The transition towards agentic commerce

In 2026, e-Commerce is all about speed. More specifically, it’s about engaging with customers in real-time across a diverse range of channels. We’re long past the days when e-commerce shoppers existed solely on direct websites. They’re also across marketplaces and social media, which means customer support teams need to adapt to meet their consumers where they are. Critical to this adaptability is the integration of artificial intelligence.

 

In recent years, we’ve witnessed the growth of chatbots and the start of AI agents being embedded in customer support services. In 2025, Moneypenny surveyed 750 decision-makers, and 73% said they were currently using or considering using AI in customer support and chatbots. The bots assist human teams in handling less complex queries, making room for faster, better, smarter support. As a result, customer service and support leaders are facing increasing pressure to invest in and implement AI technology.

 

That said, AI today is not limited to reactive automation but is increasingly becoming an ‘autonomous worker’, capable of handling the full customer support cycle from beginning to end.

 

 

The end of point-and-click workflows

The point-and-click model - manually searching through order details and clicking through multiple screens - has dominated e-commerce for over two decades. However, consumer demands today call for a different approach. Point-and-click workflows lack real-time order integration, have rigid, predetermined paths, and poor scalability for complex queries.

 

Given how the point-and-click model operates, seamlessly bridging customer support across numerous sales channels is nearly impossible. Customers are not only on traditional marketplaces, but also on TikTok Shop, Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Notably, forecast data from Demandsage estimates that mobile commerce reflects over half (59%) of global e-commerce sales growth this year.  It’s an ever-expanding list.

 

If a business is unable to meet timely multi-channel customer expectations, they’re at greater risk of lost revenue. Our latest customer response data reveals that 47% of customers will abandon their purchase if they do not receive an answer within 30 minutes of asking a question, and 60% will give up on their purchase entirely if they have not heard back from the seller within 60 minutes.

 

 

The rise of conversational AI

While traditional point-and-click workflows are not as useful as they once were,  conversational AI is proving highly useful for online businesses. These virtual assistants allow them to engage with customers in real-time, answering questions, recommending products, and even handling sales.

 

Conversational AI can be trained to meet specific brand standards. This includes a company’s tone, terminology, and policies, and crucially, provides consistent communication across various channels. This consistency plays a huge role in encouraging customers to build trust in a brand.

 

As a result, we’re increasingly seeing British retailers replace traditional workflows with a conversational interface. For example, Fraser Group announced its latest AI shopping assistant has already seen sales conversion rates rise by 25% in its early stages. Similarly, after integrating an AI help desk solution, Right Deals UK - a furniture retailer - was able to handle support tickets 5x faster than before. Speedy responsiveness encourages customers to trust that the brand is professionally run and operationally unified.

 

Rather than dissatisfied customers and revenue leaks, the reliability created by conversational AI translates into trust and customer loyalty. Our data shows that AI chatbots are associated with approximately 4x higher conversion rates than those without AI. 

 

 

eCommerce goes machine-to-machine

Human-to-agent interactions are pretty established at this stage, but the next phase of AI assistance is already hitting the market - agent-to-agent interactions.

 

While ChatGPT is built directly into major retail and marketplace platforms, agent-to-agent activity in e-commerce is where a customer’s own machine interacts directly with a brand’s machine. Big tech brands, including Google and OpenAI, are already launching their own agentic commerce tools. Unlike generic help desks, limited to visual data and chats, agentic commerce tools can link crucial order details directly to customer support questions. It’s the “digital handshake” between consumers and brands.

 

The AI agents will essentially act as delegated shoppers, much faster shoppers than people. Conversations that once took minutes are gradually collapsing into a single, sub-second, automated exchange.

 

To be ready for this next era of digital commerce, teams must remain on top of innovation. Organisations still battling with fragmented systems will be left behind, while those already operating with unified data should experience an effortless shift.

 

 

Reclaiming human value through autonomous support

The way we shop is changing at speed and for speed. While traditional point-and-click workflows are increasingly flawed, AI-driven customer support is successfully updating the strategy.

 

This is all part of a transition towards resolution-first models where AI is more than a chatbot. It can check stock, confirm delivery times, and verify returns. The norm will soon be seeing consumer agents meet brand agents.

 

The more we embrace AI to handle the mundane and mechanical, the more our human support teams can handle the meaningful. People remain crucial to handling complex cases, and AI provides them the space to do so at the speed that counts. All of this ultimately enables the customer experience that keeps those customers coming back.

 

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Gareth Cummings is CEO of eDesk

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and PhonlamaiPhoto