In a thought leadership article published in citybiz, Arun ‘Rak’ Ramchandran, CEO of QBurst, explores how AI is reshaping customer experience in retail. Despite years of investment in digital transformation, many customer journeys remain fragmented, with context often lost across channels, creating friction for customers and limiting business outcomes.

Rak examines why the next evolution of customer experience is not about adding more touchpoints or improving automation, but about building AI-orchestrated systems that understand customer intent, maintain context, and act across channels in real time. He also outlines the foundational capabilities required to make this possible, including context-aware customer memory, intelligent decisioning, coordinated execution across systems, and continuous learning.

Drawing on QBurst's work with a global luxury retail group, which delivered a 148% increase in click-through rates and a 120% revenue lift on LINE, Rak explains how intelligent orchestration can transform customer engagement. Those results underscore a broader shift taking place across retail: success increasingly depends on a brand's ability to maintain context and act on customer intent in real time.