28 August 2026 · My AI Stack editorial
How agencies should brief AI per touchpoint
Clients do not need another tool list in the appendix. They need a map that survives the kickoff.
The appendix problem
AI shows up in pitches as a slide of logos, or as “we will use AI to accelerate delivery”. Both are true and neither is a brief. The client cannot tell whether you mean faster copy, a customer-facing agent, or a junior team with ChatGPT open.
A better artefact is a journey map with a stack card on each leaky touchpoint: job to be done, owner, tool, and what you will not automate.
Challenge the brief before you stack
If the client asks for “an AI chatbot on the site”, ask which job failed last month. Unanswered enquiries? After-hours support? A sales team that hates qualifying? Those are three different products. HEA-World, a helpdesk agent, and a CRM form route do not substitute for each other.
This is the same discipline good agencies already apply to media and UX. The stack is just another expression of the brief.
A workshop that fits in ninety minutes
- Pick one customer journey the client already believes in. Do not invent a new one.
- Name the touchpoints they actually operate — website, proposal, WhatsApp, onboarding email.
- Vote on the two moments that lose money or trust.
- For each, write the job in one sentence.
- Only then open a short catalog and place one primary tool plus one fallback.
Leave with a one-page map, not a transformation roadmap. Transformation roadmaps are how AI projects die in procurement.
Delivery, not decoration
Once chosen, the tool has to appear in the SOW as an owned surface: who trains it, who reviews answers, who reads the transcripts, what happens on handoff. If that ownership is missing, you have added a channel the client will blame you for at month three.
My AI Stack exists so that conversation has a shared language — journeys, touchpoints, catalog — between agencies, consultants, and the operators who will live with the result.