Katja & Transurban - 2026
Transurban’s next customer won't be human.
AI shopping agents already browse. Autonomous procurement systems already buy. The question for Transurban‘s leaders isn't whether machine customers are coming - it's whether your experience is designed for them when they arrive.
The agentic commerce shift
Transurban already operates in the agentic economy - you might not have named it yet. Your roads are being ‘chosen’ by fleet management algorithms. Logistics networks route autonomous trucks based on cost-per-kilometre data, not driver preference. Corporate travel systems book against structured rate cards, not brand loyalty. And that’s today.
When an AI fleet management system evaluates whether to route through your network - checking congestion data, toll costs, time-of-day pricing, API reliability - and it can’t get clean, structured answers, it routes elsewhere. The machine customer doesn’t weigh up options. It validates against criteria and transacts. Your pricing, your data feeds, your corporate account experience need to be built for that.
You’re already trialling autonomous vehicles on CityLink. Machine customers will use your roads, in fact, they already are. The question is whether your customer strategy is designed for them.
Machine Customer Experience (MCX) is the discipline of designing CX for AI agents. Katja Forbes is the practitioner who built the frameworks, wrote the book, and is already working with global organisations navigating this exact challenge.
Keynote - For Transurban’s Leadership team or a broader audience.
Machines are Customers Too: Designing for AI That Buys
Summary
What if your next customer isn’t human? In a world increasingly run by AI, machines are rapidly becoming independent economic actors, making buying decisions without human intervention. In her provocative talk, "Machines Are Customers Too," Katja Forbes challenges businesses to radically rethink their approach to sales, marketing and customer experience. She unveils how traditional customer journeys, trust-building, and engagement strategies must evolve to accommodate AI-driven agents and autonomous systems as genuine customers.
Leveraging her award-winning expertise in CX innovation, Katja delivers a compelling vision of the near future: one where the customer is code, and loyalty is algorithmic. This bold session doesn’t just speculate. Katja provides actionable frameworks and a clear roadmap, empowering leaders to adapt, innovate, and harness this shift as a powerful engine for growth. Prepare to rethink everything you know about your customers.
The future is here…machines are buying.
Outcome for Transurban
Transurban’s team leaves understanding which machine customer types are already interacting with Transurban, where the current experience breaks down for non-human buyers, and the three shifts needed to become agentic-commerce ready.
Ideal for an internal all-hands or leadership event · team away-days focused on digital futures
Duration options: 45-60 min keynote · 30 min lightning · fireside with Q&A available
Workshop - Designed for Leaders in Product, Engineering & Design.
Half-day · 3 hours
Agentic commerce Readiness - Designing Transurban’s experience for AI that buys
Outcome
Transurban’s cross-functional team leaves with a shared understanding of agentic commerce in their context, a mapped machine customer journey for a specific Transurban product or category, and a prioritised set of actions for Product, Engineering and Design.
Who it's for
Product · Engineering · Design teams at Transurban · 8-20 participants · cross-functional mix recommended
Format
Expert input + facilitated team exercises + working session · Can be run in-person · Requires no pre-work from participants
What the team leaves with
Machine Customer Canvas applied to Transurban · 5 MCX types mapped to Transurban’s real context · Machine customer journey for one product/category
full-day · 6 hours
Agentic commerce Strategy - Building Transurban’s machine customer roadmap
Outcome
Leadership and cross-functional teams leave aligned on Transurban’s machine customer strategy, with a MCX roadmap and 90-day action plan they can take immediately to their respective functions.
Who it's for
Product, Engineering and Design leads + relevant stakeholders · up to 30 participants · ideal for leadership offsite or strategy day
Format
Expert input + facilitated team exercises + working session · Can be run in-person · Requires no pre-work from participants
What the team leaves with
MCX Strategy Map for Transurban’s · Machine Customer Journey across multiple touch-points · Decision frameworks for build vs. change vs. protect · Prioritised 90-day plan by function
"Every output is built for Transurban’s context. Participants work with real Transurban examples and walk out with something they can act on - not a framework to file and forget."
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"Katja is one of the freshest, sharpest minds in the CX space."
— Paula Kennedy Garcia, CX Leader · United Kingdom
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"This is amazing work that helps build a set of practical actions for engaging machine customers and AI agents."
— Don Scheibenreif, Distinguished VP Analyst · Gartner · USA
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"A completely novel insight into the new world we are just entering - the world where intelligent machines collaborate to build a new kind of economy."
— Peter Schwartz, Chief Futures Officer · Salesforce & Creator of The Minority Report · USA
What I Do
Speaking: Keynotes on how to lead your Agentic Commerce CX transformation, getting ready to serve AI that buys
Advisory: Fractional CXO work on machine customer strategy—think "how do we design experiences for AI agents and autonomous buyers?"
Workshops: Machine Customer Experience Maturity, Types of AI that Buys, Strategy Map frameworks for Agentic Commerce your teams can use Monday morning
Author: Literally wrote the book on designing customer experience for a customer who is not human.
Meet katja
I’ve led customer experience strategy at global banks, retailers, telcos and airlines empowering leaders to create business outcomes through customer centricity. As agentic commerce and AI agents that can shop gain traction, I wrote "Machine Customers: The Evolution Has Begun" (with a Gartner foreword) to flip the customer journey on its head: Customer focussed teams are the natural owners of machine customer strategy because they already understand buyer journeys, friction points, and experience design. Now I keynote and workshop globally, advising enterprises on how transform their entire customer journeys for algorithms, not just humans and I bring practitioner frameworks that teams can use Monday morning, not theoretical models they'll never implement.