Three in Four Retailers Say AI Agents Will Be Necessary For Competitive Edge by Next Year
Salesforce‘s annual Connected Shoppers Report showed that as 2025 chugs on, retailers have their eye on continuous progress with artificial intelligence initiatives. That technology will likely change and influence legacy processes, like customer service, loyalty and marketing, which retailers hope will entice and excite their shoppers.
Still, the industry has work to do before it declares victory on its emerging technology prowess, even as consumers warm up to the idea of AI becoming a more integral piece of their shopping experiences.
Three-quarters of retailers said they believe AI agents—systems that can autonomously handle what are, today, human-led tasks—will be necessary to compete by 2026. Still, just over half of retailers are currently piloting the technology, while 43 percent of retailers are actively evaluating use cases for agentic AI and 4 percent of retailers lack any plans to integrate agents into their technology stacks.
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Michelle Grant, director of retail strategy and insights at Salesforce, said, despite the fact that most retailers haven’t yet reached maturity with agents, their development and deployment is likely to proliferate quickly after pilot tests begin proving out results.
“Right now, we’re seeing a lot of deployments, but [on] a smaller scale. As people test and learn, and once those tests come back, it’s going to be scaled very quickly, and it’ll differ by function. So, it’s not necessarily [that] the whole company will be agentic first in the next two years, but certain functions [will],” Grant told Sourcing Journal.
The stakes are high—six in 10 retailers said they feel excited about the promise of autonomous AI, and 67 percent of retailers said it would bring opportunities to their business. They project that customer service skills, merchant skills and marketing skills will be the top three retail-oriented use cases for the technology. That could extend to tasks like handling low-value customer returns, optimizing sales based on historical data or drafting consumer-facing marketing emails.
And as that transformation continues, retailers have placed a solid amount of faith in AI-based technology. Ninety-four percent of retail customer service employees indicated that AI saves them time, and 93 percent of employees in that same group indicated their belief that AI will help organizations reduce customer service-related costs.
Consumers have indicated their excitement about agents, too. Seven in 10 consumers noted they have at least some interest in using AI agents to optimize their loyalty points, and 71 percent of consumers said the same about customer service questions.
Those basic functions show the early promise of AI agents, but more advanced processes like buying products on behalf of consumers are also top of mind for some. Sixty-six percent of consumers said they would be interested in an agent purchasing items when they reach a target price or in purchasing high-demand items, like exclusive sneakers, before they sell out.
Grant said that interest likely comes from consumers’ distaste for consistently monitoring items.
“I already know what I want. I know the price. Just take that friction out for me,” she said.
Despite the excitement around AI, barriers exist to fully implementing it. One of the usual suspects—cost of integration—is still high on the list as a hurdle. Grant said despite the financial and efficiency gains AI can offer organizations, persuading leadership to spend major dollars on such initiatives can still prove trying.
“The retail industry, in general, is facing so many different obstacles, from rising customer acquisition costs, [to] rising return costs, [to] dealing with what could be a more stringent tariff regime. To convince the board of directors that we need to embark on a years-long program to realize [AI’s] benefits, it can be really tough given the short-term issues that need attention,” she said. “Funding and implementing it takes time, takes money, takes human capital for a return on investment that may not be seen for another four or five years.”
Part of the struggle over effectively implementing AI systems comes from disjointed data and existing technology systems. Salesforce’s data shows that while nearly nine in 10 retailers have what’s known as unified commerce initiatives—in essence, marrying the systems and data on the frontend, with the information and processes on the backend—only 15 percent have actually realized unified commerce’s value.
But Grant noted that figure will need to increase for solid AI implementation in many organizations. About three-quarters of organizations indicated that, in 2025, they will increase their AI-related investments and their data management investments. Grant said that, while those dollars should work in tandem, prioritizing data will help produce better AI outcomes.
“Data management has to come first. AI works on data, and if you have poor quality data, or you or you don’t have enough of it, or you don’t have the right amount of it, then the AI isn’t going to give you results that are accurate or super meaningful or actionable. So it’s really important to really have that data cleaned up, ready to go, accessible,” she said.
As retailers adjust their strategies to further include AI, strong, convenient customer service will continue to be paramount to the retail experiences, particularly as consumer sentiment dives and shoppers remain price conscious in the face of economic uncertainties.
Salesforce data shows that about three-quarters of shoppers switched brands within the past year. The top two reasons for their switches were high prices and poor customer service, with 66 percent and 43 percent of shoppers citing those hurdles, respectively.
Grant said loyalty programs may become more important than ever in the coming months, as retailers work to keep their core customer bases engaged.
“With this kind of storm of issues—high customer acquisition costs, really low brand loyalty because of the cost of living crisis where people are switching retailers and brands and buying private labels to save money, plus more bottom-line pressure with the tariffs—loyalty programs are a really good strategy,” she said.
Consumers agree. Among shoppers that belong to at least one loyalty program, 84 percent said those programs make them more likely to make another purchase from the same brand or retailer. The specific incentives that are most likely to draw consumers into a loyalty program include points at a retailer or brand, points at the brand or retailer’s partner or sister companies, free shipping and more.
But problems with loyalty programs remain. Even though 67 percent of retailers already offer a loyalty program, with 29 percent of retailers without one planning to bring one to the fore within the next two years, consumers still feel that existing programs take too long to accumulate points or that the rewards aren’t worth the spending they have to do to receive them.
Grant said as retailers begin evaluating their loyalty programs on a more frequent basis, those will be considerations they’ll need to address to keep control of consumers’ devotion.
“Retailers used to look at their loyalty programs and update them maybe every three years. But now, because they’re so strategically important for first party data, for actual loyalty—and now fueling retail media networks—they’re evaluating them every year based off of their own financial goals and customer feedback,” she said.
