Adam Grohs, Founder of agnoStack and Stackable Labs chats about the various improvements digital commerce brands need to focus on to drive better post-purchase experiences in this SalesTechStar interview:
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Tell us about agnoStack and the company’s growth journey.
agnoStack was built to help retail brands improve the online post-purchase experience while turning Zendesk customer service agents into “super agents.”
The company grew out of more than 20 years of experience in large-scale retail eCommerce consulting with brands including Walmart, Target, Diesel, Abercrombie & Fitch, and The Home Depot. While running a direct-to-consumer agency, we were asked by a fast-growing retailer to develop a next-generation retail back-office platform. That project became agnoStack, which we spun out into its own company in 2019.
Our mission was to bring enterprise-level commerce capabilities to brands of every size — from emerging businesses to multi-billion dollar, multi-brand retailers — and give them the tools modern consumers now expect.
From those learnings, we recently launched a new company called Stackable Labs that expands beyond commerce into messaging, AI, and conversational customer experiences. The platform enhances Zendesk’s industry leading Messaging platform, transforming basic text-based support into interactive, branded experiences where customers can access relevant data and resolve issues directly inside the conversation. AI is embedded throughout the platform, allowing brands to build customized experiences through an open marketplace of pre-built extensions.
What are the most urgent problems in modern post-purchase experiences?
There are really two primary sides to post-purchase today: increasing customer lifetime value after the sale, and making customer support more efficient without damaging the customer experience.
Over the last several years, especially after COVID, the balance of customer interactions shifted dramatically. Brands used to have three or four touchpoints before purchase and maybe one after. Today, there are often far more interactions after the sale — returns, refunds, delivery updates, exchanges, and support inquiries — with a nearly 3x increase in touchpoints after the initial sale.
As a result, brands are reallocating budgets away from pure customer acquisition and toward loyalty, CRM, and customer support. One of the biggest challenges is figuring out how to turn retention and support into growth drivers rather than cost centers.
At the same time, automation and AI have created a major customer experience problem. Efficiency has improved, but the “elephant in the room” is that satisfaction has often declined. Consumers are more willing than ever to try new brands, but one poor support experience can permanently lose that customer — and potentially many others through word of mouth. There needs to be a better balance between speed and efficiency and actually being able to help the customer with their question.
How is AI impacting digital commerce globally?
AI is changing nearly every aspect of commerce, from product information to discount discovery to customer support.
One of the most interesting shifts is that brands no longer have to rely solely on instinct to decide what products to create. AI allows companies to analyze search behavior and customer intent in real time, helping them identify unmet demand and build products around actual consumer needs.
In post-purchase support, AI has dramatically increased automation and self-service resolution rates. But it has also created unintended consequences.
Many consumers now feel trapped in what feels like “bot purgatory” — endlessly trying to reach a human agent. By the time they finally connect with a person, they’re already frustrated, and the issues are often more complex.
That changes traditional support metrics entirely. Handle times get longer, customer satisfaction scores decline, and support agents face more difficult interactions because AI has already filtered out the easy questions. The industry talks a lot about automation gains, but not enough about the customer frustration those systems can create when implemented poorly.
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Which brands have mastered the digital commerce experience?
One of my favorite examples is Chewy. Chewy has built an incredibly human customer support experience. From sending handwritten cards and surprise gifts to responding compassionately when a customer loses a pet, they understand the emotional side of commerce better than almost anyone. What makes the brand especially successful is that customers genuinely want to share those positive experiences publicly. The company generates tremendous goodwill and organic PR simply by treating people with empathy and care.
What are the must-have features of a great digital commerce experience?
A seamless, fully integrated support experience is essential.
Customers should never have to repeat themselves every time they’re transferred between agents or departments — or between bots and humans. The best experiences carry context across every interaction so support teams immediately understand the customer’s history, past purchases, and issues.
For me, that level of continuity is table stakes for modern digital commerce.
When we started Stackable, we were frustrated in general with the emerging AI/chat experiences that have seemingly surrounded us Even beyond commerce, it wasn’t lost on us that the industry we came up in has spent two decades treating customer experience as the differentiator — every brand swore by it, every consultant evangelized it, every CX team agonized over every touchpoint. Then AI chat arrived and we all, somehow, agreed that flat, fast, and artificial was somehow “good enough” because it was automated.
We need to bring back rich, engaging experiences into all touchpoints for the customer — even those that are now enhanced with AI automation.
Do you have five top of mind growth tips that you would share with eCommerce business owners
1. Use AI-driven search analytics to identify product gaps. Brands often assume they know what customers want. AI can uncover unmet demand and reveal opportunities you may never have identified on your own.
2. Treat abandoned carts as research opportunities. Most brands simply send reminder emails, but abandoned carts can reveal valuable insights about pricing, product descriptions, trust issues, or competitive concerns.
3. Invest in post-purchase experiences as heavily as pre-purchase marketing. Many organizations still separate eCommerce and customer support teams, even though customers now have far more interactions after purchase than before it. Post-purchase experiences should be a core part of digital strategy, not an afterthought.
Five thoughts on the future of digital commerce
1. Messaging and chat will become far more experiential. Brands need to embrace AI-powered chat without losing their identity or brand personality.
2. Commerce conversations will become multimodal. Chat is evolving beyond text into voice, video, and interactive experiences. Consumers increasingly expect to communicate in whatever format feels most natural to them.
3. Customer experience will remain the differentiator. As brands adopt new channels and AI tools, maintaining authentic, human-centered experiences will become even more important.
4. Companies will need to be more selective about technology adoption. The pace of innovation is accelerating and can be overwhelming, but not every new tool deserves investment. Successful brands will learn how to separate meaningful innovation from noise and focus on technologies that truly improve the customer experience and long-term business growth.
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About agnoStack
agnoStack is an industry leading, platform agnostic, eCommerce, customer service tool.
About Adam Grohs
Adam Grohs is the CEO and Co-Founder of agnoStack and Stackable Labs. Prior to founding agnoStack and Stackable, Adam was the Co-Founder/CEO/Chairman of Particular, an innovation agency and previously worked at Publicis Sapient as the Head of Business Development/SVP of Growth – North America, responsible for reimagining value creation through customer-centricity.
