The Day the Customer Doesn’t Visit Your Website
PLUS: The Unglamorous “Trust Plumbing” is About to Become Your Advantage
📅 January 22, 2026 | ⏱️ 4-min read
Good Morning!
The Executive Hook:
Everyone’s been debating whether AI sounds human. Friendly. Empathetic. “On brand.”
But the real shift isn’t voice. It’s agency.
AI is moving from suggesting to doing. And when an AI agent can press “Buy” on a customer’s behalf, CX stops being a conversation design challenge… and becomes a permission + identity + proof challenge.
Because the second money moves, customers don’t want vibes. They want receipts.
🧠 THE DEEP DIVE: Checkout Is Becoming a Protocol Game (And CX Needs to Care)
The Big Picture: PayPal is flagging the rise of “agentic commerce” protocols—shared rules that let AI agents, merchants, and payment systems coordinate safely when software is shopping for people.
What’s happening:
We’re heading toward AI that can: discover products, compare options, initiate checkout, authenticate, pay, and then handle the messy aftercare (returns, disputes, delivery issues).
PayPal’s point is simple: sure—if trust is built in. Consent, verified identity, fraud protection, and secure payments are the price of admission.
PayPal also nudges at the operational reality: merchants can’t assume “one agent, one flow.” Fragmentation across platforms is coming, so you’ll need flexibility, not a single rigid integration.
Why it matters (the part most teams underestimate):
When an AI is the interface, your customer experience gets translated.
Not by your UX team.
Not by your brand team.
By whatever the agent can infer from your catalog, policies, and support content.
So if your shipping promises are inconsistent, your return language is vague, or your product info is “technically accurate but hard to interpret,” the agent will do what humans do in ambiguity:
It’ll guess.
And when that guess goes wrong, customers won’t blame the AI. They’ll blame the name on the charge.
The takeaway:
Treat your policies like part of the product—because AI will present them like they are. Make them clear enough that an agent can summarize them without improvising, and design a fast “undo” path when the purchase wasn’t what the customer intended.
Source: PayPal Newsroom
📊 CX BY THE NUMBERS: Customers Are Already Using AI to “Pre-Judge” Your Brand
Data Source: Clutch Agentic AI Survey
70% of consumers use AI tools during the online shopping process. (Your “first impression” is often happening somewhere else now.)
65% use AI to research products before buying. (AI is a front door, whether you like it or not.)
32% use AI shopping tools weekly. (This is already a behavior pattern.)
The Insight:
This changes what “digital shelf” means. It’s not just SEO and reviews—it’s how interpretable you are. Brands with messy, contradictory, or hard-to-summarize information don’t just look confusing; they get recommended less and questioned more.
Source: Clutch
🧰 THE AI TOOLBOX: LTX Studio
The Tool: LTX Studio is an AI video creation platform built around storyboards and editing—designed to help teams create and refine videos faster without a full production workflow.
What it does:
It supports AI-assisted video editing and storyboard generation so you can go from “we need to explain this” to a usable asset without turning it into a multi-week project.
CX Use Case:
Turn your top contact drivers into micro-videos. “How do I reset…?”, “Why was I charged…?”, “How do I return…?” Short clips reduce misunderstandings because customers can copy what they see instead of interpreting text under stress.
Ship policy/process changes internally in 60 seconds. Agents don’t need another PDF. They need a quick “what changed + what to say + what not to promise.” This is how you reduce inconsistency—the quiet killer of trust.
Trust:
Customers don’t want “more content.” They want fewer surprises. Video can remove ambiguity—especially when the customer is already frustrated—and that directly lowers escalations and repeat contacts.
⚡ SPEED ROUND: Quick Hits
🛡️ AI agents widen the cybersecurity attack surface. Barron’s highlights prompt injection risks when agents can read emails, click links, and access tools—exactly the setup that can cause customer-facing mistakes fast.
🏛️ OpenAI pushes governments toward broader everyday AI use. Reuters reports “OpenAI for Countries,” aimed at helping nations apply AI in areas like education, healthcare, and disaster preparedness—public-sector CX is about to be a major proving ground. Source: Reuters. (Reuters)
🎧 eGain announces an AI Agent for Cisco Webex Contact Center. The pitch: real-time guidance inside the agent desktop to reduce performance variability and improve service outcomes. Source:
🔔 THE SIGNAL: “Trust” Is Becoming a Product Requirement
We’re entering an era where trust isn’t something you claim in a campaign. It’s something your systems can demonstrate.
Can you demonstrate consent?
Can you demonstrate identity?
Can you demonstrate what was authorized, what was purchased, and how you fix it when it goes wrong?
As AI starts acting on behalf of customers, the companies that pull ahead won’t feel “more automated.” They’ll feel more reliable. And reliability is what customers call trust when they’re not trying to be poetic.
See you Monday!
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