Writing

Ideas for the next generation of commerce.

Engineering, economics and perspectives on AI, customer experience and the infrastructure behind modern commerce.

AI & Engineering 10 min read

Done means confirmed

A support system that marks a ticket resolved before Shopify or the helpdesk confirms the action is not reporting success. It is manufacturing it.

All articles

The ticket nobody writes

Most post-purchase contact is a customer looking for something the store already knows. Self-service that sees the order and acts inside the window removes the ticket.

Commerce 8 min read

Coverage is a schedule

Demand arrives by the hour, unevenly; people are hired whole. The customer meets whoever is on the queue that minute, so coverage is a schedule, not a headcount.

Operators 8 min read

Authority belongs in code

An instruction in a prompt is advice to a probabilistic system. Access control is a deterministic check that runs outside the model.

AI & Engineering 11 min read

Support scales by hiring

Every other cost line a DTC brand carries buys capacity at a published price. Support buys it by recruiting a person.

Perspectives 10 min read

What a headcount costs

A salary is the visible part of a support headcount. Employer contributions, turnover and supervision are the rest, and the BLS publishes what they cost.

Customer Economics 10 min read

AI alone closes nothing

The ceiling on an AI support agent is not fluency but authority and context — the right to act, and the facts that decide whether the action applies.

AI & Engineering 7 min read

Not a confidence score

Handing off below a confidence threshold sends a person the cases the AI answers better, and lets the AI decide alone the cases that need permission, not knowledge.

AI & Engineering 11 min read

Escalation is a routing decision

The industry treats escalation as a defect rate, and therefore optimizes the wrong number. A correct escalation is a routing decision with a right answer.

AI & Engineering 10 min read

Capture is not processing

Most brands count only the tickets their team handled. What the tracking page, the returns portal and DMs absorbed never enters the count, so every rate is wrong.

Operators 10 min read

Each piece argues one thing and links to the page that carries it. Nothing here is a product announcement.

Ideas for the next generation of commerce.

Done means confirmed→

All articles

Done means confirmed→

The ticket nobody writes→

Coverage is a schedule→

Authority belongs in code→

Support scales by hiring→

What a headcount costs→

AI alone closes nothing→

Not a confidence score→

Escalation is a routing decision→

Capture is not processing→

Done means confirmed

Done means confirmed

The ticket nobody writes

Coverage is a schedule

Authority belongs in code

Support scales by hiring

What a headcount costs

AI alone closes nothing

Not a confidence score

Escalation is a routing decision

Capture is not processing