Front page
InterviewCX AI28m · 15:01 GMT · 3 min read
How Agentic Commerce Could Shift Power to Consumers
Agentic commerce could move the start of the shopping journey from retailers and search engines to AI assistants. Joko’s Nicolas Salat-Baroux explains how that could shift power to consumers, and why retailers’ product data may decide who gets chosen.
Online shopping rewired the customer journey once. Agentic commerce could do it again, moving the starting point from a retailer’s website or a search engine to a conversation with an AI assistant.
For retailers, that raises an uncomfortable question. If an agent does the searching, comparing, and sometimes the buying, what decides who gets chosen?
Nicolas Salat-Baroux, CRO and Co-Founder of Joko, tells CX Today how AI shopping assistants could change the way consumers discover and buy products. He also explains what retailers need to get right before agents become a regular part of the shopping journey.
How Does an AI Shopping Assistant Change Product Discovery?
Salat-Baroux explained that Joko combines a universal product catalog of more than 100 million items with users’ shopping and spending data, enabling it to recommend products that fit their tastes, brands, and sizes at the best available price.
His ambition is for Joko to become a new front door for shopping. He argues that natural-language search is a big part of the appeal, because traditional filters rarely match what a shopper is really after:
“It’s much easier to ask it in natural language than going on a website and clicking on all the different filters, because the filters do not necessarily match what you’re looking for.”
He adds that much of the useful detail sits in product descriptions and reviews, where filters cannot reach it.
Will Shoppers Hand Every Purchase to an Agent?
Not necessarily. Salat-Baroux separates low-cost repeat purchases, such as reordering a favorite lunch or restocking coffee pods, from high-value decisions like a new TV. Shoppers may trust an agent to handle the first from start to finish, but are less likely to let it check out on a $1,000 product.
Even so, he expects the agent to be part of the journey in both cases, whether that means hunting for a lower price or checking for a coupon once the shopper has made a choice.
Can Agentic Commerce Really Shift Power to Consumers?
Salat-Baroux thinks so. Today, he says, shoppers often settle for one of the first results on Google Shopping or Amazon rather than spend hours comparing, and those results can cost more because brands pay for visibility. Agents that do the legwork could change that:
Microsoft’s AI Agents Put CX Accountability on Notice
Microsoft’s Q1 2027 earnings call shows AI agents moving from workplace assistants into governed, metered business actors. For CX leaders, the decision now centers on accountability, cost control, model routing, and how autonomous work gets monitored at scale.
Sprinklr Pushes AI Agents Toward Proof at CXUnifiers
Sprinklr is bringing Marketing AI Agents and new AI measurement research to CXUnifiers 2026, sharpening a bigger enterprise question: can customer-facing AI turn live signals into governed action, then prove what changed for customers and the business?
