Review: Customer Centric Retail 2026
With mounting economic pressures and impressive recent technological advances there are growing tensions for retailers as they seek to deliver great customer service while maximising efficiency through adopting the latest tech solutions.
Balancing technology and personal service in-store and online was very much under discussion at the recent The Retail Bulletin Customer Centric Retail 2026 conference that brought together a packed room of delegates in central London.
Subscribe to TRBBrands need to stay human
Susannah Schofield OBE, director general at the Direct Selling Association, suggests: “The brands that keep the human touch will survive. Fifty seven per cent of people abandon a purchase because of impersonal service. The future of retail is not faster. It’s closer. The brands that survive will be those that stay human.”
Peter Cross (pictured far left), former customer experience director at John Lewis Partnership, very much agrees: “Customers want faster but they don’t realise that with speed comes compromise. There is some brilliant technology but customer service is cultural and starts at the top.”
![[Commentary] Teresa Long: Customer Centric Retail: What are the risks?](https://www.theretailbulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Shop-assistant-wearing-apron-150x150.jpg)
He suggests that as people have spent more time online over recent years they have begun to find appeal in the rich, people-led experience seen in-store. Certainly the value of the physical store – with human service – has been increasingly recognised post-Covid-19 by Peter Williams, non-executive director at SGS Retail UK and former CEO of Selfridges.
He says: “At Selfridges people wanted to go to the store. It was all about the place and the experience and we were very generous in having lots of events when people didn’t have to buy anything. But hopefully they’d return when they needed a suit. Covid-19 changed the way people shop but we are social and people have been only too glad to return to stores even though online is convenient.”
Developing customer-centricity
Even in physical stores it can be tough to deliver a customer-centric proposition. Peter Goggin, CTO & global DTC technology director for EMEA at Dr Martens, says that when he was formerly at Burberry the employees were not typically customers of the brand: “We were not likely to drop £10,000 on a coat. What did we know [about the products and shoppers] if we were not the target customer?”
To overcome this the company made sure product was all around the office and the marketing team would pitch new product ranges to the technologists. “It was part of the relentless pursuit of who are our customers. Trench-coats would be in every room when there were meetings. And when samples were available we’d all try and buy them up when we got the opportunity,” says Goggin.
To lose sight of the customer is very easy as he recalls the roll-out of click & collect in China following its success in Europe. But the shoppers rejected it: “The numbers said it was the right thing to do but the culture is very different. In China they go into stores to explore not to pick things up. You’ve got to make sure you know the customer and the region.”
Listening to customers
Cross says leaders systematically should spend time listening to customers as this shapes decision-making. Jodie Sanders (pictured second left), chief marketing officer at Pooky Lighting, recalls some of the most valuable insights have come from effectively “stalking” customers round the store in order to listen in to their conversations. “These snippets of information and ad-hoc interactions really had my mind running. We need to promote this listening culture and not just focus on perfect data,” she says.
Similarly Gracie Tullio (pictured second right), co-founder & creative director at PURESEOUL, recommends team members stand just outside the stores and hear what customers think. Being outside the perimeter of the store opens up their conversations. The company has also initiated a non-sales commission policy that has boosted service levels: “The communications with customers is then effortless and not just done for generating sales.”
Being able to deliver this improved level of service is critical, according to Jo Causon (pictured far right), chief executive at the Institute of Customer Service, who says research shows retailers with outperformance of service levels deliver 10 percentage points higher profitability, 7% higher revenues, and two-times the productivity levels.
In-store technology
To help with service levels in store there has been an influx of technology but there have been question marks over its effect. Williams says: “There is limited space in stores, whereas digital stores are stores without walls, and retailers need a way to show the full breadth of their offer in-store using tech.”
This would certainly help with solving the issue of not having all colour or sizing options in stores. Stefan Kühn, CTO of Sporting Rock, cites the full-body smart mirror that was created by Snap that could show people in a range of clothes that were not necessarily available in that location. The problem with its lack of success was likely the price point. Williams says there have also been various attempts at creating sizing tools – that would help reduce return rates among other things – but none have worked at scale.
Giles Smith, independent digital product & technology advisor, suggests: “The challenge is to get beyond the flagship stores. If we feel the price is going down for these technologies then maybe we will see them scaled [across store estates].”
Cross-fertilisation of technology
What we are increasingly seeing is learnings from technology crossing the channels. Bruce Langlands, CEO of Trotters, says the experience of measuring shoe sizes in-store has been replicated online through an app that can measure children’s shoe size and is 95% accurate.
“It has brought returns down and is part of our bringing the store experience to digital. We’re transforming the digital space. It was previously appalling online versus the stores, which are inspirational. The wonderful thing about Trotters is the experience whereby children want to go into the stores,” he explains.
Further investment in stores – to make them even more child-friendly – is being undertaken alongside improvements to its digital prowess. One aspect is to become more customer-centric by better understanding where the customers are and who they are. “We’ve got to get into the thought process of knowing whether a customer is buying a gift or if it is for themselves, says Langlands.”
This has been a tough exercise for Meg Ellis, managing director at LA Brewery – that sells direct to consumers and to wholesalers: “We love our wholesale customers but they have not been keen on letting me know who are end-customer is. I’ll be surprised when one of our products crops up in a farm shop so building up a picture of our customers would help. We’d like the data to be shared.”
Data learnings
Providing data to enable retailers to better understand their businesses and customers is very much the role of Dan Wrigglesworth, director of data products and specialist sales for Transaction Banking Solutions at Lloyds Corporate & Institutions, who says the company has 28 million customers who account for 25% of UK transactions across debit and credit cards.
This provides a backdrop from which it can help retailers in many ways. This includes assisting with their location planning strategies; highlighting individual store performances of competitors in defined areas, determining customer brand affinity to help work out what would attract new customers; and using granular transaction-based intelligence to help retailers handle quick changes in customer behaviour and competitive shifts in the marketplace.
Highlighting the importance of data, Will Lockie, global digital director at Noble Panacea, suggests it is invariably down to failings on the data side that proves to be a problem with retailers being able to deliver a joined-up experience across channels. To address any such issue at Noble Panacea it is currently working on a single customer view across the business’s various channels that will enable it to deliver the likes of in-store clientelling.
Small retailer challenges
The other issue retailers can have, according to Bunty Stokes, consultant at KitBrix, is data overload. “As a small team we have to keep it simple. If we sell five of the same products to a customer then we can assume it is a basketball or other team. We then serve them [marketing] information to convince them to be advocates for other members of the team. We can build loyalty out of this. We’re spending time looking at the grass roots of sport and working with clubs to [tap into] tribal sporting communities,” she explains.
Also operating as a small retailer is Pim Vellenga, head of operations at BatchLDN, who says there is a need to be agile and cost-efficient, especially with marketing as the company does not spend any money on advertising. “People are now searching by asking for recommendations. We make sure our photo-shoots show up on a variety of searches and not just those by a male but also lifestyle-type searches when undertaken by a partner validating a purchase by a male,” he says.
These AI-driven search types are becoming more prevalent and are being investigated by a growing number of retailers. LA Brewery is also looking at where it can use AI in addressing friction points in its operations, says Ellis, whose underlying objectives are to work with two metrics in mind: customer acquisition costs and lifetime value. For Simon Poland, transformation director at Teleperformance, AI is used to predict the intent of customers and then it is used to start interventions with the customer on their journeys.
Enhancing customer journeys
The customer journey has also been enhanced through AI at Trotters when shoppers engage with the company’s customer service desk. The use of chatbots has enabled it to operate 24 hours per day and the four human advisors can focus their attention on specific enquiries that will hopefully “turn a negative into a positive”.
All initiatives should contribute to retailers delivering a more friction free journey for the customer. But all too often they have under-performed in this department. For Smith the collection of data can be a pain and companies should reduce their desire for customer feedback. This is often around requesting reviews that can be for even very mundane items that have been purchased. Retailers must recognise that such actions are likely to annoy the customer and that they are unlikely to garner any valuable insights for the business from the data.
Whether loyalty schemes merely add friction for limited upsides to members is certainly up for debate. Desi Reuben-Sealey, senior manager for UX at Victorinox, says: “If a loyalty scheme lowers the friction, is an extension of a brand, and feels natural then it helps customers. What I find with great schemes is that that there is less friction.”
Questioning loyalty programmes
Danielle Sones, managing director at Aba, suggests that some loyalty programmes – especially those from supermarkets – feel like its administration for the customer. “It’s supposed to be about loyalty so whatever you do don’t add more friction. They are nice to have but not what brings customers into stores,” she says.
According to Emily Mackay-Wright, customer experience manager at Bravissimo, none of the various schemes she has signed up to have been sufficiently beneficial to have warranted ongoing use. Although Bravissimo has a loyalty programme she says it has evolved: “Customers said the previous prizes were not earned quick enough. We’ll constantly ask customers what they think. All our innovations have been done with them in mind.”
The customer-centric nature of the business can be seen in the culture of the organisation, with the headquarters team all having to spend time in the stores and warehouses because that is where they will see the pain points and where the internal operations affect the customer. “Our decisions are all about how they impact customers,” says Mackay-Wright.
Reserve free places at our next event: Future of Retail Operations on 2 June
