What Does Agentic Commerce Change For Shoppers’ Experience?

A good salesperson doesn’t just ring up your purchase. They help you figure out what you actually want.

At Cannes Lions, our CEO, Diaz Nesamoney, made the point that treating agentic commerce as a faster checkout skips most of what shoppers actually value. It should cover the full consumer journey, from discovery and product questions to learning from other people’s experiences, and, only then, the purchase.

Rajat Agarwal, Senior Managing Director and Global Commerce Practice Lead at Accenture Song, described what that looks like at scale.

“Agentic commerce, in at least the way I describe it, is meeting the best salesperson you would ever encounter in a shop, who would know exactly what you are looking for, is not very intrusive, and really guides you to the exact purchase.”

Guiding shoppers well means covering that whole journey, from discovery to purchase.

Video Transcript

To me, agentic commerce is the entire consumer experience, right? We all come to know about a product, or we discover it’s called discovery, and then we we have more questions about it. Right, what does this product do? What color is it available in? What can I use it for? What can I not use it for? And so on and so forth. So it’s some discovery and it’s experience. We want to, you know, imagine ourselves owning that product, right? Or learn about others that are using the product. Learn from their experiences. So that’s the experience phase. And then, and only then, once we made our choice, we want to buy. And I think in a rush to implement agentic commerce, people are focused just on, oh, the agent will buy it for you, or you can just click and buy. I think the full experience is what matters.

I think agentic commerce, in at least the way I describe it, is meeting your, you know, the best salesperson you would ever encounter on in a shop, who would know exactly what you are looking for, is not very intrusive, and really guides you to the exact purchase. I think all of us have experienced that moment, and it gives us the real shopping delight. I think the fundamental belief is that shopping should not be boring, and it should not just be making it more efficient. In some cases, we want it to be efficient, but in a lot of cases, we want it to be inspirational. So I think as brands grapple with this issue, they should not feel that agentic commerce is just another channel. I think it’s the ability to provide a truly authentic human first, actually, strangely speaking, experience to their customers.