Designing Service for the Agentic Commerce Era

Service is being transformed whether organizations choose to lead that transformation or not. Customers have already moved. The economics are shifting. What remains is the harder work of building service as a system that anticipates, acts, and holds together, rather than one that optimizes the channels and tools of the previous era.

Many people now start elsewhere, using AI to diagnose issues, interpret policies, and decide what to try before engaging a company at all. When they do reach out, they arrive with context already gathered, steps already attempted, and expectations already formed. In more cases each year, an AI intermediary may be acting on their behalf entirely, expecting machine-legible policies and completed tasks rather than explanations. The service model most organizations are still running was designed for customers who start at the top of a carefully managed flow. That assumption is breaking down.

Designing Service for the Agentic Commerce Era covers what proactive service actually demands, why the classic journey map has become insufficient, how to design for continuity across channels and handoffs, and where human judgment has to lead. It includes a diagnostic organizations can use to locate where they stand today.

Read the full report to see what building service as a system actually requires.