AI Can Spot the Signal. Can It Deliver the Promise?
Customer engagement AI can now identify intent, choose a next step, and personalize a response in real time. This week’s news from ServiceNow, Coforge, Pacsun, and Orange France shows the harder test is whether the business can follow through when the customer acts.
Rhys Fisher · 3 Nov 2026
Amazon Wants Alexa to Become Your Default Shopping Agent
Amazon has reported that more than 400 million customers have used Alexa for Shopping in the past 12 months. The company sees the assistant as the future front door to its platform, but higher spend alone will not prove the customer journey is improving.
Rhys Fisher · 2 Nov 2026
Can AI Make Shopping Easier Without Taking Control?
AI-assisted shopping can help customers turn product discovery into a more confident purchase decision. But TikTok product designer Zhengyang Yang argues that the technology must reduce uncertainty, show its evidence, and know when to step aside and allow customers to move forward without it.
Rhys Fisher · 30 Oct 2026
Salesforce, Braze, and the Battle for Customer Signals
Salesforce’s planned Braze acquisition, Databricks’ campaign agents, Optimove’s zero-copy audiences, and Adobe’s Alpine F1 partnership all point to the same fight: who gets to turn trusted customer data into the next action, without losing speed, relevance, or control.
Rhys Fisher · 27 Oct 2026
Has Salesforce Bought Its Missing Engagement Engine?
Salesforce has agreed to acquire Braze for $5.66B, adding real-time customer engagement to its CRM, data, AI, and content stack. But Constellation Research’s Liz Miller argues the deal is really about one missing piece: the execution engine that turns customer insight into action.
Rhys Fisher · 21 Oct 2026
AI Can Spot the Signal, Who Decides What Happens Next?
Amperity, Treasure AI, and Adobe are giving customer engagement teams more capable AI agents to investigate signals, personalize journeys, and speed up decisions. The catch is that brands remain responsible when an automated next step is poorly timed, irrelevant, or simply wrong.
Rhys Fisher · 20 Oct 2026
Why Customer Engagement Is Still Too Slow to Be Personal
Brands have more customer data, dashboards, and campaign tools than ever. Yet turning a useful signal into the right response can still take days, multiple systems, and several teams. Amperity’s new AI agent, Pér, highlights the challenge of acting faster without losing context, control, or trust.
Rhys Fisher · 16 Oct 2026
Why Churn is a Customer Experience Warning, Not a Metric
Churn is often treated as a retention metric to manage at the end of the customer journey. But as NRG’s Suzie Dieth explains, it can actually be an early warning that trust, clarity, or value broke down much earlier, long before a customer decides to leave.
Rhys Fisher · 12 Oct 2026
Retailers Cannot Allow WhatsApp to Become a Spam Channel
Retailers are moving toward WhatsApp and other rich messaging channels to support shopping, service, and customer loyalty. But as brands gain more ways to reach customers, the real challenge is making every message feel timely, useful, and worth opening.
Rhys Fisher · 9 Oct 2026
AI Is Starting to Run Customer Journeys, Not Just Shape Them
SAP, Braze, Cisco Webex, and Lola are pushing AI from recommendations into customer actions, campaign decisions, and client conversations. But Walmart’s stance on personalized pricing shows why the next engagement battle will be fought over trust, control, and consent.
Rhys Fisher · 6 Oct 2026
AI Owns the First Interaction, But Brands Run the Customer Journey
The customer journey is evolving. Is your brand adequately prepared? As shoppers increasingly turn to AI assistants to discover and compare products, retailers cannot afford a disconnected experience once customers reach their own digital properties.
Rhys Fisher · 2 Oct 2026
AI Moves Customer Engagement Closer to the Customer Moment
Microsoft is putting CRM context into a proactive Copilot, Adobe is bringing real-time personalization to NHL fans, and Forrester has released its latest customer engagement Wave Report. The question is whether vendors can make customer engagement more useful without making it feel automated.
Rhys Fisher · 29 Sept 2026