What happens when your next customer is represented by an AI agent that can research products, compare prices, evaluate suppliers, negotiate terms, and make purchasing decisions?
In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Ian Kahn, Partner and Customer and Commercial Excellence Platform Leader at PwC, about the rise of the Intelligent Customer Edge and why companies need to rethink how they sell, market, price, serve customers, and compete as artificial intelligence changes the buying process.
Much of the enterprise AI conversation has focused on helping employees become more productive. Ian argues that this overlooks a much bigger change already taking place. Customers are using AI to research products, compare alternatives, evaluate pricing, and make decisions. In some consumer and business markets, AI agents are already being given permission to make routine purchases.
Companies are no longer selling only to people. They increasingly need to serve customers whose AI agents expect accurate product information, transparent pricing, availability, service history, and performance data that can be discovered, verified, and understood by machines. This creates a serious problem for companies operating with fragmented front offices.
Marketing, sales, pricing, commerce, and customer service have traditionally operated as separate functions, each with its own technology, data, processes, incentives, and performance measures. Customers do not experience companies through those internal structures. They expect consistent information and relevant experiences across the entire relationship.
Ian explains why adding AI to each department independently will not solve this problem. Companies risk making existing processes faster without improving the customer experience or business performance. Instead, he argues that leaders need to reconsider the operating model behind the entire customer journey.
The Intelligent Customer Edge is PwC's approach to bringing these commercial functions together into a connected system centered on the customer. Powered by proprietary company data and AI, the system can continuously learn from customer interactions, support real-time decisions, and help companies respond to changing customer needs.
We also discuss the idea of the commercial brain and why proprietary data could become one of the most valuable competitive advantages available to companies adopting AI.
Most businesses already possess customer records, transaction histories, operational information, market signals, service interactions, and other data their competitors cannot access. Yet much of that information remains fragmented across systems and departments.
Ian explains how connecting these sources can create an intelligence layer that informs pricing decisions, marketing activity, sales opportunities, service interactions, and the moments that matter throughout the customer relationship.
For CEOs, chief customer officers, marketing leaders, sales executives, CIOs, and technology teams, the conversation offers an important lesson about AI transformation. The companies achieving meaningful results are not starting with the technology. They begin with customer outcomes and redesign the work, decisions, workflows, and operating models required to achieve them.
Human judgment remains an important part of that model. AI can process large amounts of information, identify patterns, provide recommendations, and handle routine tasks consistently. People continue to bring judgment, creativity, empathy, relationship-building, and strategic decision-making to customer interactions where trust and context matter.
Ian argues that the goal is not to choose between people and AI. Companies need to design customer systems that use the strengths of both, determining where automation can improve speed and consistency and where people can create greater customer and commercial value.
Trust, governance, explainability, and accountability also become more important as AI agents are given greater authority. Rather than treating guardrails as barriers to adoption, Ian explains why companies should design controls into AI-enabled customer processes from the beginning.
The conversation also examines the cost of waiting. Customers are already adopting AI, and businesses that continue relying on fragmented front-office operations risk falling behind competitors capable of responding faster, providing better information, and creating more relevant customer experiences.
Ian offers practical advice for companies deciding where to begin. Start with the customer journey. Understand how customer behavior is changing, identify where friction exists, determine how AI could improve the experience, and establish clear measures for customer outcomes and business value before investing heavily in new technology.
For business and technology leaders under pressure to deliver growth, improve margins, control costs, and demonstrate returns from AI investment, this conversation provides a practical framework for redesigning the front office, using proprietary data more effectively, preparing for AI agents as buyers, and creating better customer experiences.
Your customers are already using AI. Some AI agents are already making purchasing decisions. The question for companies is whether their customer systems, data, commercial models, and operating structures are ready to compete for business when the buyer on the other side of the transaction is no longer always human.
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[00:00:04] - [Speaker 0]
What if the next customer making a purchase from your business isn't a person at all, but an AI agent that is acting on their behalf? Now for some of you, that might sound futuristic, but today's guest says it's already happening. His name's Ian Carr, and he's from PWC. And he's gonna join me today and explain why organizations possibly need to rethink the way that marketing, sales, service, and commerce all work together. And also expand on why businesses that continue to treat AI as just another productivity tool risk missing out on a much, much bigger opportunity.
[00:00:45] - [Speaker 0]
And if I've got you intrigued, then you are perfectly primed for today's guest. Let me introduce you to him now. So thank you for joining me on the show today, Ian. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?
[00:01:00] - [Speaker 1]
Sure. Thanks, Neil. It's great to be with you. I'm Ian Khan. I lead the customer and commercial excellence platform at PwC.
[00:01:07] - [Speaker 1]
We work with organizations navigating the intersection of customer growth, commercial transformation, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. And my focus is on helping business leaders rethink how they engage their customers, modernizing front office operations and using data and AI to drive better business outcomes. Our work centers on helping organizations to move beyond technology investments and instead to really focus on building connected intelligence systems that improve customer experiences and drive business value.
[00:01:45] - [Speaker 0]
It's a pleasure to have you join me today. Every day on this show, I try and demystify or talk about something that we're hearing a lot in our news feeds about and how technology is impacting just about everything in our lives, work, and indeed world. And you've been talking about the rise of the intelligent customer edge. And for listeners hearing that phrase for the very first time, what does it mean, and and why do you believe it it represents such a fundamental shift in how organizations are engaging with their customers. Tell me more about that phrase.
[00:02:18] - [Speaker 1]
The intelligent customer edge is a new operating model. Traditionally, marketing, sales, service, pricing, commerce functions have really all operated independently, almost in silos. And each function had its own goals, its own processes, its own technology systems, and and really its own scorecard. And, you know, we see in in in today's world with shifts in customer behaviors, we see the intelligent customer edge as the concept that starts to bring those functions together into a single intelligent system centered around the customer, powered by the proprietary data that exists in your organization and and and and a system that continuously learns from all of the interactions you have with your customers. So it's a it's a pretty big shift in how most organizations work, leveraging AI to transform the way you engage with your customers and to and to drive, you know, much more real time and personalized experiences.
[00:03:32] - [Speaker 1]
So, you know, very significant opportunity. The intelligent customer edge is a platform that can sense, decide, and act in real time to deliver consistent and excellent experiences across every touch point.
[00:03:47] - [Speaker 0]
And it's such an exciting point at the moment because I think much of the AI conversation is traditionally focused on just helping sellers, marketers, and service teams all become more productive. But what you're suggesting here is that customers themselves are also increasingly using AI. So how does that emergence of, an AI enabled buyer, how does that change the dynamics between organizations and their customers? I one change that I often see in in my own habits, I'm turning less to a search engine and and more to AI. But what what are you seeing here?
[00:04:20] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. The productivity opportunity, while significant, is a small slice of the big picture. And, you know, for the past couple of years, as you said, I think it's true. A lot of the AI conversations have been focused on productivity, how to, you know, do, you know, the work that we've been doing faster in a more cost effective way. But I think, you know, what's changing now, especially when we look at the customer side, you know, of of things is that, you know, customers are buying differently.
[00:04:54] - [Speaker 1]
They are leveraging AI in their own journeys, and they're using it to to research products, to compare alternatives, to evaluate pricing in real time. And, you know, that that represents a very big shift because the organizations that we're working with understand they're no longer just selling to their traditional customers. They also need to be prepared to engage with their customers' AI agents who are now playing a bigger role in the in the in the buying process. So that that's a pretty significant shift. Right?
[00:05:29] - [Speaker 1]
And customer expectations are going up very quickly. Customers expect faster responses, better information, more relevant recommendations, and and transparency, you know, of of course. And and, you know, the organizations that are slow to adapt that that still rely on that fragmented sort of front office approach where marketing, sales, and service are working in isolation, what what we see is that those organizations are are having a hard time serving this modern customer who, in some ways, has sort of jumped ahead. The customers are are embracing AI, in many cases, faster than a lot of the the organizations that are are trying to earn their business.
[00:06:18] - [Speaker 0]
And looking ahead, I'm curious. Do you see a future where AI agents are not just assisting purchasing decisions, but also actively help make them or just going off on their own and making them? And if so, what does that mean for traditional sales, marketing, and customer engagement strategy? It feels like there's there's so much up for grabs here and so much big changes.
[00:06:40] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. It's driving very significant change. And in fact, we think we think it's already happening today. In many situations, we've we're moving beyond a world where AI agents are are just assisting, and and instead, they're being given the authority. They're being given permission to make routine purchasing decisions on behalf of customers, on behalf of individuals, on behalf of organizations.
[00:07:08] - [Speaker 1]
And, you know, we're seeing examples today in procurement functions with replenishment. We see it in Trava. We see it in subscription management. And the examples, the list of examples are this list is just getting longer. And and I think the key point is that the agents aren't they're not just replacing humans.
[00:07:29] - [Speaker 1]
What they're doing is they're taking on the routine. And as this as this rolls out, it it is critical, right, that we need oversight around these agentic processes. And I think, you know, what what what's crucial, and this is where we bring the trust point into the conversations, is that, you know, the organizations that not only are able to deploy sophisticated agentic processes, that provides an advantage in terms of speed and personalization. But we've gotta do it with trust in mind. We've gotta put guardrails around the AI.
[00:07:59] - [Speaker 1]
We we these systems need needs need strong controls, explainability, governance. And so that becomes really, really critical as organizations make make the shift.
[00:08:10] - [Speaker 0]
We will have many people listening in organizations that still operate with separate marketing, sales, pricing, commerce, and service teams. And to give those people listening somewhat of a wake up call on what we're talking about here, can you just expand on, why that fragmented front office model will struggle in an AI driven world? And what does a truly connected customer's system look like instead? Because I think it'd be great to paint a picture of why it won't work and what is going to work as we move forward.
[00:08:41] - [Speaker 1]
Traditional sales and marketing approaches were designed for human audiences and and consume consuming information manually. And in the future, organizations need to optimize the experience both for the humans they interact with as well as the their their buying agents, which which we've talked about. And so when you when you think about that, it means that, you know, product information, pricing, availability, service history, performance data, all of these things need to be easily discoverable. They need to be trustworthy, verifiable, and machine readable. And success will depend on providing accurate information and context, delivering seamless experiences across these the end to end customer life cycle, and then differentiated value rather than simply, you know, flooding the zone with more marketing messages.
[00:09:32] - [Speaker 1]
And so this is a big opportunity, you know, for organizations to win with superior customer experience. And the and the and the early movers so far are starting to establish an advantage in this new marketplace. That's what we're seeing.
[00:09:46] - [Speaker 0]
And people do love a good shortcut. I suspect there will be a temptation in some circles to simply add AI to an existing workflow or workflows, slap a label on it, and call it transformation. Job done. But from your experience, what what separates organizations that really achieve meaningful business outcomes from those that are simply automating existing inefficiencies from the previous way of doing things? What is there any big gaps there?
[00:10:12] - [Speaker 1]
The the organizations that create meaningful value don't they don't start with the technology. They view this as a business transformation opportunity, and they start with the outcomes in mind. They rethink the work that should be done, and they avoid the trap of simply layering AI onto poorly designed processes. You know, in fact, you know, when you do that, AI ends up exposing the inefficiencies in your processes And and simply, you know, what you end up with is a faster version of that fragmented process that typically, you know, will result in, you know, poor customer feedback. And so I think it's the opportunity now to step back and really redesign that end to end operating model.
[00:11:01] - [Speaker 1]
That's why we think of intelligent customer edge, first and foremost, as a new operating model. You know, rethinking your decision making processes, reimagining your end to end customer journeys and the workflows that support those journeys. And when you do that, that's where we see the biggest growth opportunity and ultimately the opportunity to deliver a better customer experience. There'll be a productivity opportunity that comes along with that, that's sort of a byproduct rather than being kind of the core focus.
[00:11:33] - [Speaker 0]
When I was doing a little research on you, I know you've recently spoken about this idea of a commercial brain that is powered by proprietary data. So how can organizations turn the data that they already possess into a competitive advantage that ultimately will better help them make smarter decisions and deliver better customer experiences? Because there's so much focus on the technology, but the the gold is often hidden right inside their own data. Right?
[00:12:00] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. We see a lot of value in those proprietary data sources. And if we step back, there's a pretty significant evolution happening with the technology architectures that power world class customer experiences. That value of that underlying proprietary data you know, is is is core to this commercial brain concept, which which we've talked about. We see most organizations sitting on really valuable data, customer data, operational data, but it's often fragmented across many different systems.
[00:12:36] - [Speaker 1]
The opportunity now is to connect that data and transform it into an intelligence layer that continuously informs decisions and powers great experiences. We think of this concept as the commercial brain. It's a system that combines that proprietary customer data, those insights with transaction data, operational data, market signals, and it guides everything we do around pricing, around customer interactions, marketing messages, sales cycles, moments that matter from a service perspective because that that data that exists in your environment, it's it's unique to you. And it it can become the source of competitive advantage that your competitors can't match when when you unleash it and and use it to power real time interactions that we see in this increasingly, agentic world.
[00:13:28] - [Speaker 0]
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[00:13:56] - [Speaker 0]
And there is often a concern that AI will eventually replace human roles. But where do you see human judgment, critical thinking, etcetera, remaining valuable? And how can organizations maybe better design their customer experiences that combine both the strengths of their people and also AI effectively? Because I like to think that it's not about replacing people. It's leveraging the strengths of of both and and creating something that both perform better than they ever could on their own.
[00:14:24] - [Speaker 0]
But how do you see this playing out?
[00:14:27] - [Speaker 1]
We're really excited about the opportunities that it creates as our organizations shift from being traditional enterprises to what we think of as intelligent enterprises. That unlocks new growth opportunities, and it creates opportunities for organizations to innovate. And and with that, you know, I think it's going to create a lot of really new interesting, you know, opportunities for humans and and AI to work together in ways that, you know, we're just beginning to understand. And so, you know, the the the the value that that humans and AI, you know, bring, it's very complimentary. You know, AI is is incredibly efficient at processing large amounts of information, right, much better than we can as humans.
[00:15:11] - [Speaker 1]
It can identify patterns, and it can execute, you know, routine tasks quickly and very consistently. But when it comes to, you know, bringing judgment and bringing creativity and and empathy to the moments that matter in a in a customer journey, building relationships maybe with new customers, you know, humans will continue to play really critical roles. And I think the opportunity now is to spend more of our time on the things that really matter and to maybe offload some of the routine or some of the other tasks that are better performed by AI to the system. And the, you know, the most successful organizations, the early movers that have started to establish an advantage by capturing value from their AI investments, they're not choosing between people and AI. What they're doing is they're they're actually designing the system that leverages the strengths that that that that each provide.
[00:16:01] - [Speaker 1]
You know, AI providing the insights, the recommendations, the the automation, and and people deployed on the things that allow us to build trust with our customers, to make critical strategic decisions, you know, to bring that empathy into the in into that specific moment that that matters a great deal with your customer when when when they're really, you know, dealing with maybe a challenge. And I think it's that orchestration to make sure that we're we're we're tapping into the right capability in in in the right context. That's where we create the greatest value.
[00:16:35] - [Speaker 0]
And three years ago, I suspect we both would have been asking the same question on what would happen if business leaders continue to wait and sit on the fence trying to work out which way it's going to go. And here in 2026, I'm gonna ask you again for those business leaders, what is the cost of waiting? And if an organization recognized the shifts that we're talking about in our conversation today, but they are unsure where to start, any practical first steps that they should be taking to build an AI enabled customer and commercial strategy while also maintaining the things that they're probably concerned about, trust, governance, and accountability. And I realize that is an entire podcast episode on its own. But for that person listening, what would you say?
[00:17:21] - [Speaker 1]
Well, first of all, on the cost of waiting, you know, as it pertains to, you know, our topic today, the intelligent customer edge, I think it's very important to recognize the customer's already there. You know, whether you're looking at b to c industries like retail or travel or b to b industries and, you know, large, sort of procurement processes, customers have already adopted AI in their purchasing journeys in a very significant, way. And so, you know, for organizations today, what is the cost of waiting? I would say the cost of waiting is, you know, being left behind. Your customer is moving forward, and and you have to adapt in order to serve the customer and meet them where they are.
[00:18:04] - [Speaker 1]
So, you know, I think my my advice is to is to really, you know, start with your customer journeys and understand, you know, where is the customer today? How do they want to interact with your organization? And then what are the opportunities to, you know, leveraging AI to maybe reimagine some of those customer journeys and deploy I I AI in a way that, you know, starts to remove friction and starts to create value in the context of, you know, your business given the way it's evolving. So, you know, I think, you know, one of the keys is measurability. We we we think and and talk a lot about that.
[00:18:41] - [Speaker 1]
You know, I think the other piece of advice would just be, you know, as you get going on your AI journey, you know, make sure you're clear on how success will be measured, you know, and understand that as you deploy these new capabilities, you know, there there's gonna be a natural sort of learning exercise and optimization over time. So having that sort of value measurement and the focus on customer outcomes from the start, you know, is really, really important.
[00:19:08] - [Speaker 0]
And for anybody listening, we maybe we've set off a few light bulb moments today, and they're intrigued by this rise of the intelligent customer edge that we've talked about and also how AI is shifting power to AI enabled buyers and why their company should be starting to rethink how they engage, etcetera. Where would you like me to point everyone listening that wanna find out more information about this?
[00:19:31] - [Speaker 1]
Thank you. The best place to learn is our website, so pwc.com. You you can find insights on AI, customer transformation, also the intelligent customer edge. You'll see research, thought leadership. We publish a lot of interesting studies there and case studies that demonstrate what some leading edge clients are are doing with us in this space.
[00:19:55] - [Speaker 1]
And then I'd also encourage people to connect with me directly on LinkedIn. I post regularly, share my thoughts, and always excited to make new connections.
[00:20:05] - [Speaker 0]
Love it. And we've covered a lot today, and I think there's a very clear message in listening to you as well that your customers' AI is already buying. Your customers are already adopting the technology, and that combined with the emergence of AI agents and buyers, not just tools in both b two c and b two b, should act as a wake up call. And we should also highlight again very strongly, we're talking here about human plus AI designing for augmentation, not replacement. And on that note, I will gladly include links to everything you mentioned there.
[00:20:37] - [Speaker 0]
Try and get a few videos and, things and your LinkedIn added to the blog post associated to this episode. But more than anything, just thank you for bringing it all to life today. Really appreciate your time.
[00:20:48] - [Speaker 1]
Thanks, Neil. It's been a lot of fun.
[00:20:50] - [Speaker 0]
I think today's conversation was a fascinating reminder that AI is changing both sides of the customer relationship. It's no longer about just giving employees better tools. It's also about recognizing that customers are increasingly using AI to research, compare, and even make purchasing decisions. And Ian made a compelling case today that organizations gaining an advantage won't simply automate yesterday's processes. They're probably the ones that are redesigning the customer experience right from the ground up and doing so while keeping trust, governance, and human judgment firmly in the picture.
[00:21:31] - [Speaker 0]
But I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is your organization still relying on those processes built for another time, Or are you ready for customers whose first interaction is through AI rather than a search engine, a salesperson, or your website? Let me know. Techtalksnetwork.com. I love to hear your stories.
[00:21:50] - [Speaker 0]
Also, an open invite to any of you listening to join me on here. So let me know, and hopefully, I'll also get to speak with you again tomorrow. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.