Scaling BPO success with agentic AI: Real-world client wins -
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AEO makes sure you show up as direct answers from answer engines. And it’s how retailers stay visible when AI picks the winners.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the process of making sure your products show up as the direct answers consumers get from AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot. And for retail, it’s already changed the product discoverability game.
A year ago when a consumer asked, “The best running shoes under $100 for flat feet,” you’d try to get a product page to rank high enough in Google to win their click. Today, AI engines show a short list of options, effectively shutting out every other brand from consideration.
If your product data is clean and up-to-date, you might win a spot. If it’s messy, inconsistent, or unclear, then your product becomes invisible. Not even qualifying for another abandoned sale report.
This is a new battlefield for retailers. And it’s why AEO was one of the hot topics at eTail Boston 2025. As Pinkfish CEO and Co-Founder put it, “The conversations showed just how fast retail is changing. Retailers aren’t debating whether AI has a role anymore. They’re focused on how quickly they can put it to work to drive results.”
The change is brutal for most retail teams. They’re feeling the pressure of having to update thousands of SKUs, knowing that missing an attribute might wipe the best-selling product off the AI shelf.
So the real question isn’t whether AEO matters. It matters. The question is whether your team will still be fixing spreadsheets at 10pm on a Friday while another brand quietly takes your spot.
So what exactly is AEO, and why does it matter more than the SEO playbook you’ve run for years? Think of it this way:
When a shopper asks, “Which laptop for college under $800 is worth it?” the AI engine won’t hand them 20 tabs. It will pick one or two. If your data is structured and optimized, your product is in. If not, it's invisible.
That’s what makes AEO so crucial. The answer has become the new store aisle.
Consumers using AI search don’t compare 20+ products anymore. They trust the first answer that feels credible and move on. Which means that every outdated attribute, blurry image, or vague description could mean a lost sale.
What makes things even scarier is that AI engines evaluate at incredible speed, comparing thousands of products in seconds. Manual workflows simply can’t compete anymore.
The winners will be retailers who:
It’s quite simple: no human team can update tens of thousands of SKUs across markets fast. Not without losing their minds—and more than a few weekends—at least.
That’s why being successful in the AEO era is about deploying agentic AI: autonomous agents that take the grind of retail operations and make it invisible. And that’s where Pinkfish comes in.
Pinkfish helps build AI agents that handle the unglamorous, high-stakes work AEO depends on: keeping data clean, current, and consistent.
For retail teams using Pinkfish, the shift means that pricing changes that once required hours now update across 50,000+ SKUs in minutes. Teams collectively reclaim over a thousand hours each month, and the relief shows in morale—satisfaction doubles when overtime changes to more time with friends and family.
Without this level of automation, AEO wouldn’t even be an option for most retailers.
IPSY, the beauty subscription brand serving millions of members, hit the same wall many retailers face: endless product updates and digital merchandising teams stretched way too thin.
“We had to be available 24/7, including nights and weekends, to process price changes,” says Dio Aquino, IPSY’s Head of Digital Operations.
With Pinkfish AI agents, IPSY turned those fire drills into background noise. Updates that dragged on for hours now publish in minutes, validated and deployed automatically. Their teams save valuable time, but more importantly, AI engines see consistently accurate, trustworthy data across their product palette.
It’s exactly what AEO rewards—retailers who deliver structured, accurate, real-time data engines can trust. By automating merchandising workflows, IPSY made itself the kind of brand answer AI engines want to surface.
As Nicole Clendeninn, IPSY’s VP of Program Management, puts it: “The cool part about Pinkfish is it allows non-technical people to leverage automation instead of waiting on engineering.”
AEO is the byproduct of three undeniable shifts in consumer discovery:
The journey doesn’t start with search bars anymore. It starts with questions like “Which subscription option is the best for my exact needs?”
And, in many cases, the answer given is the purchase made.
Retailers still optimizing just for clicks and rankings are playing a game that’s already over.
AI engines don’t care much about brand campaigns. They care about attributes, reviews, pricing, and inventory.
If your SKUs are messy, you probably won't make the shortlist.
Think of it as AI-era shelf placement. Engines surface the products they can trust to be complete, current, relevant, and credible.
AI engines weigh trust signals algorithmically: freshness of updates, review quality, consistency across different channels.
A single sloppy attribute can erode the authority of the entire line of products.
“Winning” in AEO is about nailing the basics that answer engines care about the most:
AEO is here, and the urgency to adapt is critical.
AI engines are already deciding which products deserve visibility and which never get seen. If your product data can’t keep up, your sales opportunities are gone before you even know they existed.
Retail companies have two options. Wait it out to “see what happens”, while AI learns to trust other companies’ data. Or act now, and start having your products surface as the reliable answer.
Pinkfish is already helping leaders like IPSY make that leap. With agentic AI, they’ve mastered brand consistency, reclaimed thousands of hours, and built the operational trust that AI agents reward.
Want your products to be the ones AI recommends first? See how Pinkfish makes it possible—book a demo today.
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