From Chatbot to Concierge: AI Agents Boost Customer Connection in Retail’s Digital Age

When an online shopper searches a retail site for red basketball shoes, today’s systems respond with a product list. Autonomous AI agents can take that interaction further — asking follow-up questions just like an in-store associate might: “Do you prefer Nike or Adidas? What’s your budget? Are these for indoor or outdoor courts?” 

Why it matters: Powered by large language models (LLMs), this next wave of AI technology can understand and respond to customers in a natural conversation flow. It’s an evolution from transactional efficiency to genuine concierge service that can build lasting brand connections. 

In a recent survey, nearly half of consumers indicated they would abandon a brand after a poor experience.

The current state: In a recent survey, nearly half of consumers indicated they would abandon a brand after a poor experience. But most retail AI still relies on traditional chatbots that create more frustration than connection. These systems suffer from fundamental limitations that prevent them from delivering the personalized, brand-aligned experiences customers expect.

• “Chatbots are horribly frustrating when they don’t do what you want or when you don’t follow their script,” said Warren Holmes, director of product management for Agentforce Commerce at Salesforce. “They fall into a trap so fast.”
• Traditional chatbots require extensive programming and constant updates to handle new scenarios, making them expensive to maintain and slow to adapt to changing customer needs.
• Most chatbots deliver generic, one-size-fits-all responses that don’t reflect a brand’s unique voice or understand the nuances of specific product categories or customer segments.
• Current chatbots often can’t access real-time inventory, customer history, or contextual information, leading to outdated or irrelevant responses that frustrate shoppers.

Driving the transformation: Retailers like Saks, Dolce & Gabbana, The Real Real, and Versace are piloting AI agents that can create the sophisticated, personalized experiences that define concierge-style service — at scale.

• Shoe Carnival is an American family footwear retailer with 429 stores across the Midwest, South, Southeast, and Puerto Rico. An Agentforce-powered Shopper Agent will provide personalized shopping recommendations to enhance the customer experience and respond to general FAQ cases.
• Saks is committed to delivering high-touch luxury experiences, and Agentforce is key to this vision.
  • “There are times when the customer wants an extremely low-friction interaction … where is my order? …That’s what the traditional kind of agent bots did,” said Michael Hite, CIO at Saks, in a recent episode of CIO Corner. “Sometimes you want a little bit more, right? You want to have a more complex conversation that there’s not a decision tree for; that’s really where we’re leveraging Agentforce… We really believe that the human aspect is going to be much more meaningful…”
• Saks is also enhancing its personalization strategy by using first-party data and AI to create a highly customized shopping experience across digital, mobile, and in-store touch points, transforming the luxury shopping experience and fostering loyalty.
  • “You can digitize every conversation you have with a customer. The technology to analyze conversations, extract intent, and understand what customers are looking for is happening right now,” said Holmes, noting how AI agents can combine conversational data with browsing behavior to understand not just what customers buy, but why they buy it.

Innovation in action: Agentforce is the agentic layer of the Salesforce Platform for deploying autonomous AI agents across any business function. The platform includes tools to create and customize agents, plus a library of ready-to-use skills for retail scenarios like styling consultations and order management.

Implementation reality: Technical deployment happens in “weeks, not months,” according to Holmes. Agentforce enables this rapid deployment, allowing retailers to build AI agents that adapt to individual customer needs in real time. The bigger challenge is customer adoption — most shoppers don’t realize these enhanced experiences exist.

• “Customers tell us ‘that chat button down at the bottom feels like a support tool, not a shopper engagement tool,'” said Holmes about improving customer discovery of AI capabilities. “We have to help change expectations to understand that it can be so much more.”
• One solution for that? Salesforce is working with retailers to integrate agents directly into search experiences, proactively engaging customers rather than waiting for them to discover chat interfaces.

The bottom line: The most sophisticated AI concierges aren’t replacing emotional brand connections, they’re scaling them. By remembering preferences, understanding context, and providing thoughtful recommendations, these systems create digital experiences that feel more human than the impersonal chatbots they replace.

“The technology is moving so fast,” said Holmes. “The biggest hurdle right now is just us humans adopting it.”

More information:

• See how AI agents beat chatbots in service use cases
• Read why, with AI adoption surging, shopping behavior is at an inflection point