Latest Posts
What If Better Support Is Your Real Moat?
There’s a phrase that keeps coming up in customer service conversations that I think we need to retire,…
The Grocery Stack Is Breaking
And therein lies the opportunity. I recently spent time in conversation with Sean Turner, co-founder and CTO of Swiftly, and…
When AI Starts Designing the Business
Insights on enterprise AI from a recent conversation with Alan Trefler, CEO of Pega In a recent conversation with Alan Trefler,…
Subscriptions Need to Manage Volatility, Not Just Churn
For most of the last decade, subscription strategy was framed as a retention optimization problem. Reduce churn. Increase…
The Thousand Quiet Saves
Brands rarely implode in public. They erode in private. A confusing bill.A reminder that arrives too late.A chatbot…
Building a Resilient B2B Career (While AI Rewrites The Rules)
There’s a persistent temptation, when talking about careers in B2B, to frame instability as a personal problem. If…
February 4, 2026
Stores Aren’t Broken. But the Mental Model Might Be.
This piece is based on a recent conversation with Justine Melman, CMO at Optimum Retailing. What stood out…
AI Didn’t Change the CMO Role. It Took Away the Hiding Places.
I keep hearing CMOs talk about AI as if it’s a tooling problem. What platform to adopt. Which…
January 21, 2026
Trust, Agents, and the Future of Work
Agentic systems don’t just automate work – they redefine where trust lives. The AI conversation is loud right now…
Infrastructure Is the Strategy
Why Retail’s Next Advantage Won’t Look Like Software Retail has spent years talking about experience – personalization engines,…
The Best of Customerland (So Far)
This year, Customerland crossed a meaningful milestone: 53 published episodes! It’s been a year of massive shifts – AI…
December 29, 2025
Retail at the Speed of Intent
Retail has crossed a quiet but consequential threshold. Real-time decisioning is no longer a differentiator reserved for elite…
When The Cart Becomes the Channel
Why Smart Carts Mark the End of “Unmeasured” Retail A conversation with Yaniv Zukerman, CMO at Cust2Mate For…
Unified Commerce, Real Loyalty, Actual Results
A conversation with Eagle Eye’s Jeff Baskin For decades, retail loyalty sat on top of the business like…
December 3, 2025
Fraud, Identity, and the New Economics of Trust
Digital commerce delivered on its promise of speed. What it didn’t deliver – at least not fully –…
November 26, 2025
The Collapse of “Good Enough”
What Andrew Schulkind Shows Us About Strategy, Craft, and the Marketing Metrics That Actually Matter Marketing spent the…
November 19, 2025
Cardlytics and the Real Economics of Commerce Media
From a conversation with Amit Gupta, CEO of Cardlytics Commerce media has quietly moved from marketing experiment to…
November 12, 2025
After Omnichannel – Why Brands Must Redesign for Agentic Customers
In my recent Customerland conversation with Ben Wiener, Managing Partner at Cognizant Moment, one theme kept resurfacing: the ground beneath marketing is…
CX at Its Core: What Technology Can’t Fix
Takeaways from our conversation with Lee Kemp Customer experience has never been louder.New tools, dashboards, frameworks, and acronyms…
Rewriting the Math of CX
My conversation with Ken Lain, Senior Vice President and Head of CX, Customer Service and Operations at Verizon…
Empathy, AI, and the New Operating Model for Customer Engagement
The conversation with Rob Walker, GM of 1:1 Customer Engagement at Pega, begins with a blunt truth: if we work…
October 15, 2025
When Research Finally Meets Reality
What SightX and ZS Are Really Solving Insights professionals are skeptics by design. When your work is picked…
Clarity First, Then Velocity
A conversation with NexChapter’s Art Sebastian Retail is changing in ways that feel both sudden and overdue. For…
October 1, 2025
Agentic AI and the New Demands of Leadership
The AI revolution is not arriving incrementally. It’s unfolding at a pace that outstrips the organizational reflexes of…
September 24, 2025
Why Product Experience Is Becoming Retail’s Most Valuable Currency
The retail industry stands at a critical inflection point. Once defined by supply chains and store shelves, today’s…
The Paradox of CX: Why Cost-Cutting Technology Initiatives Often Backfire
CX as a Battleground, Not a Back Office Function For more than a decade, leaders have repeated a…
Why Post-Purchase “Transaction Moments” Are Becoming Retail’s Next Frontier
A conversation with ROKT’s Ashley Firmstone In e-commerce, innovation often focuses on the flashy front end: discovery, targeting,…
Retail Media’s Shifting Center of Gravity
The retail media ecosystem is evolving with unusual speed, and the pace of change is beginning to outstrip…
Retention Is the New Growth Engine
A conversation with Recurly’s Lina Tonk. For two decades, the subscription economy has lived by a single mantra: acquire,…
AI in Retail Has Finally Crossed the ROI Threshold
A conversation with Matt Bertucci of Lenovo. For years, artificial intelligence in retail was a headline feature without…
August 13, 2025
CX Compassion Fatigue Is a Systems Issue
Let’s start with the numbers because that’s often where decision-makers start. When you design psychological safety into your…
August 6, 2025
Customer Retention in Uncertain Times
A conversation with Calvin Cheng, Partner at West Monroe Customer acquisition and retention have never been simple tasks…
AI’s Double Impact: From Data to Customer Insight
Lindsay Bayuk, CMO at Fullstory – on the Customerland podcast In the rush to make sense of customer behavior,…
The Real AI Revolution Isn’t Efficiency – It’s Understanding
A conversation with Resonate CEO, Bryan Gernert The pace of AI-driven change in business isn’t just fast –…
Why Emotional Intelligence Still Wins in the Age of AI
A Conversation with Mike Lytle, CEO of TP USA In a world racing toward full-on AI everything, the most…
Data Breaches and Broken Trust
Data breaches have become an unavoidable reality in today’s digital landscape. With over 2,200 cyber attacks occurring every…
What Consumer Spending Patterns Are Really Telling Us
At first glance, consumer spending data might seem like just another economic metric. A number to quote in…
Redefining Customer Experience in the Nonprofit Sector
When we think about customer experience innovation, nonprofit organizations rarely lead the conversation. Yet Unbound, an international development…
June 18, 2025
From Hype to Habit: How Pega Is Using AI to Scale Empathy, Creativity, and Control
Two leaders from Pega show how marketing and operations are being reshaped by AI – not just through…
How Website Analytics Grew Up – and Started Solving Real Problems
Lessons from our conversation with Dave Anderson, VP of Product Marketing at Contentsquare Every company claims to care…
When Brands Carry the Flag – What the 2025 Brand Keys Survey Really Tells Us About American Patriotism
In a year where everything seems political – and almost nothing feels unifying – consumers are still rallying…
The Art and Science of Smart Planogramming
The retail landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, with AI-powered tools revolutionizing how stores approach merchandising and customer…
Futurescape: What Comes After Apps, Ads, and Algorithms
There’s a phrase that comes up often in this conversation with Jess Leitch, Executive Strategy Director at frog:…
The Guts of Great Customer Experiences
A Conversation with FD Giambattista Behind every polished customer experience is a mess. Not in the sense of…
What Powers the Retail Media Boom? Look Behind the Screens
Over the past decade, digital signage has undergone a quiet but profound transformation. No longer limited to static…
How Composable CDPs Are Transforming Retail Media Networks
Navigating Retail Media’s Growing Pains: What Hightouch’s Moves Signal About the Future The expansion of retail media is…
Beyond Headless: The Journey to Joyful Content Management
The evolution of content management systems has been a slow and often painful journey. Many of today’s most…
April 23, 2025
Real-World AI in Retail
Talkdesk Leaders Reveal What Actually Works Beyond the Hype The intersection of artificial intelligence and retail customer experience…
April 16, 2025
Peak Immersion: The Science Behind Engaged Store Associates
Editor’s Note: I had been anticipating this conversation with Aptos‘ Nikki Baird for some time – mostly based…
