De Heus Animal Nutrition
AI-Coach for farmers system via WhatsApp
De Heus Animal Nutrition is an international animal feed company operating in more than 20 countries with its own production facilities in Europe, Asia and Africa, and exporting to 75 countries. With over 10,000 employees, De Heus helps farmers around the world improve their business through expertise, feed solutions and digital tools. In partnership with Youwe, De Heus has developed an AI assistant to offer personalized support to poultry farmers in Africa via their smartphones.
100%
Guideline-Conformity Rate
-86%
Reduced response time
Our AI now delivers support so human-like, most customers don’t even notice the difference.
Our solution
The challenge
Talk to AI via Whatsapp
The solution runs fully serverless via Azure Functions, resulting in low maintenance and high scalability. Azure Cognitive Services provide voice functionality for users who have difficulty reading or typing. Concretely, this includes:
Text-to-speech: written text is read aloud.
Speech-to-text: spoken input is converted into text.
Speech recognition: the system understands spoken commands.
Speech translation: real-time translation of spoken language.
The data integration between Twilio ensures seamless communication via WhatsApp, supporting text, voice, images, and documents. Making it very easy for users to interact with de Heus without friction.
Smart knowledge integration with RAG
We implemented a basic RAG pipeline allowing the AI assistant to retrieve relevant answers from guides, trainings, blogs, and other De Heus content. Using a vector-supported database , the system can efficiently deliver the most relevant information out of unstructured content types like pdf documents, images and word files. Structured chat flows are used, and triggers are built in to escalate to a human coach when needed.
Multilingual and voice-first user experience
Because the user base spans multiple countries and digital literacy varies, the interface is designed around simplicity. The AI coach supports both English and French and is optimized for use with voice memos. Combined with an offline-first design and clear fallback mechanisms, the tool remains usable—even with limited connectivity.
The results
Considering AI for your organization?
In a Proof of Concept, we implement a working version of our assistant tailored to your specific context. You’ll gain real insights and tangible feedback — without the complexity of a full-scale rollout. Get in touch to explore what your Proof of Concept could look like.