The shift to agentic commerce won't wait for your strategy slides
Trusted Agents is the Situation Room for leaders under pressure
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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Hi folks,
For the last 15 years, I’ve been advising businesses on what an empowered customer world really means.
And one way or another, I’ve been writing about, designing, and helping build digital wallets, digital ID systems and personalisation platforms with companies all over the world.
But today, I’m launching something new.
Together with Gam Dias, we’re announcing Trusted Agents. A new specialist advisory firm focused on Agentic Commerce.
Not theory, not hype, but clarity.
Why now?
Because you already have enough AI perspectives.
Your inbox is full of 80-page decks about autonomy, transformation and “the agentic future.” You’ve seen the quadrants, the maturity curves, the threads declaring AGI is already here, and the ten AI courses you MUST do before your job disappears.
But when you close the slides and look at your own company, it doesn’t feel like a neat framework or whitepaper.
It feels more like a storm.
And we feel it. It’s exhausting.
Vendors are shipping AI agent platforms faster than you can read the release notes. BigTech and the payment networks are announcing new agentic protocols every week. And the analysts declare, ‘this time it changes everything’.
Meanwhile, your customers are experimenting with AI agents in ways you didn’t design for. And your teams are testing things at the edges just to keep up.
Now your execs and your team are being asked for a clear view on AI, especially AI Agents, and a plan to respond to what’s going on around you.
Plans around your market position. Plans for the product roadmap. Plans for budgets. And a defensive business strategy that keeps you relevant.
But you don’t need another AI thesis
The uncomfortable truth is this. We are entering a technology cycle that doesn’t behave like the last three. You don’t need another thesis.
You need a Situation Room.
Big consultancies are great at building five-year narratives that survive the board room. That’s valuable. But when the ground is shifting weekly, you also need short feedback loops. Real-time interpretation. Someone watching the same storm you are.
We’re launching Trusted Agents to do exactly that.
We sit at the intersection of:
AI agents
Digital trust
Digital wallets
Identity and credentials
Enterprise customer data
Delegation and personal AI
Every day we’re speaking with global product teams, large enterprises, standards bodies, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, wallet providers, payments companies and many more.
We’re tracking how agentic delegation is shifting. Where trust models are changing. Where new risks are showing up.
And we’re translating it into usable clarity.
An agentic commerce Situation Room.
We’re keeping it simple
Here’s what we’re not.
We’re not armies of consultants. We don’t write dense market papers that barely get skimmed. We don’t pretend to have the ‘right’ answer. (If anyone tells you the exact tech to use, or the exact market play, remember that they’re guessing).
And we’re not promising perfection.
Instead, we’re positioning ourselves as close as possible to the eye of the tornado - from consumer AI agents, decentralised identity, digital wallets, personal data stores - and interpreting how those forces will show up at your door.
So we’re keeping what we do really simple:
1. Agentic Readiness Sprints
Structured, 4-6 week engagements mapping your business, customer journeys and your likely exposure to agent-driven change.
Getting your teams up to speed on the latest shifts and protocols. Identifying where to position to win, and how to respond as the market changes.
2. Executive Briefings
Short, sharp, exec briefings that get your leadership team aligned on what matters now. Not in 2030. What decisions to take, how to view the market, and how to find the signal in the Agentic Commerce noise.
3. Self-Guided Pathways
Simple frameworks and guided exercises for individuals and teams who need to get up to speed on agentic commerce fast, but don’t want - or can’t afford - a whole AI project.
This path is also for those who think their company isn’t going fast enough, or might even fail. You need to plan for your next role.
So that’s it. No dogma. No fixed doctrine. No pretend certainty.
Just grounded, real-time interpretation from people close to the front line. Making sense of it all in real time, to save you time and effort.
Customer Futures continues
Customer Futures isn’t going anywhere. If anything, it becomes more important.
This newsletter will continue unpacking the big shifts around customer empowerment, digital wallets, identity, and data portability. It’ll be more like every two weeks, and we’ll be pointing to Trusted Agents as the place to get things done.
We’re already working with some of the biggest brands in the world on real-time situation assessments you can use right now:
Short, digestible briefings for you and a handful of your senior team
Agentic Commerce playbooks you can read in an hour, and use at the next team meeting
Guided exercises your teams can run themselves in 30 minutes
So I only have two requests for you:
First, sign up for the Trusted Agents Newsletter. A new, focussed digest on personal agents, agentic commerce, digital trust, and practical tools you can use right now. It launches next week.
Second, get in touch. We’d love your feedback on what we’re doing at Trusted Agents, and to help you make sense of what’s happening in the market. Just reply to this email or contact us directly at the website.
It’s never been more important to understand the future of the digital customer relationship. So welcome back to Customer Futures.
And welcome to Trusted Agents.
We’re genuinely excited to build something new that will help you navigate the shift to agentic commerce.
Because the empowered customer is coming.
Are you ready?
Let’s go.
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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