This Experian report finds that security is also a high concern for consumers, with 55% saying it’s the most important aspect of their online experience.    Businesses agree, rating fraud detection as their second-highest digital CX priority, well ahead of decisioning software, staff, and fixing legacy technology.  Intriguingly, consumers said they prefer biometrics, PIN codes, and behavioral analytics over passwords.  Interesting breakouts by region and age.

Ladorian delivers messages to point-of-sale devices, using AI to tailor each message based on everything from inventory to weather to shopper behavior patterns (but not individual profiles). They’ve just added inputs from inReality, which uses in-store cameras to classify the mood, age, gender, and behavior of individual shoppers at specific locations (without identifying them).  Is anonymous surveillance an oxymoron?

Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents.  You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better.  It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange.  Price was not announced.