You used to shop with us most weeks. What changed?
O
Lapsed Customer Research
Interviewer agent · 1.1K uses
Interviewer Agent
Shopper Insights: Why They Chose You and What Almost Sent Them Elsewhere
Your sales data shows what shoppers bought. It cannot show what they almost bought instead. Ask shoppers why they shop somewhere and they say price and convenience. Walk them through one real purchase and a different story comes out: the brand they checked first, the site they almost ordered from, the out-of-stock that nearly sent them elsewhere. This conversation gets that story.
Real purchase decisions, not stated preferences
Named competitors from the shopper's own shortlist
Near-miss moments you can fix
Used 1,569+ times
What's inside this template
Start from this conversation and adapt it to your team — change any question, add your own logic, and connect the tools you already use.
Information it collects
The category and channel of a real recent purchaseWhat else the shopper considered firstThe specific competing stores, brands or sitesWhat tipped the final choiceThe moment they almost left, and what saved the saleThe need or value underneath the decision
Questions it always asks
The core fields every response captures.
Always anchor on one specific recent purchase
Ask for the names of the stores, brands or sites they compared
How it adapts
Follow-ups that change based on what people say.
If they almost bought elsewhere, ask what nearly tipped them and what brought them back
If they shopped online, ask which other sites were open in their browser
Where it routes people
Different paths for different answers.
Send near-miss moments tied to one location to that store or site owner
Escalate competitors that appear across several categories to category leadership
Automations it can trigger
Actions that fire the moment a response comes in.
Post a weekly digest of named competitors and tiebreakers to #merchandising in Slack
Log the shopper's shortlist against their record in HubSpot
Tag the Shopify order with the choice driver for later analysis
SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 certified. Responses are encrypted in transit and at rest, and you own your data. View our Trust Center.
How this AI agent works
The conversation asks the shopper to walk through one specific recent purchase, and gets the category, the channel and roughly when it happened. It asks separately about what they considered first and what tipped the final choice, and asks for the names of the stores, brands or sites they compared. When they mention hesitation or almost leaving, it digs into that moment: what triggered it and what kept the sale.
Getting started
- 1
Invite recent buyers from order confirmations, receipts or your loyalty program
- 2
Decide which categories and channels you want covered so results roll up cleanly
- 3
Tag responses by store or site so near-misses can be traced to a location
- 4
Route recurring near-miss moments to the merchandising or ecommerce owner
Template Details
- Agent Type
- Interviewer
- Category
- Retail and e-commerce
- Industry
- Retail & E-commerce
- Business outcome
- Strengthen your brand
- Job to be done
- Interview customers & users
- Journey stage
- Discovery & research
- Replaces
- 1:1 interviews
- Integrations
- Slack, Hubspot, Shopify
- Times Used
- 1,569+
Forms collect fields. Conversations capture context.
Static forms force complex situations into rigid dropdowns. Perspective captures structured data and the reasoning behind it — so your team makes better decisions, faster.
The static form
yoursite.com/intake
Category *
Select...
Details
Describe your situation...
Submit
Result:Category: "Other"|Details: "It's complicated"
No context. No follow-up. No next step.
- Shopper surveys ask people to rate why they shop somewhere in general, which produces tidy answers like price and convenience that describe nobody's actual decision.
- Checkbox lists of competitors only include the ones the retailer already thought of, so the surprising alternatives never appear.
- The moment a shopper nearly abandoned the purchase leaves no trace in transaction data, and a survey rarely asks about it.
The AI conversation
"Tell me more about the timeline — when did this start, and is there a deadline your team is working against?"
Extracted & structured automatically
Category
High-priority
Urgency
Deadline: 2 weeks
Sentiment
Frustrated but hopeful
Next step
Route to senior team
Triggered: Slack alert sent| CRM updated
Right team. Full context. Instant action.
- The interview anchors on one specific, recent purchase and gets the category, the channel and roughly when it happened before asking anything else.
- It asks about the consideration stage and the final choice separately, so what got a store onto the shortlist is not confused with what won the sale.
- It asks for the names of the specific stores, brands and sites the shopper compared, in their own words.
What are shopper insights?
Shopper insights are an understanding of how and why people make purchase decisions: what they consider, where they shop, what tips the final choice, and what nearly sends them elsewhere. Where customer data describes what was bought, shopper insights explain the decision behind it, which is what merchandising, marketing and store teams need to change the next one.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Explore More Agents
More retail templates for competitor stores, omnichannel shoppers and brand switching.
You use both shops. What decided this trip?
M
Competitor Store Research
Interviewer agent · 1.6K uses
Did the rewards actually decide where you shopped that day?
S
Loyalty Program Survey
Interviewer agent · 1.5K uses
What first made you look at anything else?
E
Brand Switching Research
Interviewer agent · 968 uses
Where do you shop for this now?
R
New Store Research
Interviewer agent · 1K uses
Walk me through last week's shops.
A
Grocery Switching Research
Interviewer agent · 1.6K uses
Related Articles
How retailers get the why behind the basket.
Shopper Insights in 2026: How Retailers Get the Why Behind the Basket
Shopper insights are the evidence-backed explanations of why a shopper chose a specific product, brand, store, or channel at the moment of purchase, including…
Read articleRetail Customer Experience Surveys: How Multi-Location Retailers Hear Every Store
A retail customer experience survey is a structured way for a store-based retailer to collect feedback from shoppers about a specific visit (service from store…
Read articleCustomer Experience in Retail 2026: What the Store Data Cannot Tell You
Retail has the richest behavioral data of any industry and the thinnest explanation of it.
Read articleForms are costing you business
Replace drop-off, poor qualification, and missing context with AI conversations that capture structured data and real understanding. Set up in minutes.
No credit card required • Cancel anytime