AI Agents Transforming Customer Relationships

AI agents like Instinct are changing how customers interact with services, managing tasks on their behalf. This shift raises questions about brand loyalty and customer acquisition strategies for businesses.

added by @MarwaTechSpot

The one owning the customer relationship is the AI agent not the company selling the service.

I have been experimenting with #Instinct, an AI agent that works through #WhatsApp and can take action on your behalf.

My today’s experiment: helping my teenager create a study schedule.
The school has restrictions on AI agents, but Instinct proposed a workaround.

Last month, I gave Instinct my #DeltaAirlines reservation number. It found my booking and booked my window seat online without coming back to me for confirmation.

What a smooth experience! Traditional travel booking often overwhelms me with endless back-and-forth emails just to get things done.

▫️ I didn't need to open the airline's app.
▫️ I didn’t need to interact with its customer service.

I told my agent what I needed, and kept searching until it got the job done .

For decades, airlines, banks, retailers, and platforms like Amazon have owned the customer interface. They controlled the customer journey through which customers accessed their services ( a decade ago, I was selling cloud services at #Oracle to help companies optimize the customer journey).

But today those customers are delegating those interactions to AI agents!

The airline still operates the flight. The school still delivers the education. But the AI agent owns the relationship with me.

The agent is now the interface, adviser, and the decision-maker.

This creates a profound strategic question for every business:

What happens to brand loyalty and customer acquisition strategies?

The short answer: Companies may increasingly compete for the trust and recommendations of AI agents, rather than just the attention and loyalty of customers.

We are still early. But this shift could fundamentally reshape how businesses compete.

My experiment with Instinct is just a small example of a much bigger transformation.