No explanation? Customers will write their own.
EXPERT OPINION BY HENNA PRYOR, WORKPLACE PERFORMANCE EXPERT, 2X TEDX AND GLOBAL KEYNOTE SPEAKER, AUTHOR
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Somewhere between the bread basket and her second glass of cab, a friend who runs a wedding planning business shared about a client who’d pushed back on her price. This client had run her quote past an AI tool and then told her the package should “cost a fraction of what you quoted.”
My friend knew exactly how much her work was worth. She discounted her price for that client anyway because the machine’s number had a “source” attached. To the client, it felt like hers was based on nothing but her word.
Frustrating? Yep. More common by the day? Also, yep. Welcome to what I call the verification era: the shift from “trust, then verify” to “verify, then trust.”
Every price you set now gets checked, often by someone with a free AI tool and no hesitation to use it. New data suggests plenty of customers have decided what they’ll find before they even start looking.
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Americans already have a theory about price increases
For the first time, the 2026 Bentley-Gallup Business in Society report asked Americans about prices and profits. Nearly 9 in 10 said prices went up over the past year. Then came the part that stings if you run a business: 8 in 10 believe businesses raised prices more than they needed to because they wanted bigger profits. Nearly half say businesses raised prices “a great deal” more than necessary.
What surprised me is what people said businesses should do when costs rise. Gallup let them pick up to three options. Accepting lower profits won easily at 74 percent. About half said to raise prices, and 40 percent said to shrink the size or quantity of a product.
Two options barely registered — lowering quality got five percent, and cutting employee pay or benefits got four percent.