I love sushi, but don’t box me into your crappy marketing segment - my Personal Agent doesn't care
Plus: It’s time to wake up and smell the (customer experience) coffee
Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to Customer Futures.
Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around Empowerment Tech. Digital wallets, Personal AI and the future of the digital customer relationship.
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Happy New Year folks,
Welcome back. This week, rather than dive into the latest and greatest news, I wanted to share a few snippets of Customer Futures opinion to shape the year. What might be coming and why.
I’m starting 2026 thinking about the $64M question. What’s going to be the disruptive innovation coming with digital wallets and ID?
To help us look forwards, it’s always worth looking backwards, to history.
The first mainstream use for TV was pointing the camera at people doing a radio broadcast. It took 20 years for TV to become its own, new creative format.
And the first mainstream use for the web browser was consuming content. Just another channel to read and receive stuff.
It took 10 years before we saw the potential for 'user-generated content'. For publishing. For customer control and engagement.
You see, it’s the fast-following disruption that brings the real value. The new business models. New uses and industries.
Helpfully, it's a predictable pattern. Clay Christiansen talked about “sustaining innovation” (same thing, new tech) vs “disruptive innovation” (new thing, new tech).
Today, with digital wallets and ID, so much of the market is doing Tactical Stuff. Things we can already do with existing tech. Sharing verified ID. Form filling. Payments. Tickets. Login.
It's all sustaining innovation. Same thing, new tech.
So what of the disruptive stuff? I believe it’ll turn up as a new category of Empowerment Tech.
Things like proof of ‘customer present’. Using my digital wallet not just to share ID, but proof of my customer status. Helping the business know that it’s really me involved in a transaction, and not a fraudster replaying my personal data from North Korea.
Things like proof of status, where rich and varied personal data like employment info, purchase history, loyalty entitlements, and much more become portable via the customer themselves. Rather than being locked up in company systems, unable to be reused or create other value.
By definition, we can’t predict how and where these things will show up. Just like we couldn’t have predicted that the motor would be added to car wing mirrors or fridge door ice dispensers.
But we can be sure that digital wallets will be about helping us in our daily lives. In ways most people can't yet see. Across health, travel, money, learning, work, home and much more.
Of course, innovation, including all the AI hype, is everywhere. But it’s the type - sustaining or disruptive - that’s going to count.
It was 20 years for TV. 10 years for the web. I give it less than 5 years for digital wallets to show up in marvellous but unpredictable new ways.
Yes, we’ll get consumer adoption and fancy new digital IDs in our Apple and Google Wallets much sooner. But the real wallet disruption? That's not yet obvious to most people. But it’s right around the corner.
You just need to know where to start looking. Because it might already be right under your nose.
2026 is going to be another crazy year. And maybe it’s finally time that digital wallets and ID aren’t just seen as a $64M idea any more.
Because I’m betting that Empowerment Tech will soon become a new, billion-dollar market.
It’s never been more important to understand the future of being a digital customer. So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.
In this week’s edition, some Customer Futures opinions to get your brains ticking over:
Digital wallets will become a kind of new ‘customer account’
OBO: A Customer Futures Conversation Live
It’s time to wake up and smell the (customer experience) coffee
I love sushi, but don’t box me into your crappy marketing segment - my Personal Agent doesn’t care
… and much more
So grab a hot chocolate with all the trimmings (because why not, screw the January rules), and Let’s Go.
Digital wallets will become a kind of new ‘customer account’
Let’s look at this ‘disruptive innovation for wallets’ thing a little closer. And the opportunity for portable customer data.
Remember, I don’t mean wallets for e-money. Or about tokens, coins or bitcoin. I’m talking about a different kind of digital wallet.
An identity one. A personal one. A private one.
Once individuals can show up independently at the front door of business, with their own digital tools - like digital wallets with verifiable, data, identity and digital assets - then we get something new.
It’s going to be a New Customer Channel.
Here’s why.
Once a business can use that digital wallet - a new digital customer channel - to ask for some customer data, for example, your digital identity or entitlements or shopping history, then the company can form a new digital connection with that customer.
A persistent one. A verifiable one. A private one. And an auditable, secure and intelligent one.
It’s why I think of it as a new kind of customer account.
My goodness, what business wouldn’t want that? Imagine plugging that new customer digital connection directly into business workflows and processes like CRM?
And what customer wouldn’t want a new digital channel to connect with a company that’s more intelligent than a customer portal, more private and secure than email, more useful than an app, and more portable than SMS?
Yes, digital wallets can hold and control digital assets. But they will also hold digital ID, and lots of other portable, verifiable, authentic data.
The risk is that with a narrower ‘identity, data and assets’ framing for digital wallets, we miss the larger market opportunity. We miss the new way to connect with customers and to handle the digital relationship.
Yes, AI Agents and all the rest are going to fundamentally disrupt customer engagement. But not without proof of the customer.
And where is that going to come from? Another clumsy login? Or a one-time password?
Nope. It’ll be with verifiable data from the customer themselves. And I believe that’ll be held in a customer’s digital wallet.
Yes, digital ID wallets are about to emerge as a new way to prove who you are. But look carefully, and beyond ID, you’ll see a powerful new customer channel.
And a new customer ‘account’.
OBO: A Customer Futures Conversation Live
OBO - On Behalf Of - a way of capturing digital, delegated authority, is set to become a new critical layer of the digital economy.
And an important new capability for leaders managing risk in regulated industries.
I’m delighted to say that our next Customer Futures Conversation will be a live chat on LinkedIn with Jon Evans from Digidentity, the co-author of our recent OBO paper.
Because most organisations can tell you who logged in. But far fewer can prove who was authorised to act, at that exact moment.
It’s now a perfect storm of employee digital identity risks. Where hybrid work, delegated approvals, contractors, and AI and automated workflows have together quietly broken the link between identity and authority.
People change roles, responsibilities shift, and systems lag behind. Then, when something goes wrong, the audit trail starts too late.
Join us on Thursday, 22nd January at 4pm UK, where we’ll be talking about:
Why employee identity beyond the business is so challenging
How employee authority can leak between systems and across companies
What verifiable, time-bound authority looks like in practice
Why eIDAS 2.0, Business Wallets, and the UK DIATF make OBO inevitable
How OBO shows up in real workflows
We’re looking forward to digging into how businesses can protect themselves - and their employees - in the 'moments that matter'.
See you there?
It’s time to wake up and smell the (customer experience) coffee
A coffee bean costs less than $0.01. A scoop of ground coffee costs maybe 20c. And a cup of hot coffee from that same scoop costs $2.50.
Yet a visit to your local organic coffee shop is much more expensive. That skinny-latte-extra-shot-no-foam-jazz-serenade costs nearer $6.
Why?
Because there’s a hidden value flow:
From commodities (beans) -> goods (packets of coffee)
From goods -> services (fresh coffee poured for you)
From services -> experiences (the coffee shop, music, sofas)
With each step-up of value, we commoditise the one before. And we stop caring about what came before.
Example: When raw beans arrive in neat packets of ground coffee, we stop noticing where the raw beans come from. And when we get fresh, hot cups of coffee, we stop noticing where the packets of ground coffee come from.
And today, when you have a coffee experience in a warm coffeeshop, with the sofas and a local noticeboard, the poetry nights and jazz playing ... all the services (the pouring), the goods (the packet) and the commodities (the beans) often disappear.
So what’s the next step? Where’s the new value for experiences? And what happens when we commoditise an experience?
Well, it becomes personal. Just for you.
A market of one.
But now it gets complicated. Because it now means understanding rich and deep customer context. Understanding when customers have the experience. And where. And with whom. Often in real time.
Yes, ‘personalised experiences’ are the holy grail for businesses. They are way more valuable, and can command a much higher price. But in reality, it’s much harder to do, because it means collecting lots of personal data. Often the sensitive stuff.
So that’s the trade-off, right? Collect lots of personal data and personalise the service or experience... OR collect only a little data and build more customer trust?
Well, that’s the new twist. There’s a new way for businesses to do BOTH.
To build trust AND create personal experiences. To deliver value AND high levels of privacy, security and digital trust.
How?
By giving the customer much more control. Remember: the only true ‘360-degree view of the customer’… is the customer themselves.
We’re about to see an explosion of new digital tools on the side of the customer. AI Agents, digital wallets and portable digital reputation, plus new portable ‘digital IDs’. Where customers can bring all that rich personal context, reputation and intent directly to the business. No more guessing or fumbling.
My bet: that ‘generalised experiences’ are about to commoditise. And the services, the products and the commodities beneath them will disappear. We won’t notice where the products or event services come from.
Because it’ll be personal to us, and it’ll be staged as a personal experience.
It’s why a profound customer shift is coming with ‘Empowerment Tech’. Personal AI, digital wallets and verifiable credentials.
So it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Because the customer experience is about to be disrupted... by the customer themselves.
I love sushi, but don’t box me into your crappy marketing segment - my Personal Agent doesn’t care
Sophisticated Sushi Lovers. Vulnerable Volvo Drivers. Excitable Diabetics.
All random ‘customer segments’. And it’s all just guesswork by a business trying to make sense of its customers.
But personalisation like this goes wrong when businesses don’t really understand the customer. Not really.
It’s why you get sent a ‘targeted’ advert for a car, but the business doesn’t know you just joined a car club. And why you are recommended a book based on your shopping history. But that they don’t know you actually hate the genre. Your previous purchase was for a friend’s birthday.
Logically then, the opportunity is to help organisations better understand their customers.
That’s easy, right? Drop another cookie. Collect some more personal data. Stick it in another database and run some AI magic…? Nope, it’s incredibly hard. Certainly at Internet Scale.
So businesses end up being either creepy or clumsy:
1. Creepy businesses
Collecting massive centralised databases of customer personal information. An attempt to build a ‘360-degree view’ of the customer. All exposed to the hourly risk of another data breach.
The ‘How did you know that about me?’ moment.
2. Clumsy businesses
Product and marketing teams just guessing. Grouping customers who are similar enough to cluster, but different enough to get their own ‘demographic segment’.
And it’s all made up of course, and why online advertising peaks at 3-4% click-through.
Step back, and you’ll see that neither option is working. Because both ends of the spectrum - creepy and clumsy - are the result of industrialised data thinking. Standardised and centralised customer experiences. Standardised and centralised service models. Standardised and centralised processes.
And yes, standardised customer ‘targeting’.
It’s all a hangover from 100 years of industrial culture. Centralise, commoditise, optimise. But it’s been made 100x worse with decades of management consulting and TechBros driving nothing but digital efficiency, digital optimisation and ‘digital transformation’.
Especially around digital customer marketing.
The answer?
Customers need a new way to express who they are. When they are. What they are. And why they are.
And businesses need a new way to listen. To connect to customers.
For those paying attention, it’s clear that AI Agents, and specifically Agentic Commerce, have the potential to form the backbone of this customer revolution.
It’s why we get an announcement about AI agents every 6 minutes from the AI Majors. And why we’re seeing a collapse in the use of search engines and SEO, the traditional engines of capturing ‘customer intent’.
But don’t miss the equally important digital shift: new data capabilities on the customer side. For individuals to hold, organise and share their own verifiable data.
Verified needs, not just guesswork. Personal history, not just today’s chat. Preferences, not just payment. And for businesses to listen and learn. And then respond appropriately.
Yes, I might be into sushi. But please don’t box me in with a crappy marketing segment that wastes your time and mine.
Not when my Personal AI will handle all your mistargeted marketing spam for me, and will connect me to the brands that matter, on my terms.
My Personal Agent doesn’t care about what you think I want.
Mark my words, there’s going to be a LOT of developments this year around the future of marketing, and the future of brands, with the disruption coming with Personal AI and AI agents.
And some exciting Customer Futures announcements coming soon. Watch this space.
OTHER THINGS
There are far too many interesting and important Customer Futures things to include this week.
So here are some more links to chew on:
Post: The genius rebranding of “gambling” to “prediction markets” READ
Idea: Is Your AI Browser Actually a Firewall? READ
Article: The announcability problem of the UK Digital ID scheme READ
News: AI agents and verifiable credentials: A match made in heaven? READ
Post: The moat around private data gets smaller - If your users can see it, AI can see it READ
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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Love the "creepy vs clumsy" framework—it's such a clean articulation of the marketing failure mode we're stuck in. The point about Personal AI agents handling mistargeted spam hits home. I've been thinking alot about how verifiable credentials change the power dynamic here, and your emphasis on customers bringing their own context rather than businesses extracting it feels like the key unlock. The coffee value chain metaphor works perfectly to show why personalised experiences are the next layer up.