, and aligned with the brand’s standards. It blends smart automation and human oversight, backed by Frontkom's technology and expertise.

24/7 support

Since Tore’s launch, Ligaard has seen a dramatic transformation in how customer support is handled. Total chat conversations have grown by more than four times compared to when support was handled only by humans, while the need for live agents has dropped by almost 92%.

At the same time, about one-third of all conversations now happen outside traditional business hours, closing critical gaps that previously existed during evenings and weekends. Tore ensures customers get immediate help whenever they need it, not just between 8 and 16 like earlier.

Service quality has remained high: nearly 70% of chats during this period were given a positive sentiment rating, with most of the rest neutral. Negative sentiment accounted for only around 1.5% of the conversations.

Tore has also lowered the threshold for asking for help. Many customers feel more comfortable reaching out to an AI assistant than a human, leading to more questions asked, faster problem-solving, and a smoother shopping experience.

By offering expert guidance 24/7 in a low-barrier, customer-friendly way, Ligaard not only improved efficiency but also unlocked real demand — ensuring higher satisfaction, more confident purchases, and setting a new standard for service in their industry.

Tore’s architecture

At the foundation of Tore’s intelligence lies a secure and high-performance data architecture. Langflow sits at the core, orchestrating the AI agent's behavior, tool usage, and response logic through a modular, low-code interface.

Frontkom leverages DataStax Astra DB to store and manage all critical AI data assets, including chat history, user activity, instructions, Ligaard’s expert knowledge base, and synced product information from the e-commerce platform.

Structured data like user sessions and instructions are stored traditionally, while the knowledge base and products are vectorized to enable fast, context-aware retrieval.

Embeddings for semantic search are generated using Azure OpenAI models, enabling Tore to deliver intelligent and highly relevant responses.

The AI engine powering Tore is hosted on Frontkom PaaS, a containerized cloud platform built on AWS infrastructure and managed through Lagoon, an open-source Kubernetes-based system.

For fast, secure global delivery, the platform is integrated with the Fastly CDN, providing low-latency access for users across regions.

At the core of the system, Langflow, a low-code tool for developers that makes it easier to build powerful AI agents and workflows, runs inside Docker containers orchestrated by Kubernetes.

This setup ensures flexibility, scalability, and operational resilience across all AI operations.

Together, this architecture gives full control from deployment to ongoing management, allowing rapid prototyping, easy iteration, and the ability to scale GenAI workflows seamlessly into real-world operations.

Learn more at the Kubernetes deployment guide.

At the application layer, Frontkom’s AI Platform manages frontend and backend operations through a Next.js-based environment.

This environment connects directly with Tore Ligaard’s e-commerce store and CMS, making it possible to pull live store data, synchronize product information, and handle customer interactions in real time.

Designed for full customization, the Frontkom AI Platform enables tailored AI experiences that seamlessly adapt to each business’s unique needs.<<

AI flow

Prompt

Each message triggers a flow that instantly collects everything it needs: the user’s question, agent availability, location, date, and vector-based expert-knowledge retrieved from Astra DB, managed through the Frontkom AI Platform.

These contextual inputs are merged into a structured prompt, empowering the agent to generate intelligent, actionable, and context-aware answers.

Agent and tools

At the heart of the system is the agent, an intelligent decision-maker that interprets the prompt, selects the right tools, and uses them whenever needed to deliver the best possible result. The agent operates with full autonomy, adapting in real time to each situation based on the user’s needs and the available context.

Once the structured prompt is ready, the agent steps in, dynamically using the latest instructions from Astra DB and leveraging Azure OpenAI models hosted in Sweden to generate responses that are not only accurate but also aligned with business goals.

The agent has a variety of specialized tools in its arsenal, designed to handle different types of user requests with speed and precision. The most notable ones are:

• Store Info, which connects directly to Ligaard’s e-commerce API to retrieve up-to-date store information.
• Product Search, which queries Astra DB for product IDs, retrieves detailed product data from the e-commerce platform, and refines the results into a clear, agent-optimized format.
• Handover, which collects customer details and triggers a transition to a live agent or a contact form when necessary.

The agent’s modular design also makes it easy to expand with new tools and capabilities over time. As new business needs emerge, additional functionality can be integrated quickly and seamlessly without disrupting the flow.

With this setup, the agent does not simply reply. It acts with intelligence, speed, and precision, consistently delivering real-world results at scale.

Full control through the Frontkom AI Platform Dashboard

Tore doesn’t operate alone. Behind him, Ligaard’s dedicated customer service team is not just monitoring conversations, they are actively managing and shaping Tore through the  Frontkom AI Platform dashboard.

In the dashboard, the team has full control over:

• Chat monitoring - Real-time tracking of active conversations, including user interactions and key events such as clicks, cart activity, and handovers to human agents.
• AI analysis - Deep insights into chat performance, user behavior, common questions, sentiment analysis, and trending topics.
• Source management - Full control over the assistant’s knowledge base, including manual documents, files, websites, and more.
• Instruction updates - Ability to tweak and refine how Tore responds to users.
• Data and analysis - Access to valuable metrics and reports to optimize the service.

Ligaard’s team also can control Tore’s knowledge, behavior, and evolution. Through the Frontkom AI Platform dashboard, they can monitor conversations in real time, refine how the agent responds, and manage knowledge sources.

Powered by Astra DB, every conversation, knowledge entry, and key metric is securely stored, providing complete transparency with no black boxes. Updates are fast and intuitive, ensuring the assistant always delivers accurate and up-to-date advice rooted in real-world professional expertise. It is a living system that continuously evolves through the hands of the people who understand their customers best.

Why customers love it

With Tore, shopping feels less like a task and more like a conversation. Customers get the right products faster and with less hassle.

The result? Higher satisfaction, more confident purchases, and an experience that feels fresh and intuitive.

The bigger picture

Tore is just the beginning.

The platform behind Tore is designed to create personalized, conversational experiences for a variety of industries, including retail, education, non-profits, and beyond.

And Ligaard isn’t stopping here. The following steps include supercharged versions of Tore, designed for internal use, helping Ligaard’s employees share and access professional expertise even more efficiently. Giving Tore insight and access to Microsoft Business Central and other data sources will provide them with a very powerful, time-saving, and knowledgeable virtual employee. An employee who never has a day off, never gets tired, and is constantly evolving. Internal knowledge sharing tools powered by AI will further strengthen Ligaard’s position as Norway’s leading door and window center, ensuring that their customers always benefit from the best advice, both online and in person.

Ready to meet Tore? Experience a new way to shop at www.ligaard.net (Norwegian only).

Democratizing AI for customers and employees

At Frontkom, they now use their own hosted Langflow instances for quick prototyping of AI workflows for customers and for production agents. Combined with Astra DB, employees who are not usually familiar with code or development can easily set up prototype AI workflows before meetings and projects, making it faster and easier to deliver tailored AI experiences as part of their AI service platform initiative.

Ready to build your own AI assistant?

If Ligaard’s success inspires you and want to explore the tools behind it, here’s where to start:

• Try Langflow - Build and customize your own AI agents with a visual interface. Get started at docs.langflow.org

• Explore Astra DB - Store data, manage context, and scale seamlessly with this vector-capable database. Sign up to try it for free. at www.datastax.com/astra