Shopping is turning into a conversation, and that changes what “good UX” even means. We sit down with Purvi Shah, Senior Vice President, User Experience at Target, to unpack how user experience works when it’s not just an app or a website, but an enterprise-wide system that touches millions of guests and hundreds of thousands of team members.

We get concrete about the daily craft behind human-centered design at scale: grounding in context, pulling in behavioral data, prototyping fast, and testing side by side with real users in the places they actually work and shop. Purvi also shares how Target thinks about UX as a strategic pillar tied to business goals, merchandising authority, and technology that makes experiences feel seamless rather than engineered.

Then we go deep on AI and agentic commerce. What should technology anticipate, and where should it step back? We talk about trust as a core quality metric, why personalization needs transparency and control, and how traceable recommendations build confidence. Along the way, we explore a deceptively simple line in the sand: just because a system can infer your habits doesn’t mean it has permission to act on your behalf.

If you care about retail innovation, digital transformation, UX strategy, or designing responsible AI experiences, this conversation will sharpen your thinking. Subscribe, share with a friend who builds products, and leave a review with your biggest question about AI in shopping.

The sale isn’t the finish line. It’s the moment you hand your relationship to shipping networks, support queues, return policies, and whatever happens when a real human has a real problem with their order. I’m joined by Andrew Schmid, Chief Product Officer at Route, to dig into why post-purchase is still the most underbuilt part of ecommerce and why it’s quickly becoming the place where profit and loyalty are decided.

We get concrete about what “post-purchase” actually means, from package protection at checkout to order tracking, WISMO reduction, claims for lost or damaged packages, and the messy reality of returns, exchanges, and warranties. Andrew shares shopper research that reveals a scary truth: after a bad experience, many customers don’t complain loudly, they just disappear and 43% may never shop that brand again. We also challenge the idea that brands must choose between protecting margins and delivering a great customer experience, and we talk about how the right flows can create a true win-win where shoppers get what they wanted and brands keep revenue in their ecosystem.

We also zoom out into technology and AI in retail, with a practical lens: automation that speeds up resolution, reduces support labor, and improves customer lifetime value without turning service into a ticket-closing machine. Andrew closes with a real example of optimizing a claims experience, including an A/B test that drives a 21% lift in replacement orders, showing how small changes after checkout can create big economic impact. If you care about ecommerce retention, returns management, customer trust, and post-purchase ROI, hit subscribe, share this with a CX leader, and leave a review with the most important post-purchase metric your team is tracking.

Loyalty isn’t a punch card anymore, and it definitely isn’t just repeat purchases. We’re chasing a tougher standard: loyalty of choice. That’s the kind of customer loyalty that shows up when someone sticks with you even when a competitor is cheaper, closer, faster, or simply more convenient and when they come back after you’ve had a service failure or a product miss. I’m joined by Jaclyn Wands, VP of Product and AI at Phaedon, to get concrete about what “true loyalty” looks like in 2026 and how to measure it without fooling ourselves.

We break down the difference between transactional loyalty (habit, ease, familiarity) and emotional loyalty (preference, trust, forgiveness). Jacqueline shares practical examples from travel and hospitality, including a smarter approach to airline loyalty programs: stop blasting generic promotions and start using data to solve the customer’s problem with relevance and timing. We also tackle the uncomfortable truth about personalization. If it feels like customers are being “haunted,” it’s usually because the brand is optimizing for its own KPIs, not the customer experience.

Then we go deep on AI in loyalty and marketing. AI can create massive efficiency, but it also exposes structural problems in your data ecosystem and processes because it scales whatever you already have. Jaclyn lays out a clear “human in the loop” philosophy, what AI should absolutely handle (repetitive work, zero-to-one drafts), and where humans must stay accountable. Finally, we look ahead to AI assistants as a new gatekeeper for discovery and booking, and why brands may need loyalty programs connected into AI marketplaces to stay visible and differentiated.

Subscribe for more conversations on customer experience, loyalty strategy, and AI, then share this with a teammate and leave a review. What brand has earned your loyalty of choice, and why?