This article was written by Greg Kihlström for CMSWire. Read the full article here.
CRMC 2026 surfaced three recurring failures in retail loyalty strategy — brands that listen superficially, friction that persists because CX teams are excluded from policy decisions and disruptive ideas that die inside siloed organizations. AI tools are accelerating all three problems for brands that have not addressed the fundamentals first.
Agentic commerce is no longer on the horizon—it’s here and scaling fast. This shift is forcing retailers to completely overhaul their operations to build customer loyalty and boost awareness from the ground up. Before diving in, we need to ask a critical question about every 2026 plan: Are we committing to genuine, fundamental transformation, or are we simply buying a new software package and calling it “transformation”?
That question followed me into CRMC, the Customer Relationship Management Conference, where nearly 1,000 attendees from more than 200 brands came to have a conversation about customer loyalty and what it takes to maintain it in the months ahead. The event ran June 1–3 at the Omni PGA Frisco Resort & Spa in Frisco, Texas, a championship golf resort just north of Dallas.
Ashley Travis, head of growth marketing at Pizza Hut, opened by saying customer behavior is “fundamentally changing,” with expectations rising to match the best experience a customer has had anywhere, in or out of your category. This surely resonated with all the attending retail marketers who are under real pressure to deliver ROI, and every roadmap now includes an AI line item. Speed is easy to buy. Coordinated execution is not. The three keynotes CRMC selected, on loyalty, friction and disruption, converged on that gap.
This article was written by Greg Kihlström for CMSWire. Read the full article here.
Original Source:
The Martech Futurist Blog – Greg Kihlström Marketing Technology & Digital Transformation
Original URL:
