As brands invest billions in AI to personalize the customer experience, are they inadvertently creating a more transactional, less human relationship with their most valuable customers?
Agility requires not just the rapid adoption of AI-based solutions, but the wisdom to know when and how to apply them to enhance—without replacing—the human element of the customer relationship.
Today, we’re going to talk about:
- The growing disconnect between what AI-powered loyalty programs deliver and what discerning consumers actually value.
Practical strategies for using AI to understand non-transactional signals and create more meaningful customer interactions.
How to evolve measurement beyond simple engagement metrics to quantify the strength of genuine brand affinity.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Jaclyn Wands, VP of Product & AI at Phaedon.
About Jaclyn Wands
Jaclyn Wands is an AI Practicalist and VP of Product & AI at Phaedon, a loyalty enterprise SaaS and strategic services company. A product leader at the intersection of human-centered AI and customer experience, Jaclyn brings technical fluency in machine learning, NLP, and data operations to a discipline that’s fundamentally about people. She has built and launched products across large enterprise SaaS platforms and founded her own human-centered AI application. All experience that shapes her belief that the most powerful technology disappears and make room for the human moment.
At Phaedon, Jaclyn leads the product and AI strategy behind loyalty programs that go beyond points and discounts to build genuine emotional connection between brands and their customers. Her work bridges the gap between what AI can do and what customers actually want. A balance she explores through Phaedon’s Humanizing Loyalty research and its practical implications for how brands design, measure, and evolve their loyalty strategies.
Jaclyn Wands on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaclyn-wands-bb507a24/
Resources
Phaedon: https://www.phaedon.com
This episode is brought to by CRMC. Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://www.thecrmc.com
We’re proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 – Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658
Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873f
Don’t miss We Make Future – the International Festival of Innovation in AI, Tech, and Digital Marketing, June 24-26 in Bologna. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c80991afff416bb2
The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1
Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom
Don’t miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba
Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com
The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Transcript
[00:01:16] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. As brands invest billions in AI to personalize the customer experience, are they inadvertently creating a more transactional and less human relationship with our most valuable customers? Agility requires not just the rapid adoption of AI-based solutions, but the wisdom to know when
[00:02:01] Greg Kihlström: and how to apply them to enhance, without replacing, the human element of the customer relationship. Today, we’re going to talk about the growing disconnect between what AI-powered loyalty programs deliver and what discerning customers actually value, practical strategies for using AI to understand non-transactional signals and create more meaningful customer interactions, and how to evolve measurement beyond simple engagement metrics to quantify the strength of genuine brand affinity. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Jaclyn Wands, VP of product and AI at Phaidon. Jaclyn, welcome to the show.
[00:03:21] Jaclyn Wands: Hi, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
[00:03:23] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to it. And of course, we’re here at CRMC in Frisco, Texas. And how’s it, how’s the conference been so far?
[00:03:31] Jaclyn Wands: The conference has been great. It’s my first year here.
[00:03:34] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:03:34] Jaclyn Wands: Uh, the venue, the Omni’s been s- stunning. Uh-
[00:03:37] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:03:37] Jaclyn Wands: … they’ve done a really good job at managing and herding such a large group of people, which I think from an operations perspective, is always impressive.
[00:03:44] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, I know, yeah.
[00:03:45] Jaclyn Wands: And then, you know, the keynotes have been fascinating. The teams, the CRM team has been great. So I’ve really enjoyed it. Yourself?
[00:03:52] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, same. Yeah, I actually, I got a chance to interview all three of the keynotes before the event, so I got to, I got a little, you know… And, and listeners got a sneak preview of, of some of what they talked about, but definitely a lot more here on, on site, so yeah.
[00:04:07] Jaclyn Wands: Love it.
[00:04:07] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, love it. So, um, and before we dive into the topic, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Phaidon?
[00:04:12] Jaclyn Wands: Yes, so, um, I have… So I’m a data scientist by training. I have a Master’s of Science in Data Science. My, uh, my capstone project, my large thesis, is based on causal mathematics and discovery of causal predictive algorithms using machine learning techni- techniques and technologies. Uh, and the approach was to determine if we could build better, smarter predictive algo- algorithms for economic outcomes if we start to incorporate computer science and mathematics in a computer science setting more fluidly into kind of those economics and large industry evaluations that we do at, like, the government level.
[00:04:49] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Nice, nice.
[00:04:51] Jaclyn Wands: Yeah.
[00:04:51] Greg Kihlström: We’ll have to talk more about that later. That’s, uh… We’ll, we’ll touch on some of that, but yeah, no, fac- fascinating.
[00:04:56] Jaclyn Wands: Yeah.
[00:04:57] Greg Kihlström: So yeah, let’s, um, l- let’s talk a little bit, though, you know, your, your research highlights a growing gap between how brands use AI for loyalty and what customers actually want, like I was kind of saying in the intro. So from a strategics perspective, what’s the single biggest misconception that leaders have about AI’s role in building customer relationships?
[00:05:17] Jaclyn Wands: I… So I’m going to lean on this because it’s, uh, pretty much a theme in my general kind of education efforts around AI, that it’s going to be right. Uh, as a leader in marketing, you need to have at least a conceptual understanding of just how frequently these models can be wrong.
[00:05:34] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:05:35] Jaclyn Wands: And I quote my favorite statistician, E.P. Box, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” And when you approach your AI technologies and you approach your AI strategy with this fundamental understanding, you are more likely going to implement fail-safes and the ability to do human in the loop checking that allows for a more powerful integration of AI, keeping it safely implemen- implemented within the parameters that it’s made to be used, right?
[00:06:03] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. So, um-Talking about loyalty then, you know, uh, m- most loyalty programs are built on this foundation of very transactional rewards. You know, you get points for purchases. You do something, you get, you get something directly in, in return. How does this legacy model clash with the goal of creating deeper connections that go beyond being transactional, and how does AI kind of, uh, end up amplifying this transactional nature instead of offering a, a way to transcend it?
[00:06:37] Jaclyn Wands: So this is a fascinating question because I completely agree that the base point economic system is a fundamental requirement of loyalty. If you’re not… If a customer doesn’t feel as if they’re being, you know, they can track their progress in your system and then redeem for something, this is, like, right at the absolute base level. Would you agree?
[00:06:58] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:58] Jaclyn Wands: Like, the loyalty system?
[00:06:59] Greg Kihlström: I agree. Yeah.
[00:06:59] Jaclyn Wands: And so I feel like building off that fundamental structure, if you haven’t done the research around your cus- customer to understand how you can enact more emotional loyalty, and you implement AI, you’re going to amplify that transactional nature of your loyalty program, right? But if you are building on top of your transactional point economic systems with understanding your consumer, understanding y- their experiences with your brand, understanding what uniqueness you bring to their kind of life, their environment. Like, Nike is shoe-wearing, right? Like, how are you uniquely entering this life, this person’s life? You can start to learn the emotional loyalty drivers around your brand and then you can build loyalty programs outside of mere transactional, right?
[00:07:45] Jaclyn Wands: Uh, surprise, delights, and rewards, share the, shared empathies and values. These things you can start to communicate with your consumer. And then if you implement AI to enhance this, it will enhance it in a way that is more of an emotional loyalty driver than a tranac- transactional loyalty driver.
[00:08:02] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, I think some of this comes down to, and you touched on some of this already, but, um, you know, getting non-transactional cues from people as well, you know, ’cause it’s, it, it is a reinforcing thing of, you know, if, if there’s action/reaction. You know, I travel somewhere, I get points. I buy something, I get points. It’s this self-reinforcing thing. But what can brands do to look at things like sentiment, intent, life stages, other things to tap into what you were just talking about to create a more genuinely human moment?
[00:08:36] Jaclyn Wands: Yes. So I have some examples of my favorite ways brands are doing this today. Uh, one of them is Nike. I’m gonna do a nod to them. They have implemented AI to scan your foot to find the best foot- shoe fit for your foot.
[00:08:50] Greg Kihlström: Oh. Yeah.
[00:08:51] Jaclyn Wands: And that is brilliant, right? Nike is, in itself, this legacy shoe brand, right? They do a lot of other athletic gear.
[00:08:58] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:08:58] Jaclyn Wands: But it’s the shoe. It’s the Michael Jordan, it’s the Air Jordans.
[00:09:01] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:01] Jaclyn Wands: It’s the, you know, it’s just where you live. And so they implemented AI to enhance their quite literal product experience. And so I encourage brands to think that way across the board. And then, um, Chewy is doing something really fascinating. They’re analyzing search input analysis to determine life stage of pets to then augment the promotions and the way they approach their, their loyal consumers. And so now you’re talking about you’re not gonna be advertising puppy treats to a senior dog for someone who just got a new prescription for arthritis. You’re going to be, as a brand, promoting something more beautiful around that life stage for that dog-owning family-
[00:09:42] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:42] Jaclyn Wands: … right, or that animal-owning family. Um, and then just, you know, flowing right out of that into kind of more generic, how a brand can approach it, like approach an emotional loyalty measurement versus a transactional success measurement, I want to start seeing brands look at m- more than just transactional frequency. What about how quickly did your loyalty member reengage with you after a documented error? So now you’re able to determine whether or not they’re a habitual transactional loyalist or an emotional transactional loyalist, ’cause now you’re talking about what was that distance of time for them to reengage you and trust you again. And this is the way measuring
[00:10:28] Jaclyn Wands: a round error and a round product, like product issue or a service issue, this is how you start to paint a picture of how loyal your customers are, are to you on an emotional level versus transactional level.
[00:12:20] Greg Kihlström: Well, and of course, doing this, I mean, there’s, there’s technology involved, but it’s not just about technology, right? So, you know, there’s also this cultural shift away from, again, we’re just, we’re just mapping action/reaction. How can marketing leaders equip their teams to think differently and think in this way to… You know, a- again, some of th- some of those things may be obvious to some that have been working in an industry for a while, but some are, are surely not, you know? So, how do you kind of work on the, the non-technology part of this?
[00:12:55] Jaclyn Wands: Really talk about… Let me see. Let me think about this. So, if we’re moving away from technology and you wanna ramp up your team, you wanna ramp up your team around loyalty, all the different types of loyalty… Some of the ones we talk about in our research is emotional, transactional, habitual. These are all different.
[00:13:13] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:13:13] Jaclyn Wands: Um, I would almost coach my loyalty team, like if I was leading one tomorrow, “I want you to start externally observing yourself and how you interact with every single brand in your life. And go out and seek new brands out of curiosity. Uh, see, see how these transactions are coming, or how these interactions are really starting to come to you. How are these brands representing themselves?” And I think when you take a moment and you encou-… And I think as just loyalty in general, we operate this way, we remove our consumer hat and we just observe ourselves as a consumer and see how brands interact with us. We’ll really start to amplify and create discovery around how you could implement technology so customized to your brand,
[00:13:59] Jaclyn Wands: right? In a way that it is amplifying their experience very, very much in tune with, like, your brand voice and your brand effort.
[00:14:06] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and then how do you… Uh, and traditional loyalty metrics aren’t gonna go anywhere. You know, they, they, they don’t take things away, they just keep adding more, right?
[00:14:16] Jaclyn Wands: Yes.
[00:14:16] Greg Kihlström: So, so, but what should be added to, you know, to some of those traditional metrics? Or even, you know, organizational KPIs that aren’t gonna go, sales that aren’t gonna go away and, and things like that. But what other metrics can be used to help with this?
[00:14:31] Jaclyn Wands: Right. So, um, leaning in a little bit more into what I was speaking on earlier, uh, imagining metrics around the fail point or the success point-
[00:14:39] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:40] Jaclyn Wands: … and removing yourself from just measuring a purchase point. So, you know, I fly American Airlines. I, my flight, I woke up in Rome and my flight was canceled. My flight was booked over 48 hours out. So, you know, I’m on the phone immediately with American Airlines, “Guys, what’s going on? Like, my flight isn’t here, and you’re putting me in Europe another two days.” Right? So, this is, this is a very, this is a failure of service. This is a fail- failure to launch across the board.
[00:15:09] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:15:09] Jaclyn Wands: Um, and all of their systems are rebooking automatically. So, like, what did American Airlines do in order to test the next time I booked an American flight? Did I stay with them? Did I cancel my credit card?
[00:15:20] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:15:20] Jaclyn Wands: Did I, you know? And, and, and measuring actual recurring transactions around specific use cases or events are gonna be more informative around emotion versus transaction.
[00:15:31] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:15:31] Jaclyn Wands: And then, of course, I think this is one, honestly, that we’ve been talking about for 12, over a decade, ’cause I, um, worked in social media CRM for a little bit. There is something to be said around brand sentiment on non-tagged conversations. Brands have gotten really good at engaging customers when they’re engaged purposefully.
[00:15:52] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:15:53] Jaclyn Wands: “Hey, guys, you lost my bag.” “Hey, my room isn’t ready and I’ve been, it’s 7:00 PM, Hilton.” You, you know, like, these, hilt-, hospitality, travel are really easy examples. Um, Hilton’s gotten really good around tracking when they’re tagged and their service, like, intervening. But something that you may not know about Hilton is that they do track non-tagged sentiment analysis because they look for travel disruptions for incoming clients. And so then they can tailor and customi- customize that person’s entrance into their property to try to turn the tide for that trip.
[00:16:25] Greg Kihlström: Hmm.
[00:16:25] Jaclyn Wands: And so that’s use of AI, that’s an external sentiment analysis, allows operations to adjust directly for the situation, and could be an ongoing metric measurement, “When we did all of this for this customer, did we see it increase frequency? Did we see a decrease fre-” And now you can really start painting a larger picture that takes into account the emotional component.
[00:16:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, and that’s a great, um, because AI is, is being used and is going to increasingly be used for this. I mean, it just, it makes sense because of the scale-
[00:16:56] Jaclyn Wands: Right.
[00:16:56] Greg Kihlström: … especially when you’re talking about the Hilton example. Uh, now we’re not just waiting for a hashtag to show up, we’re, we’re looking at, at broader things, and, um, I guess, you know, beyond that, that Hilton example, you know, is, is, what else can be done to help to train AI to look for these things to continuously improve, where, you know, human scale just can’t scale quickly enough?
[00:17:21] Jaclyn Wands: Absolutely. I, I actually talk about AI in a way that, you know, artificial intelligence is such an interesting term that we use in market. These large language models are pattern recognition at scale that we’ve never had before, but that’s all they are, they’re pattern recognition machines. So, they’re able to detect the most likely recurrence of something it’s already seen.
[00:17:46] Greg Kihlström: Hmm.
[00:17:46] Jaclyn Wands: Therefore, it’s something it’s already been trained on. Uh, and I think what’s important is as we kind- as we build data democratization around these AI systems, uh, data piping is going to be, you know, the live- livelihood of every single company. We, we as technology partners need to be talking about our ecosystems, our ease of data integration, and you wanna be working with technology partners that are speaking this way because nothing is gonna be more important than data accessibility-
[00:18:16] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:18:16] Jaclyn Wands: … because of LLMs, right? They need the data to work.
[00:18:20] Greg Kihlström: Right. Right.
[00:18:20] Jaclyn Wands: Um, and so it’s quality of data in results in quality of data out.
[00:18:25] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:18:25] Jaclyn Wands: And, and all of this to say, to try to get to the point that when we’re building and architecting these systems, data in, data out from all these different providers, nothing is more important than a human in the loop in critical touchpoints to prevent compounding errors through the system. Because all the models will be wrong.
[00:18:43] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:18:44] Jaclyn Wands: So it’s super important that as you’re building out your use cases and you’re identifying what LLMs will be used for at your company, that you also have crucial human, human in the loop touchpoints to just check off. “Yep, that looks good. We should use…” And, and, you know, that’s kind of my framing, but one of my favorite things is, I use A- I say this to people all the time, I use AI unapologetically. I use it to help me write my emails. I use it to help me write my social posts. I do brain dumps in it to see if it can help me organize raw thought.
[00:19:17] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:19:17] Jaclyn Wands: I am highly critical of the output, and that’s how everyone should operate with AI all the time.
[00:19:23] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:19:24] Jaclyn Wands: Yeah.
[00:19:24] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. And then, you know, looking out a couple of years, this is going to be… You know, AI, AI based loyalty and, and things like that, it’s, it’s like everything else that’s gonna be commoditized, and so there’s gonna be the standard things that kinda get plugged in, where now, to your point, you know, ev- everyone that I talk with is struggling to get their data foundation in order and everything. That will get worked out to some degree for, for many, let’s just say, maybe not all, hope. But, um, you know, what, what do leaders in a couple, you know, three years down the road, what are they gonna be doing or setting themselves up for that kind of the run-of-the-mill AI-based loyalty is gonna, you know, fall behind?
[00:20:06] Jaclyn Wands: If you are not preparing for every single person to have an AI assistant into their pocket to talk to their loyalty program, you’re behind.
[00:20:14] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:15] Jaclyn Wands: Every sing- every single one of us, trust in using Geminis going up for search, search kind of summaries and reviews.
[00:20:22] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:20:22] Jaclyn Wands: Everyone’s using ChatGPT for research. We did a… We presented with Forrester a little bit earlier in the, in the conference, and something like, uh, in, by industry, and, and I was fascinated even when I learned this. Like retail’s up there, right?
[00:20:39] Jaclyn Wands: Something’s also that’s in the top three that just shook me, finance.
[00:20:43] Jaclyn Wands: People are going to AI to ask for financial advice regularly.
[00:20:48] Jaclyn Wands: And if this is happening instinctively for customers to go to and, and do their research, it’s even more important that companies show up in the funnel, basically, that these, that these users are interacting in. And so, you know, I’m encouraging brands that we work with to be present in what I’m calling the MCP marketplace.
[00:21:13] Jaclyn Wands: Getting in the room with Google, getting in the room with OpenAI, talking about how your brand can have their own MCP branded on presence in marketplace. This will immediately be a trust factor. “Oh, they’re already partnered. My, I know that brand.” Or, “Hey, that’s my favorite brand.”
[00:21:31] Greg Kihlström: Right. Right.
[00:21:32] Jaclyn Wands: And, and being able to solve the personal, uh, identification, allowing them to talk to their loyalty program. It’s going to be kind of the reversal of the App Store. Instead of having one million notifications, you’re now gonna have a single channel throughput, and you’re gonna have to be the favorite right up front, bringing those favorite things to the table so that they allow your notifications from their AI assistant, stuff like that.
[00:21:59] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, we’ll, uh… (laughs)
[00:22:01] Jaclyn Wands: We’ll see.
[00:22:02] Greg Kihlström: Ex- explore. Yeah, definitely, yeah.
[00:22:03] Jaclyn Wands: (laughs)
[00:22:03] Greg Kihlström: But, um, and then, you know, as, as we close up here, you know, couple, couple last questions for you. So as I mentioned, we’re here at CRMC in Frisco, Texas. Um, what’s, uh, what’s been, uh, you know, a highlight for, uh, for you so far?
[00:22:18] Jaclyn Wands: For me so far?
[00:22:20] Jaclyn Wands: Honestly, it’s been learning from other brands.
[00:22:23] Jaclyn Wands: I’ve loved going to the small breakout workshops, hearing the stories and the problems that people are trying to solve. Makes you feel a little less alone in the world of loyalty.
[00:22:32] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. (laughs)
[00:22:32] Jaclyn Wands: It’s like everyone is- problem is very, very similar with a little unique twist, like a little flavor on it.
[00:22:38] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:22:38] Jaclyn Wands: So it’s been just fascinating to learn from all the biggest brands here.
[00:22:41] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it, love it. And last question for you. What do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:22:48] Jaclyn Wands: I keep my curiosity lever at an all-time high.I have found seeking, uh, understanding others’ experience, the problems they’re trying to solve, reading up on these kind of smaller published articles actually have really interesting insight. Uh, just to keep that scope broad, and that allows you to really maybe hear or notice patterns that you may not necessarily get from all the biggest publications out there. So just fo- follow the little guy and stay curious about peoples’ journeys.
