Customer experience
For years, ecommerce leaders have focused on optimising the customer journey. They have invested heavily in search, merchandising, personalisation, checkout experiences, and delivery options, all with the goal of helping consumers find products and complete purchases more efficiently.
In 2026, however, the challenge is changing. Retailers are no longer competing solely for human attention. Increasingly, they are competing for algorithmic attention.
Artificial intelligence is becoming a new layer between consumers and brands. AI assistants are helping shoppers research products, compare retailers, evaluate delivery options, and narrow choices long before they reach a retailer’s website.
As this behaviour becomes more common, a new competitive battleground is emerging: the decision layer.
This decision layer is made up of AI assistants, recommendation engines, and autonomous agents that influence which products consumers see, the retailers they consider—and, ultimately—where they choose to buy. It represents one of the most significant shifts in digital commerce since the rise of search engines, and it is already reshaping how retailers need to think about visibility, delivery, and customer experience.
This article draws on insights from expert-led sessions at The Delivery Conference 2026, including Unveiling the Future of Intelligent Delivery, Smart Costing: Speed Without the Spend, and 2026 Delivery Trends. Watch all sessions on demand.
The scale of the shift is difficult to ignore. According to Metapack’s Ecommerce Delivery Benchmark Report 2026, 78% of consumers have used AI tools during the past 12 months, rising to 93% among under-35s. ChatGPT alone has been used by 52% of consumers overall and 74% of those under 35.
More importantly for retailers, AI is no longer just helping people write emails or answer questions. It is influencing buying decisions.
The Ecommerce Delivery Benchmark Report found that 28% of consumers have already used chat-based AI tools for shopping-related tasks, increasing to 40% among consumers under 45.
AI-driven shopping behaviour is fundamentally different from traditional ecommerce.
“AI doesn’t act or browse like humans. It filters. It shortlists. It removes options. It simplifies decisions,” said Richard Lim, Chief Executive Officer at Retail Economics, in the Debrief: 2026 Delivery Trends session at TDC.
That distinction matters because it changes how products are discovered today. Traditional ecommerce journeys often involved consumers browsing multiple websites, comparing options, and gradually narrowing their choices. AI assistants are compressing that process. They are reducing friction, summarising information, and presenting consumers with a smaller set of recommendations that already meet their requirements.
Consumers see clear value in this. The most commonly cited benefits of AI-assisted shopping are saving time and effort (48%), finding better deals (47%), clarifying information and comparisons (36%), and discovering products (34%), according to the Ecommerce Delivery Benchmark Report.
As Lim explained during the session, AI is not simply changing how consumers search. It is changing how they decide.
Today, most AI shopping experiences remain assistive. Consumers ask questions, AI provides recommendations, and shoppers retain control over the final purchase decision. However, the industry is already moving towards a more sophisticated approach.
The Ecommerce Delivery Benchmark Report outlines four stages of evolution:
The critical point is that AI systems evaluate retailers differently from people. Humans may respond to emotion, brand affinity, or marketing messages. AI agents rely on structured information, measurable performance, and objective signals.
As AI assistants become more influential in shaping purchase decisions, retailers will increasingly be assessed on factors such as:
In this environment, operational excellence becomes part of discoverability. Retailers that provide consistent, reliable, and clearly communicated experiences are more likely to be recommended by AI systems that are optimising for customer outcomes.
The shift toward agentic commerce is no longer theoretical. It is already underway.
One of the clearest findings from the Ecommerce Delivery Benchmark Report is that delivery continues to play a decisive role in customer choice.
Delivery cost is now the most important aspect of the delivery experience, selected by 36% of consumers globally, up from 32% in 2023. At the same time, delivery speed remains a major priority for 23% of consumers.
Historically, delivery was often viewed as the final stage of the customer journey. Consumers selected a product, added it to the basket, and then evaluated the delivery proposition at checkout.
AI is changing that dynamic.
As AI assistants become more involved in product discovery and retailer comparison, delivery enters the conversation much earlier. Speed, reliability, returns convenience, and delivery costs increasingly factor into recommendation algorithms before customers ever reach the checkout page. That makes the delivery proposition itself increasingly important, as customers evaluate not just products, but the confidence and certainty surrounding fulfilment.
This means delivery performance is no longer simply an operational metric. It is becoming a discoverability metric.
In an environment where AI systems are helping shoppers narrow choices and compare retailers, predictability becomes a competitive advantage. When two retailers offer similar products at similar prices, the retailer that can demonstrate greater confidence in fulfilment, clearer delivery promises, and fewer exceptions is likely to have an advantage.
The decision layer rewards certainty because certainty reduces risk for both customers and algorithms.
As AI changes how buying decisions are made, retailers face another challenge. They have access to more delivery data than ever before. Yet, turning that data into meaningful action remains difficult.
“We now have more data than ever before. But we often have less clarity than ever,” said Emma Clarke, Senior Director of Product Management at Metapack, in the Unveiling the Future of Intelligent Delivery session at TDC.
“We now have more data than ever before. But we often have less clarity than ever.”
Emma Clarke, Senior Director of Product Management, Metapack
Across the industry, delivery data is fragmented across fulfilment systems, carrier networks, customer service platforms, and operational reporting tools. Valuable insights exist, but they are often difficult to surface quickly enough to influence decisions. Many retailers have solved the challenge of collecting delivery data, but the challenge now is turning that information into actionable intelligence.
The competitive advantage increasingly comes from making delivery insights accessible to the teams that need them.
Clarke noted that retailers need more than visibility. They need a way to transform delivery data into actionable intelligence.
“Customers want transparency. Businesses want certainty. Teams want clarity. That’s why we’ve built something new. A unified intelligence layer that powers everything we do,” said Clarke.
This vision sits at the heart of Metapack Intelligence. Rather than simply reporting on historical performance, the goal is to help retailers understand what is happening now, identify emerging risks, and make better decisions across their delivery network.
As AI assistants become more influential in shaping customer decisions, this capability becomes increasingly important. Retailers need confidence not only in what happened yesterday, but in what is likely to happen tomorrow.
For many retailers, delivery management still operates in a reactive model. An issue occurs, a customer contacts support, and the retailer works to resolve the problem after the fact.
However, AI is creating opportunities to move beyond that approach.
This ability to anticipate problems before they affect customers represents a significant shift in delivery management. Rather than reacting to exceptions after customers have been impacted, retailers can identify risk earlier and intervene before service levels are affected.
The value of this approach was echoed during TDC, highlighting the importance of proactive communication when disruptions occur.
“When a customer knows what’s happening, they will wait,” said Oksana Dambrauskaite, Digital Operations Leader at Decathlon UK, in the Smart Costing: Speed Without the Spend session.
“When a customer knows what’s happening, they will wait.”
Oksana Dambrauskaite, Digital Operations Leader, Decathlon UK
Dambrauskaite’s point reflects a broader truth. Customers do not necessarily expect perfection. They expect transparency.
Alan Mullen, Senior Customer Service and Business Change Manager at Superdry & Co., reinforced that theme in the same session.
“Customers don’t expect things to be perfect, but they expect you to update them when things go wrong,” said Mullen.
For retailers, predictive delivery intelligence creates the opportunity to deliver exactly that kind of proactive communication. It helps shift customer experience from reactive problem-solving towards expectation management and confidence-building.
While much of today’s conversation focuses on AI helping customers, the next phase may involve AI representing customers.
Mullen offered a glimpse into how customer interactions could evolve in the years ahead.
“Within the next couple of years, people are gonna have their own bots, and we’re going to have bots talking to our own AI,” said Mullen.
This idea aligns closely with the long-term vision of agent-to-agent commerce. Rather than having consumers manually compare products, check delivery options, and research return policies, AI agents could perform much of that work on their behalf.
The same theme was explored by Chris Kellner, Chief Executive Officer at Digital Genius, who discussed how customer experience is increasingly moving towards proactive engagement rather than reactive support.
“The way customer experience is going is when you have an issue, can you identify it in advance?” asked Kellner.
“The way customer experience is going is when you have an issue, can you identify it in advance?”
Chris Kellner, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Genius
Kellner’s observation points to an important reality. In a future driven by AI agents, retailers will be judged less by how effectively they resolve problems and more by how effectively they prevent them.
Retailers clearly understand the scale of change ahead. According to the Ecommerce Delivery Benchmark Report, 7 in 10 retailers expect ecommerce growth to strengthen in 2026. At the same time, adopting AI and emerging technologies was identified as the biggest expected challenge to future performance, cited by 36% of European retailers.
Investment is already accelerating. The report found that 90% of ecommerce businesses expect to increase investment in AI assistants and AI agents over the next 12 to 24 months.
The organisations best positioned for this shift are not necessarily those pursuing full automation today. Instead, they are building the foundations that will allow them to adapt as AI-mediated commerce continues to evolve.
That means focusing on:
Building these capabilities requires more than technology investment. It requires delivery infrastructure that can support increasingly complex fulfilment models, carrier networks, and customer expectations.
The retailers best positioned for the future are those building flexible, connected delivery ecosystems that can adapt as customer behaviour continues to evolve.
The defining ecommerce challenge of the next decade may not be attracting attention. It may be earning recommendation.
As consumers increasingly rely on AI assistants to navigate choice, compare retailers, and manage routine purchases, brands will need to compete not only for customer preference but also for algorithmic preference. Products will need to be visible to machines. Delivery networks will need to be understandable to machines. Operational performance must be measurable by machines.
The retailers that succeed will be those that treat intelligence as infrastructure rather than an add-on. They will build connected ecosystems, create more predictable delivery outcomes, and use AI to improve decision-making across their operations, turning delivery management into a competitive advantage.
In the age of agentic commerce, the next battleground is not simply the customer journey. It is the decision layer.
Schedule a demo to see how Metapack’s shipping and delivery software helps retailers build real-time, validated checkout experiences that convert—and keep customers coming back.
