Artificial intelligence is most certainly having a positive impact on global commerce, but few leaders understand its impact as clearly as Alex Yancher. As Co-Founder and CEO of Passport, Yancher has built one of the fastest-growing platforms in cross-border logistics, a space that is often invisible to customers yet central to the future of e-commerce.
Yancher’s background spans finance roles at Facebook and Morgan Stanley and an operational leadership role at Pantry, where he helped modernize fresh food retail. Those experiences shaped a simple belief that now sits at the core of his work. The biggest breakthroughs in AI will happen behind the scenes, not at the front of the shopping cart.
Across the industry, brands talk about personalizing storefronts and refining chatbot scripts, but Yancher looks deeper. He focuses on the parts of global trade that break most often such as customs delays, duty miscalculations, carrier volatility and the thousands of small decisions that determine whether a customer trusts a brand enough to return. His team’s latest research, the 2025 Peak Season Playbook, makes a bold claim. Customer satisfaction is no longer a soft metric, it is the economic engine of global retail.
In this exclusive conversation, Yancher explains why the next era of e-commerce will be shaped by predictive AI, compliance automation and agentic systems that act before humans even notice a problem. He also describes a future where global growth depends less on headcount and more on intelligent infrastructure. Read on to learn more.
1. Your recent report — the 2025 Peak Season Playbook — shows that customer satisfaction has become the top KPI for many e-commerce leaders. What’s driving that shift, and why now?
Customer satisfaction has quietly become the most important commercial metric in ecommerce, and the shift is being driven by two forces: rising customer expectations and rising operational complexity.
On the customer side, the bar has never been higher. Shoppers expect fast delivery, transparent duties and taxes, clean tracking, and proactive updates when something goes wrong. With brands competing for the same ad inventory and the same customer eyeballs, experience has become the new differentiator. A poor delivery or a surprise fee now leads to immediate churn.
On the operational side, the global landscape has become tougher—tariff changes, compliance rules, carrier volatility, and new marketplaces all add friction behind the scenes. What our Peak Season Playbook highlights is that brands no longer see customer satisfaction as “post-purchase support.” They see it as a full-funnel performance metric tied to conversion, retention, and lifetime value.
When brands invest in cleaner landed costs, faster cross-border logistics, and more proactive communication, the payoff is immediate: higher conversion at checkout and fewer support tickets downstream. That’s why customer satisfaction rose to the #1 KPI in our research—it’s not just a sentiment score, it’s a direct driver of global revenue.
2. How are AI and data shaping the future of predictive and personalized customer service in e-commerce?
AI is enabling something ecommerce has always struggled with: predicting problems before they affect the customer.
Across our platform, AI now analyzes thousands of signals—from HS code risks and carrier performance patterns to address validation issues and early signs of customs delays. That data helps us identify when a shipment might be late, when duties may be inaccurate, or when an order needs a proactive touch before the shopper ever reaches out.
We’re building toward an AI Copilot inside the Passport Portal that gives brands real-time risk signals, delivery predictions, and take actions. It’s a fundamentally different model of customer service: one that is preventive, not reactive.
3. Chatbots and virtual assistants have made online shopping faster and more efficient, but customers often get frustrated when they can’t reach a real person when needed. How can brands balance automation with the human touch?
Automation works best when it removes friction—not when it replaces human judgment. Customers are comfortable with chatbots for quick questions: “Where’s my order?,””How do I start a return?”, or “What are the duties?” But when something feels high-stakes — like a missing package, a customs issue, or a damaged delivery — they expect a real human to step in.
The solution is what we practice at Passport: AI as the first responder, humans as the problem-solvers.
AI should handle:
● Routine questions
● Status lookups
● Consistent policy explanations
● Simple resolutions
And it should escalate when:
● Emotions are high
● A shipment is at risk
● Multiple parties (carriers, customs, the merchant) are involved
● Revenue or customer lifetime value may be impacted
When AI is built with transparency and clear “off-ramps,” customers feel empowered rather than trapped. They get speed when speed matters, and empathy when empathy matters.
4. Beyond customer service, can AI play a larger role in managing supply chains, navigating tariffs, and improving cross-border logistics? If yes, how?
Absolutely — and this is where the biggest gains are happening. While most brands use AI for marketing and front-end personalization, very few apply it to the operational engines that make international commerce work. That gap is where AI can produce the most leverage.
At Passport, AI is already powering:
● HS code classification — reducing errors, preventing fines, and improving landed-cost accuracy
● Tariff and compliance logic — dynamically identifying risk patterns and stopping high-risk shipments before they move
● Carrier performance prediction — spotting delays earlier and rerouting shipments proactively
● Invoice audits and billing reconciliation — cutting review time by up to 80%
● Address-error detection — recommending fixes before packages enter the carrier network
Most people don’t see these systems because they operate behind the scenes. But this is the infrastructure that makes global ecommerce predictable, scalable, and profitable. AI isn’t just improving supply chains — it’s starting to empower them.
5. Looking ahead, what emerging AI trends will have the biggest impact on e-commerce in the next few years?
Four trends stand out:
1. Predictive logistics becoming the norm, not the exception
Delivery promises will move from broad “estimated windows” to machine-learned forecasts that adjust in real time. AI will choose the optimal carrier, route shipments based on historical reliability, and flag risks before a customer ever feels them.
2. Compliance automation at global scale
AI will reshape the most complex layers of cross-border trade — HS classification, documentation, valuation logic, tariff updates, and country-specific regulatory shifts. As trade rules tighten worldwide, automation won’t just be a time-saver; it will become a requirement for global growth.
3. AI-driven personalization that extends into checkout and risk management
We’re moving from “recommended for you” to fully tailored buying experiences. AI will personalize:
● Duties and taxes accuracy
● Checkout flows by market
● Payment routing
● Fraud prevention
● Post-purchase communication
● Delivery expectations
This will raise conversion rates and reduce friction for brands selling internationally.
4. The rise of agentic commerce
The next frontier is agentic commerce — AI agents that act on behalf of shoppers and brands. Retailers like Walmart and Amazon, and platforms like OpenAI, are already paving the way. In practice, this means:
● Autonomous shopping agents comparing prices, delivery times, and import costs on behalf of customers
● Brand-side agents that monitor inventory, update listings, optimize ads, and negotiate carriers in real time
● Cross-border agents that dynamically calculate duties, file customs data, and choose compliant pathways without human intervention
As agentic commerce matures, much of the manual work behind international expansion—research, optimization, compliance, fulfillment choices—will become increasingly automated, allowing brands to focus more on product and customer experience.
Together, these trends are moving ecommerce toward a world where AI handles the complexity of global trade so brands can stay focused on growth. Instead of adding headcount to manage logistics, compliance, and optimization, brands will rely on intelligent systems that anticipate, adapt, and autonomously execute.
