What if the most common point of failure in your digital customer experience: the ‘no results found’ page, could become your greatest opportunity for conversion and discovery?
Agility requires not just adopting new technologies, but fundamentally rethinking core customer interactions, like search, that have remained static for far too long. It demands a shift from rigid rules to responsive, intelligent systems that learn from and adapt to customer intent in real time.
Today, we’re going to talk about the evolution of on-site search. For years, it’s been a functional, yet often frustrating, utility for customers. But with advancements in AI, it’s transforming from a simple keyword-matching tool into a conversational discovery engine that can anticipate intent and drive a more intelligent customer experience.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Nitin Mangtani, GM and EVP of Agentforce Commerce at Salesforce.
About Nitin Mangtani
Nitin Mangtani is the SVP & GM of Retail at Salesforce. At Salesforce, Nitin’s focus is building Agent-first commerce solutions. Previously, Nitin was the Founder & CEO of PredictSpring, a leader in Modern POS. Salesforce acquired PredictSpring in September 2024.
Nitin Mangtani on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitinmangtani/
Resources
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Greg Kihlström: Hi. I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. What if the most common point of failure in your digital customer experience, the no results found page, could become your greatest opportunity for conversion and discovery? Agility requires not just adopting new technologies, but fundamentally rethinking core customer interactions, like search, that have remained fairly static for far too long. It demands a shift from rigid rules to responsive intelligent systems that learn from and adapt to customer intent in real time. Today, we’re going to talk about the evolution of on-site search. For years, it’s been a functional yet often frustrating utility for customers. But with advancements in AI, it’s transforming from a simple keyword-matching tool into a conversational discovery engine that can anticipate intent and drive a more intelligent customer experience. Now, let’s dive in. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Nitin Mangtani, GM and EVP of Agentforce Commerce at Salesforce. Nitin, welcome to the show.
[00:01:42] Nitin Mangtani: Thanks, Greg. Uh, good, good talking to you. Happy Friday to you and our listeners.
[00:01:47] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Looking forward to talking about this. This is definitely a, a, a topic ti- top of mind for myself and, and I know many others. Before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Salesforce?
[00:02:00] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah. I joined Salesforce two years ago with the acquisition of PredictSpring. Um, I was founder and CEO of PredictSpring, which was a modern point of sale company. So Craig, if over the weekend, if you wanna go to a Crate & Barrel store, or an Under Armor store, or a Hoka store, uh, or a Lovesex store, they all are powered by what was PredictSpring POS and now Salesforce, uh, Point of Sale. And, um, then six months in this role, so I was trying to make sure the POS product is well integrated into Salesforce. It was first foray for Salesforce to get into real world, Salesforce, obviously, being the leader in the digital world. Our founders, Mark and Parker, invented sales computing, and then now, being leading with Agentforce and Data Cloud. And so
[00:02:45] Nitin Mangtani: this was like a great, um, kind of, you know, extension of Salesforce to bring Salesforce in real world. And then Mark asked me six months into this role, why don’t I run the entire commerce for Salesforce, and that’s obviously a huge honor when, you know, Mark-calls you and, uh, you know, offers-
[00:03:01] Greg Kihlström: (laughs)
[00:03:01] Nitin Mangtani: … you this role. So obviously, I, I took on this role with all the excitement and, um, and then the passion for it. And, and yeah, here we are.
[00:03:11] Greg Kihlström: Nice. Nice. Love it. Well, yeah, let’s, let’s dive in here and we’re gonna talk about a few things today, but wanna, wanna start as, as we always do, uh, from the strategic standpoint here. And I wanna start, uh, with what I teed up in the intro, just this, this strategic shift from search to discovery. And so the concept of on-site search has been around for decades. Certainly, you know, those, those listening have been, uh, have been working with it and, and around it (laughs), and so on and so forth for, for years now. What’s the fundamental business problem with traditional keyword-based search that prompted this strategic shift towards what you would call Agentic AI?
[00:03:51] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah. Uh, you know, it’s a… follows the consumer behavior, right? W- if you, you know, see what’s happening in the consumer web, uh, whether it’s the Google’s AI mode, obviously, Gemini and ChatGPT, and Claude, so we all are kind of moving away from the behavior that we had, like, “Can I just type in two keywords to…” well, I can have a full conversation now.
[00:04:14] Nitin Mangtani: And I can express myself much more, uh, in a, in a more detailed way versus trying to just limit my expression, you know, jeans or sneakers. I can now say, “Well, I’m looking for dressier sneakers that go along with my dark jeans.” And that’s a much more, (laughs) you know-
[00:04:32] Nitin Mangtani: … expressive, um, need. But that’s how humans behave, right? I mean, I mean, the clicks are new to human behavior. Languages and conversations are not new (laughs) to human behavior. So humans have been, you know, conversing for thousands of years and, uh, it’s in fact, computers were like a little bit of a, you know, um, anomaly in that behavior for the last 50 years or so. And so now, we are back to how, how we should all have the most natural way to interact. And same applies to if you own a website or a mobile app, right? So if you’re a Michael Kors or Ralph Lauren or, or a Birkenstock, or, um, Hugo Boss, or Suit Supply, you all need, you know, a interface which is much more robust thana simple keyword-based interface.
[00:05:19] Nitin Mangtani: And so then I started looking around, and, you know, these decisions are complex. It’s always a build versus buy question, right? Do we-
[00:05:25] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:05:25] Nitin Mangtani: … build this in-house? We had amazing talent. And then I also looked outside, and a lot of times you’re like, “Okay, if I could reach that step, step B, in six months versus three years, well, that’s a, you know, material kind of, you know, speed and innovation.” And so we spoke to a few companies in this space. And, uh, I was lucky enough to meet the similar team and the founders, Vivek and John, and just phenomenal, phenomenal talent, uh, with their background from MIT and Stanford. And, uh, we’re just lucky, uh, to, to cross paths, and here we are. They are part of the Salesforce family.
[00:06:02] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Great. So, you know, in, in you describing that, I mean, there seems to be, uh, you know … Companies have been working with the, let’s call it the old way, the keyword-based way of doing things for years, and, and certainly there’s infrastructure set up, uh, for that and, and everything. So the, the, this seems like less of an, let’s call it incremental improvement, uh, and more about really fundamentally changing the way that a brand interacts with our customers, instead of just accepting keywords typed in and, and matching this is conversational. It’s, you know, there, there’s a, uh, uh, there, it’s a, it’s a bigger change than just a,
[00:06:48] Greg Kihlström: hey, it’s a, you know, step change improvement. How does, how does something like this change, um, the, a brand’s overall customer experience and the, the way that they treat things, even like first party data?
[00:07:01] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah. I mean, you know, i- if you think about th- three different things, I guess, right? One is, yeah, it’s, it’s a, it is a step function jump. It’s a similar order of magnitude as we went from search to ChatGPT.
[00:07:13] Nitin Mangtani: Right? We all saw that, you know, m- order of magnitude jump, right? So it’s not even like two X, it’s 10 X jump. And so it’s clearly that order of magnitude jump when it comes to e-commerce experience, and I feel really proud that our Commerce Cloud customers now have access to this technology, right? So it’s a, it’s a huge jump, um, in the last 20 years, right? I mean, like keyword search has been around for 20 years, um, in e-commerce world.
[00:07:39] Nitin Mangtani: Um, so from keyword search, which is, you know, 20 years, to now this big jump, now how does it impact the consumer b- behavior or the brand experience? Um, again, like my perspective is the best e-commerce experience is you are in a physical store, equivalent to that would be you are in a physical store, you are with an associate, he or she knows you very well. Like, they’re like, “Oh, Greg, welcome back.”
[00:08:03] Greg Kihlström: (laughs)
[00:08:03] Nitin Mangtani: “Uh, what are you looking for?” Right? And you’re like, “Oh, I’m looking for a blazer.” And, and, and the associate is not pointing you to a, a wall with 200 blazers or a section with 200 blazers.
[00:08:15] Nitin Mangtani: They are bringing you three blazers, right, that will, that’ll look great on you because they know you. They know your taste. They know your past purchases. They’re like, “Yeah, Greg likes these colors and I know what Greg bought in the past, and I know what the new arrivals are for summer this year, so I’m gonna bring the three which I think will look great on Greg.” Right? And you can kind of continue the conversation, right? The problem with keyword search was it was fire and forget.
[00:08:40] Nitin Mangtani: There was no follow-on.
[00:08:42] Nitin Mangtani: Which is, in real life, there’s never fire and forget. You don’t restart the conversation all over again. You are in a conversation, right? Like think about that s- shopping session.
[00:08:51] Nitin Mangtani: You are in the store for an hour and you continue to converse. You’re like, “Yeah, actually I like that blazer. By the way, do you have anything in blue? I wanna try that. Do you have something a little bit more casual?” Right? So you’re kind of constantly giving the additional prompts to the associate as you are refining what you want. And so you want to mimic that same behavior in the digital world where you are, the conversation continues. It’s not just you type in a query, blazers, and then, you know, the session ends. The session doesn’t end. It just continues.
[00:09:19] Nitin Mangtani: And so that’s really the delightful aspect for a brand experience and the consumer experience, ’cause now, you know, it’s 24 by seven. It’s accessible to you, right, on your mobile phone. Um, and the last thing is, yeah, conversion rates, right? Um, can you improve the conversion rates both when you’re selling, right, because that’s the ultimate metric, conversion rate/average order value.
[00:09:43] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:09:43] Nitin Mangtani: But also can you reduce the returns?
[00:09:46] Nitin Mangtani: Biggest problem in apparel at least is the returns are 18% these days. Almost one in $5 are returned, and that’s, that’s, that’s bad for many reasons. It’s bad for environment.
[00:09:57] Greg Kihlström: Oh. Right.
[00:09:58] Nitin Mangtani: Um, it’s bad for your (laughs) bottom and top line both. And so if, if you can give better, more relevant answers, and more accurate answers, which are products in this case, the chances of you returning a product will be also reduced-
[00:10:13] Nitin Mangtani: … ’cause you are kind of, you know, hitting the mark on what the customer wants. So it’s a, it’s a threefold kind of, you know, answer to your question on how, how big of a shift is this.
[00:10:23] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think maybe to go back to the, your point about the, the, the fire and forget, uh, part of this, you know, when talking about making this operational and, and implementing it, to your, to what you were saying about this is instead of this is a set, uh, or a series of searches and keyword matches and, and things like that, it’s a conversation, right? So what does that mean when marketers and commerce leaders are used to essentially, uh, having a lot of manual rules that, that kind of guide how things go? You know, wha- what is that … How does that world change when, when it actually comes to implementing this when things seem a- a lot more fluid in a,
[00:11:08] Greg Kihlström: in a conversational atmosphere?
[00:11:10] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah. I, I always thought merchandising rules, in a lot of ways, were almost like a patchwork to limitation of a good search engine. Doesn’t mean you don’t need it. Merchandising is the most complex art.
[00:11:24] Nitin Mangtani: Like being a buyer, (laughs) I just appreciate the taste of a buyer, right? Like a good merchandiser, a good buyer knows what, what they want to buy. The curation is a very hard science, right, whether it’s digital world or real world. And then how do you, you know, put that assortment both in the physical and the real world? Those are really hard sciences, right? I, I have tremendous respect. But you don’t want, like, 100, or 1,000, or 5,000 rules.
[00:11:52] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:11:52] Nitin Mangtani: That means the search is not doing their job. If, if you have to write a rule for every single use case, it’s just not scalable. That means the search is broken.
[00:11:59] Nitin Mangtani: It’s phenomenally broken. And unfortunately, that’s with the state of the art in the last 20 years. It’s just been… … you know, a lot of tuning, a lot of this thing, micro optimization. And this is where when we looked at Simulate, they kind of took the broader knowledge base they had about everything that’s going on in the web and LLMs and gen AI, right, which is… The semantics are much more sophisticated than simply, you know, the synonyming. Th- so, so the concept of having synonyms and merchandising or boost rules and what, you know, the IR folks will call query rewrite. You’re rewriting-a query as it types in.
[00:12:36] Nitin Mangtani: It’s not… Even when I was at Google, this is 2006, literally 20 years ago, you know, I, uh, I had built an e-commerce search engine, Google Commerce Search, and I’d launched it. Uh, right? And then you can read about it. And so that tech stack was available even 20 years ago, but what’s new is really leveraging the power of LLMs. And I’ll give you a concrete example. So let’s say you, you are BevMo! or, um, uh, what’s the liquor store, or chain near you, Greg? In, uh, in, uh, uh, Virginia.
[00:13:07] Greg Kihlström: Um, well, here in Virginia, it’s state-owned stuff, so A- the ABC, but yeah. (laughs)
[00:13:11] Nitin Mangtani: Okay, ABC. Yeah, so I, actually I didn’t know Virginia has state-owned. I know Canada, we have some customers, uh, which is a lot of state-owned, uh, thing. But yeah, so, uh, you know, if you’re a, you know, a liquor store or you sell wine, right? And, and you have your website and a mobile app, right? Um, and let’s say you type in Taylor Swift wine.
[00:13:32] Greg Kihlström: Hmm.
[00:13:32] Nitin Mangtani: What would you get? Zero search results, right? Because there’s no Taylor Swift branded wine out there in the market.
[00:13:38] Nitin Mangtani: So you’re just gonna get zero results. Now, if you really take a step back and you, you, you know, understand what’s going on in the social media and everything, you would see that Taylor Swift had posted some Instagram posts where she’s drinking white wine.
[00:13:53] Nitin Mangtani: Right? And people found out what that wine is. They’re like, “Oh, that looks like Sauvignon Blanc,” and, “Is it from New Zealand?” And they did all this research and kind of zeroed down to actually that particular brand.
[00:14:04] Greg Kihlström: Wow.
[00:14:04] Nitin Mangtani: Right? So there’s been a lot of chatter around, like, what kind of wine that Taylor Swift likes based on her Instagram posts.
[00:14:09] Nitin Mangtani: We are able to take that knowledge and apply this very advanced semantics. So instead of giving zero search results, because you’re like, “Well, I don’t carry Taylor Swift wine,” because there’s no such thing as Taylor Swift wine.
[00:14:21] Greg Kihlström: Right, right. (laughs)
[00:14:22] Nitin Mangtani: Right? You say, “Oh, I understand what you mean. Oh, you mean… You, you’re looking for a white wine, or you like Sauvignon Blanc?”
[00:14:27] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:27] Nitin Mangtani: Or you like the growers from New Zealand? Let me show you some search results that will come closest to you.
[00:14:32] Nitin Mangtani: So that level of advanced semantics, coupled with this full conversation, so it’s not find and forget. You can then further refine, saying like, oh, “Can you show me wines in the $100 to $200 range? Can I, can I get a little bit more dry side?” So that kind of, you know, conversation in the same interface without leaving it allows you to, uh, shopping kind of, you know, the whole funnel, which, which we haven’t seen, uh, so far because, as I said, you just keep typing in two keywords on that search box.
[00:15:04] Greg Kihlström: Let’s maybe take it one step further and so, you know, certainly y- you’ve, you’ve already mentioned the, the acquisition of, of Simulate by, by Salesforce. How does taking that into, uh, you know, a Salesforce ecosystem… What, what does that enable and, you know, how does that e- enable, uh, maybe broader, um, scenarios and, and, you know, uh, what, what, what… I guess, yeah, what does it enable?
[00:15:32] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah, I mean, you know, as I said, we, we kind of went through… And we go through this, right, for other acquisitions too. I mean, you know, we acquired some phenomenal companies, like the history of Salesforce, including my own company, PredictSpring, right? So, you know, commerce is very important to, uh, Salesforce. Uh, Mark absolutely loves retail. He’s very tuned in into all the products, not just commerce obviously. Um, and he’s, he’s a, he’s, he’s, he’s in his founder mode. It’s still, you know, same energy, so it’s kind of fun to think about it.
[00:16:00] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:16:00] Nitin Mangtani: So from Salesforce perspective, right, like, this was, like, build versus buy decision. We came to the conclusion that buy will help us accelerate our roadmap by three years. And that’s a great value to our joint customers that we can offer it m- morning than in 2030. (laughs) Right?
[00:16:16] Nitin Mangtani: And, and that’s kind of… And if you look at many of the e-commerce platforms out there, and I respect my competition tremendously, and competition is beautiful because it brings the best out of you, they don’t have this level of sophistication. It’s a very advanced next generation search that we are able to offer to, you know, our customers, and, and the feedback has been extremely positive, like, you know, across the board. Everybody I spoke to, all the CIOs, they either knew Simulate, they knew John and Vivek, and everybody’s like, “Amazing move.” (laughs)
[00:16:47] Nitin Mangtani: “I’m glad you guys, you know, uh, acquired, acquired Simulate.”
[00:16:51] Greg Kihlström: Nice, nice. So let’s talk about… I, I know you touched on this a little bit earlier, but I want to talk about how we prove ROI on this. Uh, certainly from a, from a customer experience perspective, it’s definitely an improvement when, you know, you move beyond that, that simpler keyword search and into something conversational. But, you know, the, the standard metrics are still gonna apply in an e-curr- e-commerce setting. But what, what else becomes important or what else becomes possible to measure that should be focused on in this kind of conversational, uh, experience?
[00:17:27] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah, I mean, you’re right. Like, you know, conversion rate is still conversion rate. Like you’re-
[00:17:32] Nitin Mangtani: … you’re driving traffic to your website and you want conversions to be high. AOV matters. Uh, you know, the units, the overall average, the order value matters tremendously, right? So, um, you can have a high conversion, but you’d also prefer that if the order value was, instead of a hundred bucks, $250.
[00:17:52] Nitin Mangtani: So you kind of lift, um, in this thing. So those metrics don’t go away, search click rates, you know, um, sh- like long clicks versus short clicks, uh, engagement time, um, response to… Like, you know, in, like, how many prompts you get the answer so you’re not in the- … from loop also (laughs) right?
[00:18:12] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:18:12] Nitin Mangtani: So you wanna also make sure the technology is smart enough that it’s, uh, there’s one thing to have conversation and the other thing is to have too much of conversation. So you, you want to make sure the technology is giving you the most highly relevant, uh, search results. The example I gave you it’s, you know, like, instead of pointing you to an entire rack of 300 blazers, you, you want to bring the three that will-most likely, you know, appeal to you.
[00:18:36] Nitin Mangtani: Uh, returns I men- mentioned to you, we don’t talk about returns a lot. I mean, cre- 20%, 18% to 20% returns is, is, is crazy.
[00:18:45] Greg Kihlström: Wow.
[00:18:45] Nitin Mangtani: If 20 years ago when we started on this journey, or 25 years ago, if somebody told us that we are gonna see 20% return rate, we would have not even started on e-commerce. (laughs)
[00:18:55] Nitin Mangtani: Like, the board would have shut down the e-commerce projects. They’re like, “Wait a second. On slide number three, did you say that the returns are gonna be 20%” (laughs)
[00:19:05] Nitin Mangtani: So, so I think it’s important. And this is where our only channel also plays in, right? Like, part of having point of sale is you can now buy online and return in store. And the beauty of returning in store is we are able to analyze the data. Why? Why?
[00:19:19] Nitin Mangtani: It’s because we can talk to a customer and saying, “You know, what happened? Did- the size was not right?” Um, and, and more importantly, we are like, “Oh, is, is just a size issue? Then let me give you the, the, the different size that might fit on you.”
[00:19:31] Nitin Mangtani: Or, “If you didn’t like the color, I actually have a different color,” right? So, going back to the store or, or taking the customer back to the store allows you to do an exchange instead of a straight return.
[00:19:42] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:43] Nitin Mangtani: Uh, so, so the foundation of unified commerce don’t go away, like connecting online and offline, which, which is also we have been, something we have been talking about for a long time.
[00:19:51] Nitin Mangtani: Uh, those foundations go- don’t go away. But more importantly, we are also bringing similar to store associates.
[00:19:58] Nitin Mangtani: So if you are in a store and you’re looking for something and you don’t have it, because, you know, the stores these days are not 300,000 square feet.
[00:20:06] Greg Kihlström: Sure, yeah.
[00:20:06] Nitin Mangtani: They are like 3,000 square feet brand-on stores, right? So we are seeing a transformation.
[00:20:10] Nitin Mangtani: And so you can’t… By design, you cannot carry every single assortment and every single, uh, product line that you have. And so endless style becomes important, ’cause then you can see what’s everything in your warehouse, not just in the store or stores nearby. So the iPad that we have and the devices, tablets we have, um, to the associates, they can also use similar, similar interface to look for products on behalf of the customer-
[00:20:34] Nitin Mangtani: … in the real physical, which is also new, which, which, you know, most people haven’t talked about. How do you bring AI in this physical stores? But, but not trying to take over the human. The human is important. It’s making-humans’ life easy.
[00:20:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I mean, I think that’s the… In, in all the conversations about e-commerce, um, I think it, it sometimes overshadows the fact that just how important brick and mortar, um, stores still are as well. And so… And, and also just how consumers have different behaviors when they go in a store versus when they shop online. And yet, they want a seamless experience in, you know, across the board, wherever they are, on whatever device or in person or, or whatever. So, being able to tie those things seamlessly. Uh, you know, it also, I mean, I would imagine augmenting how an, an in-store, um, employee is able to help a customer, that’s gonna save them time. And, you know, if there’s commission, you know, greater commission,
[00:21:31] Greg Kihlström: all that kinda stuff too. So, it seems like a win-win across the board.
[00:21:36] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, you know, and then bringing, you know, these whole agentic experiences in real world.
[00:21:42] Nitin Mangtani: Uh, that’s, that’s definitely net new, because we only think about, you know, consumer, but here, associate plays a, plays a equal role. So, there’s so many… You know, we are, we are making some of the biggest moves, I would say, in commerce here at Salesforce in the last five years.
[00:21:58] Nitin Mangtani: From the acquisition of PredictSpring to Simulate, we launched Storefront Next, which is our new front end experience that complements the agentic experience. This is, this is by far… This, we are calling it the June release that is coming up, uh, in, uh, in less than two weeks. Um, it’s our biggest release in the five, last five years.
[00:22:16] Greg Kihlström: Wow, wow. Exciting. (laughs) That’s great. Well, um, and I wanna talk a little bit more about, you know, some, some of the future stuff. And so, um, and m- maybe, maybe this touches on what you just mentioned, but, uh, you know, you’re, you’re piloting, um, product-
[00:22:31] Nitin Mangtani: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:31] Greg Kihlström: … catalog integration with external AI channels like-
[00:22:34] Nitin Mangtani: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:34] Greg Kihlström: … ChatGPT and Gemini. Certainly, there’s a lot of talk about, um, about the, you know, brand discovery and, and visibility and, and all those things in Agentic Commerce. You know, wha- what does this mean for the future of, of discovery and, you know, how do you see kinda the, the line blurring between owned properties and some of these third-party conversational platforms?
[00:23:00] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah. I mean, you know, commerce will happen, um, commerce will happen, what I call it, on owned and operated properties.
[00:23:08] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:23:08] Nitin Mangtani: Uh, Agentic Commerce, the properties you own, be it mobile app, your app, your website, your stores.
[00:23:15] Greg Kihlström: Hm.
[00:23:15] Nitin Mangtani: But it will also happen on agentic channels like Gemini, OpenAI. Definitely, the referral traffic is gonna come from OpenAI and Gemini. We are already seeing it, right-
[00:23:24] Nitin Mangtani: … in our stats. And I had a r- review yesterday with my team and we are looking at how much traffic is, referral traffic is coming from OpenAI and Gemini. So what we have done is we have signed a partnership with both OpenAI and Gemini, and we are also, uh, part of the tech council for UCP protocol-
[00:23:40] Nitin Mangtani: … to enable- Mm. … commerce on Gemini and other revenues. So, on our side, you know, we are basically leading both sides of the movie. Agentic on owned and operated properties and agentic on, what I call it, syndicated channels such as OpenAI and Gemini.
[00:23:56] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Great, great. And so then, you know, looking, you know, a few, few years out, um, five years maybe too, (laughs) too, uh, too far out to see, you know, what, what would you say is the, the ultimate vision for Agentic AI in commerce, you know? And, and again, keeping in mind that- There’s still gonna be some of the more, let’s say, traditional methods, but, you know, what, will, will every customer interaction be mediated by, mediated by an AI agent or, you know, how, what’s, what’s the, wha- what’s the vision here?
[00:24:30] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah. What’s your favorite, uh, awards ceremony? Like music awards, Golden Globe, Oscars, like which red carpet you, you kinda picture yourself being there?
[00:24:43] Greg Kihlström: Oh, um, uh, I don’t know. Maybe Oscars? (laughs)
[00:24:46] Nitin Mangtani: Oscars. Okay. So Greg at Oscars. Well, wouldn’t it be great if between the discovery experience, the optimization and the cost reduction in supply chain, and the curation, what if we can dress up everybody like you’re on a red carpet at Oscars every weekend? At a cost that’s feasible, that’s affordable, and you can just customize it by just having this whole conversation, and you get this dress delivered or a blazer or a f- entire outfit delivered to you by Thursday evening? That would be my dream in five years. That’s where we would know AI really accomplished its job.
[00:25:20] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, love that, love that. Well, uh, Nitin, thanks so much for joining today. Um, couple last questions as we wrap up here. First one is, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:25:36] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah. So I think the, the core tenets don’t go away, right? Like so for example, we started talking about mobile commerce in 2007 when iPhone launched, right? Mobile commerce is still important.
[00:25:53] Greg Kihlström: Right, right.
[00:25:53] Nitin Mangtani: It doesn’t mean, like, you know, so it’s been 19 years since iPhone launch. It doesn’t mean mobile commerce is no longer relevant, right?
[00:26:01] Nitin Mangtani: We talk about search. Search has been there for 25, 30 years, right? It’s still… So I think the core tenets don’t go away, right? Now the devices will evolve, right? So maybe glasses will have a bigger prominence, right? And you might be able to, you know, interact in real world with your glasses and do shopping like that. You’re like, you know, you’re at your friend’s place and you’re like, “Oh, I really like this coffee table.” Right? Or you are in a real world at a restaurant, you’re like, “Oh, I lo- love this cutlery.” And your glasses will be able to recognize it-
[00:26:28] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:26:28] Nitin Mangtani: … and you can just, you know, talk to it and you’re like, “Yeah, let’s, let’s buy it.” So I think the core tenets in a year won’t change. It’s going to be the same core tenets, but there’s gonna be, adoption is gonna go up. Lot of these things we are, product is launching, the adoption takes whatever, you know, sometimes two weeks, sometimes few weeks.
[00:26:46] Nitin Mangtani: So adoption will be more mainstream. Like every brand that you interact with today will have agentic experience instead of just the f- you know, early adopters, right? So it’s gonna go from early adopters to mainstream. Second is the, the, the technology is gonna get much more sophisticated. Maybe the Oscar one won’t be ready in a year, right?
[00:27:08] Nitin Mangtani: That, that’s, that’s, that I’m asking for five years, right? Or maybe three years, right? B- f- because the cost is also important, right? Can the AI really reduce the cost barriers and delivery barriers, right? Um, yeah, so I think it’ll be in those kind of dimensions. The core tenets of unified commerce mobility don’t go away. Adoption is going to go from early adopters to mainstream, and then you’re gonna see lot more advancements to the core technology behind this stuff.
[00:27:34] Greg Kihlström: Love it, love it. Well, 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?
[00:27:42] Nitin Mangtani: Yeah. There, there’s kind of two parts to that puzzle, One is I’m a shopper before I’m a technologist. I literally, every time I meet a customer and the folks, those who know me, I would shop something whether I’m in their store or on my mobile device. I would literally go through an entire buying experience, discovery and buying. ‘Cause that kind of helps me understand the, you know, the consumer mindset and, you know, what’s going on. ‘Cause if you start from a consumer experience and then bring the technology, it’s the right sequencing versus the other way around.
Second is I’m a huge believer in iteration. Um, the perfection of a vision is a, is a fallacy. Everybody should have a strong vision, don’t get me wrong, but this thing of like, oh, I’m gonna just like write a PRD for next 18 months is the most flawed way of thinking.
Like how do you iterate every two weeks? So you should have the North Star, no doubt. You, you should know your North Star, you should know your strategy, should know your vision. But iterating your vision and really fine-tuning it and optimizing it every two weeks or every week or every day, that’s really the mantra to building amazing consumer-oriented products.
