Retail and ecommerce have been completely transformed in recent years. Who can forget when all non-essential retail stores were told to close because of the pandemic? Most shoppers had to switch their attention online, leading to a 55% jump in online sales .
Naturally, this pandemic boost did eventually decline, but not back to the levels we saw before the crisis. There are, however, several other changes to retail that have been taking place more recently.
Stephen Loynd , the principal analyst at TrendzOwl, has been talking about ambient customer experience (CX) for the past couple of years. This is a more conversational relationship between customers and brands that is facilitated by digital assistants, such as Siri in your iPhone or Alexa at home.
All these digital assistants are due for some major upgrades in 2025 that will move them from being merely transactional — “Play some happy music on Spotify” — to being able to understand and engage with detailed tasks. For example, “Please find out where Harry Styles got the sweater he is wearing on his NPR Tiny Desk concert and how much it would cost me to buy one.”
It has been a retail rule for many years that the online shopping experience needs to blend with the physical, in-store experience, but now this omnichannel strategy needs to be blended with these ambient channels. Your customer may see products they like in a Netflix show or a TikTok video — they may just be consuming funny videos during a train journey and not even thinking about shopping until they see something they like. They are not always coming to your store — the store is going to them.
This changes how retail brands need to think of the contact center and their customer experience strategy more generally. The traditional idea has always been that customer service calls take place after a purchase has already happened — the call is because of a problem or a question.
Today’s evolution is around this approach to communication. Building relationships with customers means that you need to be in contact with them (or at least just available to them) before, during, and after a purchase. We are now exploring how a retail brand can build a relationship with their customers rather than just arranging returns.
A great customer experience in the retail environment can enhance the relationship and inspire loyalty. A customer who loves their experience with a retail brand will often tell their friends and family about this. This advocacy is worth far more than paid advertising.
So, any CX strategy for a modern retailer needs to think beyond post-sales customer service alone. How do we create a source of information for customers, build a stronger relationship, and influence sales where and when it is possible?
Being there for the customer sounds vague, but think of it this way: What if you are selling furniture and you offer customers a live chat channel where any questions about any product can be discussed in real time using an app or even just regular text messages? This is a useful point of connection for in-store customers as well as those shopping online because a customer might be able to see a new chair they like in a showroom, but they can’t find an available salesperson. They can ask about it on the app though.
When our team worked with a furniture retailer to create this live real-time conversational type of relationship with customers, the company saw their Net Promoter Score (NPS) jump by 148%. This is an important measure that deserves attention. NPS measures how likely a customer would be to recommend your company to someone they know. To see a huge jump in this measure shows that existing customers will be more loyal, and they are more likely to actively promote the brand.
Think what this idea of more interactive communication can mean for one of the biggest problems faced by online retail — cart abandonment. The exact percentage of cart abandonment varies depending on the type of retail brand, but analysts estimate it to usually be around 70-75%.
This means that all the cash you spent promoting your online store, getting customers in there, and allowing them to select products, is all wasted much of the time. Most customers who take the time to select products they want to buy never complete the transaction.
Proactively engaging with customers who are likely to abandon their cart can have a profound difference. Perhaps you can have a trigger on anyone who has spent more than three minutes at the checkout without entering payment details: Talk to that customer and ask if they have any questions. Is there a problem with the checkout process? Is there anything you can do to help?
Often there is a specific reason why the customer is not completing the checkout process. Maybe they don’t want to create an account. Maybe they are surprised by the shipping cost. Maybe they are finding the process too complex. You will never know if they just walk away. In many cases, a simple conversation can lead to a sale. If a shopper is about to abandon a $250 purchase because of a $7 shipping charge, then the agent should have the autonomy to offer an individual customer free shipping and get the sale over the line.
The contact center needs to be thought of as an integral communication center — a communication channel between the brand and customer. It is not just a place where complaints are handled. This is where the customer relationship is managed and nurtured.
In summary, the key areas to focus when designing a CX strategy that is focused on improving the retail customer relationship are:
Unifying the customer experience across all channels, including the app, website, and in-store. This should include more than just the purchasing process, so also think about how customers learn about products and how additional processes, such as returns, can be streamlined.
Integrate emerging channels into your customer relationship. Are you thinking about pop culture or social media? Where are your customers learning about new products and can they connect to your services directly from those locations (such as whether the channels are broadcast or on social media)? Customers may often want to buy even if they are not actively “shopping.” Be proactive and personal with support. The examples around real-time conversations show the power of always being available to answer questions. Be there and help the customer whenever they have a question or doubt. Build community. Stop thinking of customer service as transactional and merely problem-solving. Use your interactions with customers to turn them into fans who actively engage with you — even when they are not making a purchase. Think beyond service. Your agents may often be answering customer questions on products before a sale, rather than fixing a post-sale problem. Think how this changes their profile into that of subject matter experts and troubleshooters — think carefully about this as you hire and train agents. They are building relationships, not just trying to reduce handle time metrics.
For more information on creating loyalty in retail customers, take look at our website here . You will find case studies and examples that go beyond the tired and traditional approach to retail contact center design.
