The Phygital Retail Convention 2026 brought together some of the sharpest minds in retail, and across two days, one question refused to settle. Why do unified journeys still leak conversion? Our Founder and CEO, Ankur Rander, sat on the panel built around exactly this. Five threads we kept pulling on, in his words.
- Unified isn’t the same as adding channels. Everyone said: 'We have one store, now a new channel, web, app, and WhatsApp.' But it isn’t about adding more channels. It’s the one layer that sits above them all, so the customer doesn’t have to restart. The real pain isn’t channel coverage. It’s having to start over every time you switch screens.
- The technology is bought. The training isn’t. Every system today is API-based and open. Integration is solved. So why does the WhatsApp agent still not know what you said over email? Nobody trained the humans to deliver the unified experience that the software already enables.
- The shoe test. Picture this customer journey. You see a shoe online, walk into the store to try it on and end up buying it on the app. If a single intelligence layer is talking to all three, your salesperson on the floor already knows everything else you’ve been browsing. That’s a unified experience.
- Conversion levers change with the tier of the brand. Mass. The reason to exist has to land in the first 5–10 seconds. Big influencers plus a sharp price point. Trigger pulled. Luxury. Slow, considered, inspirational. Push too hard and you lose them. Quiet luxury. No logo to pay for, no brand premium to justify the price. The lever shifts entirely. You’re selling something else.
- If I were to open a brand today, I’d start by building a brain for it. One that makes the experience intelligent. And makes every employee of the brand intelligent. Maybe the most important shift in thinking from the whole conversation.
