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Post-purchase the new battleground
If AI is becoming essential before checkout, it is even more decisive afterwards. After-purchase customer care has traditionally been slow, fragmented and heavily reliant on human teams, but it is now one of the most important stages of the customer journey.
“Post-purchase support is the ultimate moment of truth,” Rossato says. “A customer has just given you their money and their anxiety about the order status is highest. If they have to wait two days for a human to answer a simple tracking question, that friction damages the brand experience.”
Marcus Rossato, head of marketing APJ for Klaviyo.
AI flips that dynamic. Klaviyo’s Customer Agent, for example, can instantly respond to tracking requests, manage delivery changes and initiate returns. For customers, this speed has become the baseline expectation. For retailers, it presents a major opportunity. “When retailers use AI to instantly manage those interactions, they turn a moment of potential pain into a smooth, positive experience,” Rossato says. “This creates loyalty. When you make the customer experience effortless, they come back. It turns service from a cost centre into a growth engine.”
Transparency, trust and the human handover
Consumers may be embracing AI, but trust still matters. Rossato says retailers need to design their AI service models around two non-negotiables: transparency and human assurance.
“Our research highlights the two biggest trust breakers,” he says. “One is the fear of data misuse. The other is the fear of being trapped in a loop with a robot.” Both can be mitigated if the AI runs on a secure, unified data platform that respects consent and understands customer intent. What matters most is that AI knows when to step aside.
“The AI must be designed to know its limits. If a customer needs empathy or has a complex issue, the AI must instantly and smoothly hand the customer off to a human agent, along with the full conversation history. Getting it wrong makes a long-lasting negative impression on the consumer involved.”
This matters especially in industries where Australian shoppers already show high comfort levels with AI, such as travel, beauty and entertainment. Expectations in these sectors tend to set benchmarks that flow through the rest of retail.
The adoption gap
One of the most striking findings from the AI Shopping Index is the gap between consumer behaviour and retailer adoption. “More than four out of five respondents, 86 per cent, said they have used AI tools for online shopping or product research in the last three months,” Rossato says. “I doubt anywhere near 86 per cent of Australian retailers are using AI, so there is a huge gap here.”
What Black Friday 2025 reveals
Klaviyo’s latest research on Black Friday 2025 highlights just how much is at stake. Australian and New Zealand retailers saw revenue growth of 14 per cent, outpacing the global average of 11 per cent. Crucially, this surge was driven by repeat buyers, whose spending grew more than twice as fast as the spending of new customers.
“This shows retailers are successfully leveraging their most valuable asset, which is their existing customer relationships through owned channels like email and SMS,” Rossato says. But the same surge in orders also produces a surge in service strain. “That impressive 14 per cent revenue growth directly translates into a massive spike in tracking requests, delivery questions and returns. Traditional, manual support models will likely struggle to cope with the volume.”
As Klaviyo prepares new research for release in December, Rossato says one takeaway will dominate. “The only way to retain those hard-won Black Friday customers and avoid frustration over delivery or returns is through an AI-first service solution that delivers instant, accurate and personalised support 24x7.”
The new frontline
For retailers, the message is becoming hard to ignore. AI is now the frontline of customer service in Australia. It handles the high-volume questions that once created bottlenecks. It improves post-purchase trust at the exact moment customers feel most anxious. And it gives businesses a way to meet rising expectations without overloading staff.
Rossato says: “AI is the new benchmark. Customers expect it. They trust it for the right types of tasks. And if retailers do not adapt quickly, they will lose customers to competitors who already have.”
To find out more, please visit Klaviyo.
