Ensure That You're Asking The Right Questions About Agentic Commerce

Why Most Companies Are Starting Their Agentic Commerce Strategy in the Wrong Place

Agentic commerce is no longer a distant concept reserved for Silicon Valley futurists. It is rapidly becoming a defining force in how businesses sell, serve, and connect with their customers. Yet despite the growing excitement, a significant number of companies are approaching their agentic commerce strategy from entirely the wrong angle — asking the wrong questions, chasing the wrong metrics, and anchoring their roadmaps in assumptions that may already be outdated.

The difference between companies that will lead in agentic commerce and those that will fall behind often comes down to one deceptively simple factor: the quality of the questions they ask at the very beginning. Getting those questions right is not just a strategic advantage — it is a prerequisite for meaningful progress.

What Is Agentic Commerce, and Why Does It Matter Now?

Before exploring the right questions to ask, it helps to establish a shared understanding of what agentic commerce actually means. At its core, agentic commerce refers to the use of AI-powered agents — autonomous software systems capable of perceiving their environment, making decisions, and taking actions — to facilitate and optimize commercial interactions. These agents can browse product catalogs, negotiate terms, complete purchases, manage returns, and even proactively anticipate customer needs, all without requiring constant human intervention.

This shift represents far more than incremental automation. Traditional e-commerce relies on customers initiating and completing every step of a transaction. Agentic commerce flips that model. Agents act on behalf of consumers or businesses, executing complex, multi-step workflows at a speed and scale that human teams simply cannot match.

The commercial implications are profound. Industries from retail and financial services to healthcare and B2B manufacturing are beginning to explore how agentic systems could reshape procurement, personalization, loyalty, and customer service. The companies that understand this shift early — and frame their strategies around the right foundational questions — will be the ones who shape the next era of commerce.

The Danger of Starting in the Wrong Place

According to Forrester's analysis, companies thinking about agentic commerce strategy often begin their journey with a technology-first mindset. They ask questions like: "Which AI platform should we invest in?" or "How quickly can we deploy an agent on our website?" While these questions are not inherently wrong, they are premature. Starting with technology before strategy is one of the most common and costly mistakes in digital transformation — and agentic commerce is no exception.

When organizations anchor their agentic commerce initiatives in the wrong questions, several predictable problems emerge:

• Misaligned investments: Teams build or buy capabilities that solve problems customers don't actually have, leading to expensive technology that delivers minimal ROI.

• Fragmented customer experiences: Agents deployed without a coherent CX strategy create inconsistent, sometimes frustrating touchpoints that erode brand trust rather than building it.

• Organizational confusion: Without clear ownership and governance frameworks, agentic initiatives stall in internal debates about accountability, data access, and risk management.

• Regulatory blind spots: Companies that move fast without asking questions about compliance and consumer protection expose themselves to significant legal and reputational risk.

The antidote to all of these problems is the same: start with better questions.

The Right Questions to Anchor Your Agentic Commerce Strategy

So what does a well-framed agentic commerce question actually look like? Rather than beginning with tools, the most strategically grounded companies begin with outcomes, customers, and trust. Here are the categories of questions that deserve priority attention:

What Problems Are We Actually Solving for Customers?

Agentic commerce creates the most value when it addresses genuine friction in the customer journey — not when it simply automates existing processes for operational efficiency. The best starting point is a rigorous analysis of where customers struggle, where they abandon, and where they would genuinely welcome an intelligent agent acting on their behalf. This means going beyond quantitative data and engaging in deep qualitative research to understand customer intent, anxiety, and aspiration.

What Level of Autonomy Are Customers Comfortable With?

One of the most underexplored dimensions of agentic commerce is the question of consumer trust and control. Different customer segments have vastly different comfort levels with autonomous agents making decisions on their behalf. A high-value B2B procurement manager may welcome an agent that negotiates contracts autonomously. A first-time retail shopper may find the same level of autonomy alarming. Understanding where your specific customers sit on the autonomy spectrum is essential before designing any agentic experience.

How Will We Maintain Brand Integrity Across Agent Interactions?

Every interaction an agent has with a customer is a brand interaction. Companies must ask hard questions about how their brand voice, values, and quality standards will be preserved when an autonomous system is conducting conversations and transactions at scale. This requires governance frameworks, ongoing monitoring, and clear escalation paths for edge cases.

What Data Foundations Do We Actually Have in Place?

Agentic systems are only as good as the data they operate on. Before investing in agents, companies need to honestly assess the state of their customer data, product data, and operational data. Fragmented, inaccurate, or siloed data will produce agents that frustrate rather than delight.

How Forrester's CX Forums Can Help You Get Anchored in the Right Questions

Forrester's CX Forums, taking place this June, represent a timely and highly relevant opportunity for CX leaders, commerce strategists, and digital transformation executives to step back from the noise and get anchored in the questions that actually matter. Forrester's analysts bring independent, research-backed perspectives that cut through vendor hype and help organizations identify where they are in their agentic commerce maturity — and what they need to do next.

At the forums, attendees can expect curated sessions designed to challenge conventional thinking, expose common strategic blind spots, and provide frameworks for evaluating agentic commerce readiness. Rather than showcasing technology for its own sake, Forrester's approach is deliberately customer-centric — putting the quality of the customer experience at the center of every strategic conversation.

For companies that have already started exploring agentic commerce, the forums offer a valuable reset — a chance to pressure-test assumptions and recalibrate strategy based on emerging research. For companies just beginning their journey, they offer an invaluable shortcut past the most common early mistakes.

Building a Future-Ready Agentic Commerce Strategy

The organizations that will define the next chapter of commerce are not necessarily the ones with the biggest AI budgets or the most aggressive deployment timelines. They are the ones that approach agentic commerce with intellectual humility, customer empathy, and strategic discipline. That starts with asking better questions — and having the frameworks and expert perspectives to answer them well.

Agentic commerce is not a destination. It is a dynamic, evolving capability that will require continuous learning, iteration, and adaptation. The companies that build that capacity now, grounded in the right strategic questions, will be positioned to lead — not just in 2025, but for the decade of commerce that follows.

Whether you are an executive looking to set direction, a strategist working to build the business case, or a practitioner trying to understand where to start, the most important step you can take right now is to ensure the questions you are asking are the right ones. Forrester's CX Forums this June are an excellent place to do exactly that.