As AI-powered assistants increasingly guide shoppers from discovery to purchase, the experience itself is being reshaped. It’s faster, more conversational, and often more helpful. But it’s also increasingly removed from the retailer. Retail customer experience has always been about understanding people, be it their needs, their preferences or their intentions in the retail space. This is vital because it informs customized and authentic responses that build trust over time.

You’ve built your list. You’re sending SMS campaigns. Customers are engaging. But what happens after they hit reply? For most brands, that’s where the story gets uncomfortable. In a channel built for immediacy, 76% of brands still can’t respond in real time. Nearly half of consumers report getting a delayed, generic, or no reply at all. And 82% of shoppers have abandoned a purchase simply because they couldn’t get an answer fast enough.

Demographic questions cover age, gender, race, income, education, and more to better understand respondent diversity. Every response in a survey has a voice behind it. Demographic data helps researchers understand who those voices represent. From age and income to gender identity and education, demographic survey questions create the context that makes insights more meaningful. They help identify how different groups behave, what motivates them, and how buying power shifts across populations.

There is no question that AI is transforming the nature of customer contact. There is, however, ample debate about what that transformation will mean for the idea of the human connection. Customer contact thought leaders have long argued that AI is about augmenting rather than replacing humanity. They stress that by automating rote tasks and surfacing actionable intelligence real-time, AI enables humans to better demonstrate qualities like personalization, empathy, and resolve – and thus better cultivate meaningful relationships.

This report offers actionable, data-backed insights from our survey of 150 supply chain leaders to help brands prepare for 2026. Geopolitical conflicts, trade disputes, and evolving consumer expectations have made peak-season volatility the standard for brands and retailers. To prepare for 2026, supply chain leaders should revisit key takeaways from the successes and challenges of 2025.  

A crisis handled well can strengthen customer relationships by demonstrating responsiveness and accountability. Handled poorly, it becomes a digital record that surfaces in every future search. A complaint posted at 9 a.m. can become a trending hashtag by noon. We’ve seen it time and time again:

United Airlines lost $1.4 billion in market value after a passenger incident went viral.

Bud Light saw U.S. sales tumble following partnership backlash.

Tired of generic AI advice? Get the real playbook top marketers are using to turn AI into their secret weapon. From 94% better conversion rates to 20% productivity jumps, these are the strategies actually moving the needle – straight from HubSpot, a16z, and Asana leaders. Don’t waste time with AI experiments that go nowhere. This guide cuts through the noise to show you exactly how marketing leaders are using AI to level up their content creation game, crush their numbers, and optimize the customer journey.

AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are now an integral part of how consumers research products. Shoppers use them to compare options, evaluate trade-offs, and clarify decisions during the buying process. But how much influence do these tools truly have? And where do they fit alongside traditional search engines? To answer that, we surveyed over 1,000 U.S. consumers with experience using AI to understand how they use it for product research. Here’s what we found.