Q&A: Graham Dixon, Chief Technology Officer, x-Hoppers
x-hoppers is all about connecting and empowering retail teams across the business. Our unified communications platform offers store colleagues hands-free access to full telephony, systems notifications and agentic AI, all without leaving the shop floor.
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
As CTO of x-hoppers, I help leading retailers and brands deploy scalable innovation that empowers their stores and the colleagues working within them.
I’ve been delivering and building systems across retail, telephony and IT for over 20 years, so that cross functional experience helps inform how I develop solutions that not only integrate effectively, but also deliver the outcomes needed for modern stores to perform, making frontline teams faster, smarter and more connected.
What does your company do? / What is your USP?
x-hoppers is all about connecting and empowering retail teams across the business. Our unified communications platform offers store colleagues hands-free access to full telephony, systems notifications and agentic AI, all without leaving the shop floor.
Combining wireless headsets, a mobile app, QR code-based call points and AI features, the platform keeps stores connected, accelerates learning and development and serves the customer in a smarter way that puts shoppers at the heart of every interaction in-store.
Giving frontline teams the power and knowledge to act in real-time, our solution integrates with retailers’ existing systems, allowing staff to work efficiently from the shop floor while still being available to support shoppers. Whether it’s troubleshooting a broken till, checking real-time inventory or supporting shoppers with in-depth product information or recommendations, staff can provide personalised and efficient service, enabled by AI and activated by voice.
What’s special about the platform and your approach?
Our approach is about truly connecting every part of the store and the retail business – across the workforce, technology and AI – into one seamless and unified network. It’s this interconnectedness, ensuring critical performance drivers all act in unison, which drives the efficiency and customer service gains we’re able to deliver to retailers.
While customer experience and enhanced in-store service delivery sit at the heart of the platform, we also enable micro-learning opportunities for instant on-the-floor training for frontline teams.
Recognising that CX improvements and operational efficiencies can only truly be delivered by an engaged and empowered team of colleagues, our solution integrates with retailers’ knowledge databases and Learning Management Systems (LMS). This provides staff with real-time microlearning without having to leave the shop floor, helping to improve employee experience (EX), support career progression as well as enabling retailers to onboard new-joiners or seasonal staff faster, creating best-practice and consistent experiences across the estate.
Additionally, because we know that bricks-and-mortar retail depends on fast decisions, clear communication and seamless service, our proprietary agentic AI is embedded in our headsets. This means staff can instantly access product information, inventory files or support complex customer queries, without having to leave the customer’s side, something which is a growing expectation among shoppers.
Recent research in our State of the Connected Store report, for example, showed that two thirds (65%) of consumers welcome technology that enables store staff to support them without leaving their side, while 88% want colleagues to have access to instant information to resolve their queries in real time.
This change also underlines the strategic shift in retailers’ store innovation investment strategies, with 58% of UK retailers investing in GenAI solutions designed for frontline teams, alongside tools focused on training, knowledge-sharing and employee enablement, which blend digital intelligence and efficiency with human connection.
How are retailers using your systems to gain competitive advantage and what does best practice look like? Can you share a case study with us?
We’ve been working with British value-led supermarket chain, Heron Foods, leveraging our platform to improve CX and streamline its store operations, all while enhancing colleague safety.
Combining our wireless headsets with a mobile app, Heron Foods has enabled smarter and more consistent operations across its UK stores.
The platform connects area and regional managers with frontline store teams via the mobile app, creating a direct line to the shop floor. This ensures the right messages reach the right teams at the right times to drive operational efficiencies and enhanced productivity. It also embeds intelligence directly into staff members’ daily workflows, improving speed of service, while smart notifications create greater consistency and compliance.
As well as improving in-store experiences, the solution helps staff feel safer and more connected on the shop floor. The headsets integrate with StaffSafe, an always-on security solution offering real-time, two-way verbal and visual connectivity to prevent, control and remedy in-store incidents. Able to access the StaffSafe helpline via the headsets, each team member can feel more confident, connected and safer when walking the shop floor on every shift.
Looking ahead, Heron Foods is exploring our new agentic AI headset features, which bring AI intelligence directly into the ears of colleagues to deliver even more personalised and efficient service.
Are there other companies you partner with?
Our partner ecosystem is important because retailers rarely need another standalone system. They need an integrated, connected platform that brings together the technologies already operating across their stores.
We work with partners across colleague safety, task management, inventory intelligence, security, facilities monitoring and loss prevention. Examples include StaffSafe for colleague safety and incident response, StoreForce for task management and workforce execution, MOOS for smart shelf and inventory intelligence, Sensormatic for security and loss prevention notifications and NOVUS for refrigeration and facilities monitoring.
Our vision is to make the headset the single point of engagement for frontline teams. Rather than requiring colleagues to monitor multiple devices, dashboards, screens and applications, we unify communication. That means critical alerts, tasks, insights and other information are delivered directly to the colleague in real time through a simple voice-enabled experience. This allows teams to respond faster, remain focused on customers and operate more efficiently, while giving managers greater visibility across the store.
What challenges and opportunities do you see in UK retail for 2026? How will you address these challenges and turn them into successes?
Retailers know they need to invest in connected stores to drive efficiency and meet rising customer demands, but knowing where to invest – and how to balance that innovation investment – remain ongoing challenges.
Retailers investing in store technology are realising that adding more tech, more screens and more automation doesn’t necessarily equal more performance – especially when innovation acts in isolation. Our report revealed that 46% of retailers admit their systems still don’t talk to each other, while a further half cited lack of real-time management visibility as a source of friction, highlighting the growing need for greater integration.
Another key challenge facing retailers is how they delicately balance the need for automation and innovation with human connection and personalised service.
Even as consumers demand greater technology in-store to deliver seamless, friction-free purchasing journeys, they don’t want innovation for innovation’s sake and still value the role of human interaction.
Indeed, our recent poll of 1,000 UK shoppers showed that a third (33%) remain indifferent to store tech that isn’t enhanced by colleagues. At the same time, 88% value staff being able to deliver real-time information to solve queries and a further 65% said connected store tech that empowers colleagues to instantly support them would enhance their buying journeys.
In short, retailers will need to balance fast, efficient services that shoppers want, while still keeping personal, colleague-delivered engagement in-store – and that’s where connected communication solutions can bridge the gap in delivering those human-led, tech-enabled experiences.
What is on the horizon for you as a company?
The next phase for x-hoppers is focused on making AI genuinely useful for frontline retail teams, rather than another dashboard or back-office tool.
We are continuing to further develop agentic AI capabilities that allow colleagues to ask questions by voice and receive instant, context-aware support through their headset or mobile app. That could include product information, stock and inventory guidance, operational procedures, training prompts or help resolving a customer query in real time.
We are also developing smarter task and notification workflows, where important store events can be routed to the right colleague at the right time and followed through to completion.
Alongside this, our mobile push-to-talk capability gives retailers a lighter, faster way to connect teams in stores where a full headset deployment may not be the starting point. The broader roadmap is about combining communication, AI, analytics and store workflows into one connected layer that helps retailers improve service, support colleagues and make faster decisions on the shop floor.
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To find out how x-hoppers can help your retail operation, visit them online here or connect with them here.
