In January 2024, a customer trying to track a missing parcel ended up with a poem instead. After the customer shared screenshots online of how he had got the chatbot to swear and criticise the company, DPD switched off the AI element of its chat. The company said the problem followed a system update.

It made headlines because it was funny. It’s worth remembering because of what came next.

Three headlines, one pattern

A few weeks later came a case that wasn’t funny. A customer asked Air Canada’s chatbot about bereavement fares and was told he could claim the discount after travelling. The airline’s published policy said otherwise. When he sought the refund, Air Canada argued it was not responsible for what its chatbot had said. A British Columbia tribunal disagreed and ordered the airline to compensate him.

In April 2025, a software company’s support bot told a customer about a one-device-per-subscription policy that did not exist. Users said online that they would cancel, and the company confirmed the bot’s answer was wrong.

Look at what these three have in common. None of those systems did anything. They only talked, and words alone were enough to cost money, trust and, in one case, a legal ruling. In each case, the company was left owning the consequence.

Now give the system hands

Everything above involved software that answers. The next generation is built to act. Gartner’s analysts describe the shift this way: earlier GenAI tools help people with information, while agentic AI is designed to resolve service requests on a customer’s behalf.

Imagine a system that can issue a refund, change a booking or cancel a subscription. That changes what a mistake looks like. A wrong answer becomes a wrong outcome.

The Klarna experiment

Few companies tested this in public as boldly as Klarna. In February 2024, it announced that its AI assistant had handled two-thirds of its customer service chats in its first month, which it said was equivalent to the work of 700 full-time agents. Those were Klarna’s own figures.

In May 2025, Klarna’s CEO told Bloomberg that cost had become too dominant a factor in how the service was organised, and that quality had suffered as a result. He said customers should always be able to reach a human if they want one.

Both chapters can be true. The efficiency claims and the quality concern came from the same company. The question isn’t whether AI can handle volume. It’s what is being measured while it does.

What the analysts say

Analyst outlooks for agentic AI are ambitious, but even they urge caution. Gartner has warned that more than 40% of agentic AI projects are likely to be cancelled by the end of 2027, citing rising costs, unclear business value and inadequate risk controls. It has also cautioned about “agent washing,” where existing chatbots and assistants are rebranded as agentic. Its advice is to pursue agentic AI where it delivers clear value or return on investment.

What customers say

Gartner’s customer survey in early 2026 found that people are becoming more comfortable with AI resolving service issues, yet 87% said it is essential to be able to reach a human agent when a company uses GenAI. According to Gartner, customers push back when AI becomes a barrier to reaching a person, and among those unwilling to engage with AI, the most common thing that might change their mind was the option to switch to a human.

In other words, customers seem to be asking for an exit more than for the end of the technology.

A region building rather than debating

In the UAE, the ambition is explicit. Abu Dhabi’s government digital strategy for 2025–2027 aims to make it the world’s first fully AI-native government across its digital services by 2027. It is a government treating AI as infrastructure rather than a pilot, and it will produce real deployments to learn from.

Five questions these stories raise

These are my takeaways from the examples above:

1. Does it answer, or does it act? The risk changes completely.
2. Who owns the outcome? DPD, Air Canada and the software company each ended up owning it.
3. Where is the human exit? Klarna’s CEO and Gartner’s 2026 survey point the same way.
4. What are we measuring? Klarna’s early claims centred on speed and volume.
5. Is the use case worth it? Gartner recommends pursuing agentic AI only where it delivers clear value.

Where these conversations continue

These are the questions CX leaders in the region are working through, and many of them will be in one room on 19 January 2027 in Dubai at Agentic CX Unplugged 2027.

The agenda opens with a keynote titled “From Chatbots to Autonomous Agents: The New CX Operating Model.” It is followed by a panel on whether agentic AI is ready for the enterprise, covering trust, governance and risk, ROI and workforce readiness, and by case studies from banking and financial services and from retail and e-commerce.

Around 100 CX leaders are expected. The event is curated by Scribe Minds & Media and held in association with the Middle East – UAE Agentic AI Forum (20–21 January 2027).

Join us in Dubai and bring your toughest questions: https://www.agenticaiforum.net/agentic-cx/

Few cities capture the pace of digital commerce in the region quite like Dubai. It has firmly established itself as a digital commerce hub for the wider Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia corridor. The city’s combination of a tech-forward consumer base, strong logistics and payments infrastructure, and its position as a gateway between East and West has made it a natural testing ground and launchpad for retail and fintech innovation. Government-backed digital transformation initiatives, rapid growth in e-commerce adoption, and a steady influx of global retail and payments players have kept the market moving fast — making events like Seamless Middle East a genuine barometer of where the region’s digital economy is headed.

BIGBOX Media Company is proud to announce we are Official Interview Partner for Seamless Digital Commerce Middle East 2026, taking place from 22–24 September 2026 at the Dubai World Trade Centre.

As one of the region’s flagship events for retail, e-commerce, fintech, and digital commerce, Seamless Middle East brings together industry leaders, innovators, and decision-makers from across the Middle East and beyond to explore the future of digital retail. This year, BIGBOX Media steps into the spotlight as the show’s official media voice for on-ground interviews capturing the insights, strategies, and stories shaping the industry directly from the people driving it forward.

As Official Interview Partner, BIGBOX Media will be conducting exclusive on-site interviews with speakers, exhibitors, and thought leaders throughout the three-day event. These conversations will spotlight the trends, innovations, and challenges defining digital commerce across the Middle East, India, and South East Asia regions at the heart of BIGBOX Media’s editorial coverage.

From retail technology and omnichannel strategy to the future of payments and customer experience, the interviews will offer a front-row look at the ideas shaping the next chapter of digital commerce.

Meet Us at Seamless Middle East 2026

Whether you’re a speaker, exhibitor, or attendee with a story to share, look out for the BIGBOX Media team throughout the show floor. We’ll be on the ground at Dubai World Trade Centre from 22–24 September, and we’d love to connect.

#SeamlessDXB2026

Stay tuned to BIGBOX Media for exclusive interviews and coverage straight from the show.

BIGBOX Media Company is a media platform covering the retail and e-commerce sector across the Middle East, Africa, India, and South East Asia. Through articles, interviews, and event coverage, BIGBOX Media brings the latest news, trends, and leadership perspectives shaping digital commerce across these markets.

From social discovery to AI-assisted decisions and messaging-led purchases, consumers are taking increasingly unpredictable paths to the checkout. Retailers may need to rethink how they measure and influence the journey.

The retail funnel assumes a simple sequence: awareness, consideration, purchase. Shopping behaviour no longer fits that order. A consumer may discover a product on social media, research it through search, compare prices on a marketplace, ask friends for recommendations, and buy it through an app. Another may see a product in-store before researching and purchasing it online. Increasingly, AI enters the process too helping consumers discover, compare, and decide before a retailer ever sees a click.

The transaction is still measurable. The journey behind it is not.

From a linear journey to connected commerce

Digital commerce has layered marketplaces, social platforms, apps, messaging, and recommendation systems onto an already complex retail landscape, without physical stores stepping aside. BCG’s February 2026 report, $300 Billion Connected Commerce, describes this as a shift toward “connected commerce,” where online and offline retail increasingly co-exist through a single consumer journey rather than competing channels. The report is based on a survey of more than 12,000 consumers across urban and rural India and finds that five out of ten offline shoppers still research online before buying.

A purchase made on an e-commerce platform may have been shaped by a social post viewed days earlier. A store visit may end in an online order. The transaction leaves a record; the influence behind it often doesn’t.

Retailers track clicks, impressions, conversion rates, and acquisition costs with real precision but none of it fully explains the decision. But good tracking doesn’t mean the full picture. A consumer who sees a product on social media, searches for it days later, reads reviews, and buys it on a marketplace. Four different platforms, four different partial records and the review, often the most persuasive input, which probably mattered most, usually leave no trace in anyone’s dashboard. This is where the funnel becomes a partial picture: it shows progression but struggles with the non-linear interplay between touchpoints. The relevant question is shifting from where did the sale happen to what contributed to the decision.

AI is adding another layer to discovery

AI is accelerating this shift, especially in this region. Visa’s 2026 State of Digital Commerce in Asia Pacific study, covering 14 markets and more than 14,000 consumers, found that 74% of consumers across Asia Pacific are already using AI-powered tools to discover, track, or learn about products. Deloitte’s March 2026 report, The Future of Commerce: Agentic Shopping in Asia Pacific, points the same way almost three-quarters of Asia Pacific consumers are already using AI to discover and compare products, and nine in ten retail executives expect AI to be used more than traditional search engines by 2026, while half expect today’s multi-step shopping journey to collapse by 2027.

That’s a real shift in where the competition is happening. Retailers have spent years to optimise for visibility in search results. Soon, the next competition may increasingly be for a place in the consideration set an AI system builds on a shopper’s behalf, which actually raises the stakes on clean, accurate product data, pricing and reviews rather than lowering them. And it leaves an uncomfortable question hanging: how does a retailer build preference when the first recommendation comes from a machine rather than a search page?

Retailers have responded by expanding into social commerce, marketplaces, apps, messaging, quick commerce, and loyalty platforms — everywhere the consumer might be. But being present across channels isn’t the same as connecting them. A customer doesn’t distinguish between the e-commerce team, retail team, and customer service. They see one brand. The next challenge may be less about adding a touchpoint and more about understanding how the existing ones work together.

The answer isn’t to abandon the funnel — it’s to recognise what it can’t tell you alone. Awareness, consideration, and conversion remain measurable. What’s missing is the connective tissue: where a customer first encountered a product, what prompted deeper investigation, which information tipped the decision, and what brought them back.

The funnel may not disappear. It may simply become harder to see. Consumers move between platforms, compare, pause, return, and increasingly let AI help make sense of it all. The task ahead isn’t predicting every move, it’s understanding what role each interaction plays when the path itself can’t be predicted. Because the decisions happening between the clicks might end up mattering just as much as the click that finally turns into a sale.

At BIGBOX, we track and unpack these shifts, connecting retail and e-commerce leaders across Middle Africa, India and South East Asia to the strategies, data, and technologies reshaping how consumers actually buy.

BIGBOX MEDIA COMPANY – Expert Voice

Retail and e-commerce brands are discovering that price and product alone no longer win customers. Increasingly, it’s how a brand communicates and how much that communication can be trusted that decides who stays loyal. Mohammad Imran Shaikh, CEO of customer engagement platform TrustSignal, shared his perspective on where trust, technology, and conversational commerce are heading next.

Communication as the new differentiator

For years, Shaikh says, brands competed on product quality, pricing, and convenience — advantages that are “increasingly temporary.” What lasts is how brands make customers feel throughout the entire journey, since “every interaction—whether it’s an order confirmation, delivery update, payment notification, promotional message, or support conversation—contributes to customer trust.”

His framework rests on three pillars: Trust, Transparency, and Technology. Technology enables scale, he notes, but customers still need assurance that messages are “authentic, secure, and genuinely helpful.” The brands that win long-term loyalty, he says, “are not necessarily those that communicate the most, but those that communicate with the greatest credibility and consistency.”

Indonesia’s engagement challenge

Asked about Indonesia specifically, Shaikh points to four pressures: rising customer expectations for instant, personalized service; fragmentation across social platforms, messaging apps, marketplaces, and stores; growing wariness around fraud and impersonation; and the challenge of scaling automation without losing authenticity. “The retailers that succeed in Indonesia will be those that can combine intelligent automation with transparent and trusted communication,” he says.

Beyond the WhatsApp notification

Many brands still treat WhatsApp purely as a notification channel, Shaikh says, when the real opportunity is turning it into a relationship-building platform — one where customers can discover products, ask questions, and complete purchases without switching apps. The key, he stresses, isn’t message volume: “Successful conversational commerce is not about sending more messages. It is about understanding customer intent and responding with relevance.” As he puts it, “customers do not wake up wanting to interact with a chatbot. They want their problems solved quickly and conveniently.”

Matching channels to the customer journey

On TrustSignal’s own omnichannel mix — WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, Voice, and Email — Shaikh reframes how enterprises should think about channel strategy: “Customers do not think in channels. They think in experiences.” He maps channels to journey stages: rich, interactive channels for acquisition; conversational ones to reduce friction at conversion; personalized messaging for retention; and a blend of automation and human support for service. The goal, he says, is “creating a consistent trust experience across every touchpoint.”

Measuring what matters

Shaikh argues that open and click-through rates “do not capture the full business impact of customer engagement.” He points instead to outcome-linked metrics — conversion, lifetime value, repeat purchases, retention, and acquisition cost — alongside a concept he calls a “Trust Index,” tracking verified engagement, fraud reduction, and complaint volumes. His logic: “Revenue follows trust.”

Localization means relevance, not translation

Expanding into Southeast Asia, Shaikh says, requires more than translating language. “What resonates with consumers in Jakarta may not necessarily resonate with customers in Bangkok, Manila, or Singapore,” he notes, pointing to tone, timing, offers, and support experience as equally important. “Trust is local,” he says. “The winners will be those that think globally while communicating locally.”

Keeping humans in the loop

The most common mistake, Shaikh says, is “focusing on technology before understanding customer needs” — treating conversational commerce as a marketing initiative rather than a customer experience strategy. He also warns that over-automation can undermine trust: customers “still value empathy and human support when situations become complex or emotionally sensitive.” His summary: “Technology should enhance trust—not substitute for it.”

What defines the next five years

As AI becomes standard and product cycles shorten, Shaikh expects competitive advantage to shift decisively toward relationships. “The companies that win will not simply have better products or more advanced technology. They will have stronger customer trust,” he says. His closing thought: “Trust is no longer a soft attribute or a branding exercise… Trust is the new currency.”

About Mohammad Imran Shaikh Mohammad Imran Shaikh is the CEO of TrustSignal, a customer engagement platform working with retail and e-commerce brands across Southeast Asia and beyond on omnichannel communication spanning WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, Voice, and Email.

About TrustSignal TrustSignal is a customer engagement platform that helps retail and e-commerce brands communicate with customers across WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, Voice, and Email, with a focus on verified, secure, and transparent messaging.

This interview is part of BIGBOX Media’s ongoing Leader Interview series, spotlighting executive perspectives shaping retail and e-commerce across India, Southeast Asia, and Middle Africa.