Speed Is the Moat: Future-Proofing Your CX Journeys
Shavuot is one of my favorite holidays. In Israel, it marks the wheat harvest—one of the biblically ordained Three Pilgrimage Festivals—and celebrates an eternal cycle: plant → nurture → reap → start again.
During the long weekend I read a post called “Moats in the Age of AI.” Its central idea hit home for both agriculture and tech: what you harvested last season won’t feed you next year unless you keep planting and tending.
One seasoned investor summed it up:
“You don’t win because you’re defensible—you win because you’re faster.”
After a decade building CX tech, I’ve learned that speed is the only edge that compounds. The half-life of an advantage has shrunk from months to weeks; what felt like a 12-month lead in 2022 can now be reverse-engineered over a hackathon weekend.
Evolution, not revolution
A true moat lets you move first, learn first, and move again. That doesn’t require ripping out your core systems – it does mean you need to be flexible and know how to adjust to the market needs and trends.
- Build on what’s working. Keep the ERP, CRM, and data lakes you’ve already paid for.
- Spins up agentic flows on demand – across the whole business. Journeys go live in days and tap every stack – linking a “package missing” ticket to an instant win-back touch, then triggering an upsell when the customer replies. No bottlenecks, no “whoever owns Salesforce” dependency.
- Stays free of vendor lock-in. Plug into any channel or backend so tomorrow’s tools don’t become today’s roadblocks.
- Evolves continuously. Tomorrow’s journey doesn’t exist yet; your platform should shape it the moment the need appears.
Stability is table stakes; continuous change is the game.
A tangible example
While Shavuot celebrates an annual harvest; retail gets a harvest every moment. Demand spikes, sentiment dips, inventory swings – brands that treat each signal as “ripe fruit” turn micro-moments into revenue.
The following use case demonstrates how Commbox platform with its native integration to SAP ERP, CRM and Emarsys technologies provides seamless customer experience. Last week we showed a major U.S. retailer how one Conversational Win-Back journey can delight shoppers and move inventory:
Why it matters
- Friction-free for the customer: one quick chat – no portals, no forms.
- Revenue on autopilot: every stock change or sentiment shift triggers the next-best action – win-backs, cross-sells, upsells.
- Data stays aligned: ERP, CRM, and marketing automation remain the single sources of truth while CommBox handles the orchestration.
When this was presented to the U.S. retailer, they immediately asked the key questions: ‘What will it cost, and how long will it take?’.
Our team response was: “This can be live in production within just a few days”.
That’s the power of speed: The retailer gets one continuous journey that feels personal to the shopper and profitable to the business.
Why speed compounds
- Faster feedback loops → sharper fit. Ship, learn, adjust—before competitors even finish their first spec.
- Rapid releases → higher stickiness. Continuous upgrades keep customers loyal; switching would feel like a downgrade.
- Compressed time-to-value → bigger bets sooner. Early wins unlock budget and confidence for the next cycle.
- Real-time responsiveness → revenue lift. Meeting customers at peak intent captures win-backs, cross-sells, and upsells before the moment – and the money – slips away.
Three questions for every CX leader
- How many weeks does it take to launch a new journey today?
- Where are you stuck in never-ending “pilots”?
- If a competitor cloned your last release tomorrow, what’s your next move – and how fast can you ship it?
If the answers sting, you’re not alone—that’s just the market telling us speed has become the primary moat.
Ready to accelerate?
At CommBox we layer an AI-driven engagement engine on top of whatever enterprise apps you already run—SAP, Oracle, home-grown, you name it—so it can sense events, understand context, and trigger the next-best action automatically, all without a costly rip-and-replace.
DM me or drop a comment if you’d like to compare notes on getting to market faster.
#Shavuot #AI #CustomerExperience #CX #CRM #ERP #WhatsApp #RCS #Oracle #SAP #Emarsys #Salesforce #DigitalTransformation #SpeedAsAMoat
