Retail Customer Experience Trends in 2025 and How to Successfully Adopt Them

"Customer experience is the heart of modern marketing—it’s where loyalty is built and brands come to life."

As the digital retail landscape evolves at lightning speed, marketers must stay ahead by anticipating shifts in retail customer experience trends (CX trends) driven by emerging technologies and changing behaviors.

As most recently, the 2024-25 “Customer Experience Optimization” global study by Metrigy, surveyed over 500 companies to uncover key CX trends and some noticeable retail industry insights. 

In this article, Smart Tribune will share top innovative retail customer experience trends and how to improve customer experience in retail that you can adopt to enhance touchpoints, foster loyalty, and forge meaningful connections with customers.

Top Retail Customer Experience Trends to Watch Out

AI and generative AI (GenAI)

Many organizations have begun supplementing traditional surveys and focus groups with sentiment analysis using GenAI. When asked about CX transformation projects, 37.5% of Metrigy's survey respondents cited VoC programs, and 43.7% of organizations currently use AI-enabled inferred sentiment to track CX.

By 2029, GenAI is projected to make a $9.2 trillion impact on the global economy, revolutionizing industries like retail with its multifaceted applications.

Generative AI is a cutting-edge technology that uses advanced algorithms to create data-driven insights, generate content, and automate processes. 

Its ability to analyze unstructured consumer behavior trends and learn from interactions makes it a powerful tool for retail customer experience trends optimization. 

Why trending?

• Boost operational efficiency: Retail margins are tight, making efficiency gains critical. GenAI automates repetitive tasks like inventory management, content creation, and employee scheduling.
• Strengthen customer loyalty: GenAI uses customer data (e.g., shopping history, social media activity) to create highly personalized marketing campaigns, reducing brand fatigue and fostering stronger connections.
• Enhance customer service: Automation secures a seamless customer experience, from explaining return policies to scheduling pickups for returns. AI-powered chatbots can handle inquiries, resolve issues, and provide real-time support 24/7.

Learn more about the role of AI and GenAI in retail industry and retail customer service:

• Generative AI in customer service | Definition, examples, how to use, statistics and potential growth
• 15 examples of great retail customer service that businesses shouldn’t miss
• Differences between chatbot vs conversation AI
• How to build AI chatbot for retail businesses from scratch?

How to leverage AI and GenAI for success?

• Define objectives: Identify specific CX challenges AI or GenAI can address in your business, such as personalizing marketing or automating customer service.
• Invest in training: Pilot AI and GenAI tools for one process (e.g., inventory management) before scaling. Then, equip teams with knowledge about GenAI capabilities and integration strategies.
• Leverage insights: Use these cutting-edge technologies to analyze data and drive actionable strategies across customer touchpoints. Continuously refine GenAI and AI-powered applications based on performance metrics and customer feedback.

Rise of customer self-service

A retail customer experience trends report highlights that 83% of CX leaders predict a fivefold increase in customer self-service interactions.

In another report, 81% of consumers expected more self-service options and 95% of businesses reporting an increase in self-service requests.

Explore what customer self-service is.

Customer self-service allows individuals to resolve issues and find answers without relying on direct interaction with a human agent. This approach includes tools like FAQs, knowledge bases, AI-driven chatbots, and interactive kiosks. 

Dig into the world of customer self-service:

• The best customer self-service channel: Dynamic FAQ or chatbot?
• Power of customer self-service for driving conversions along the purchase journey
• How to make your website customer self-service friendly
• Retail chatbot with top use cases, examples and how to build one.

The shift towards self-service has transformed customer support, making it faster, more cost-effective, and available round the clock.

Why trending?

• Improve customer satisfaction: Self-service empowers customers to resolve their issues instantly. With tools available around the clock, customers aren’t limited by time zones, improving their overall experience.
• Boost efficiency and scalability: AI-powered tools, such as AI chatbot by Smart Tribune, enable businesses to handle high support volumes consistently without compromising quality. 

Did you know? TotalEnergie's number of requests for assistance decreased by 40%. Discover full case study!

• Reduce costs: Self-service lowers operational costs by automating support functions. 
• Enhance customer loyalty: A seamless self-service experience fosters trust and long-term loyalty. When customers can solve problems independently, they perceive the brand as responsive and user-friendly.

How to make full use of customer self-service?

• Create a robust knowledge base with AI: Use generative AI to build and maintain an extensive self-service library.
• Deploy AI agents for instant support: Leverage AI bots to provide real-time assistance and reduce response times.
• Measure effectiveness and optimize: Track KPIs such as deflection rates, customer satisfaction scores, and average handle times to find room for improvement, fine tune the system and keep self-service tools remain effective and relevant.

The growing focus on hyper-personalization

Today’s consumers expect meaningful connections with brands, with 80% of people valuing experiences when choosing where to shop. 

Hyper-personalization goes beyond basic personalization by offering highly customized messages, recommendations, and interactions designed to meet individual customer needs promptly.

Why trending?

• 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from companies offering personalized experiences (Epsilon).
• Brands can use hyper-personalization to analyze behavior, select relevant imagery or keywords, and suggest products tailored to individual preferences.
• By offering targeted product recommendations, it reduces decision fatigue and simplifies the shopping process.

• Hyper-personalization fosters emotional connections that encourage customer advocacy.
• For instance, a customer searching for a product online can be notified when it becomes available in a nearby store, seamlessly connecting online and offline shopping experiences.

How to leverage hyper-personalization for success?

• Use analytics and AI to collect insights about customer preferences, purchase history, and behavior.
• Tools like chatbots and AI-powered platforms help scale hyper-personalization efforts effectively.

• Brands can automate messages while maintaining a human-like tone. For example, automated updates about product availability or tailored recommendations can enhance customer satisfaction.

Seamless omnichannel experience

Unlike traditional retail, where channels operate in isolation, omnichannel strategies synchronize interactions across various platforms to enhance customer convenience and personalization.

By 2027, 23% of retail purchases are projected to be online, showing the continued rise of digital shopping. Yet, a Prosper Insights & Analytics survey found that 53% of Gen-Z shoppers still prefer in-person purchases for essential items like apparel. 

This dynamic emphasizes the need for retailers to adopt omnichannel strategies to meet diverse customer needs. As consumer behavior evolves, there is a growing expectation for brands to offer a fluid experience, where every touchpoint contributes to a unified narrative.

Why trending?

• 80% of consumers say the experience a company provides is just as important as its products and services (Salesforce).
• Omnichannel strategies allow retailers to collect and analyze customer data from various touchpoints, helping them offer real-time, personalized experiences.
• Omnichannel experiences reduce friction, ensuring customers can transition seamlessly between platforms without losing their place in the buying journey. 

How to optimize omnichannel experience?

1. Ensure consistency across channels: Aligning values and messaging across these channels, so that whether the customers shop on a brand’s website, visit a physical store, or engage on social media, brands shall build recognition and trust.
2. Integrate the shopping experience: Beyond marketing, omnichannel strategies must integrate key operational elements, such as inventory visibility, customer support, and returns. Customers should be able to check product availability online, initiate returns in-store, and access 24/7 support through their preferred medium, ensuring maximum convenience.
3. Collaborate with partners: Through affiliate partnerships, products can be presented to customers in context, driving sales. Cashback and loyalty programs also encourage repeat interactions across platforms, rewarding customers for their continued engagement.

Role of sustainability

With rising concerns over climate change and consumer demand for environmentally conscious products, the retail customer experience trends include increasing pressure to adopt sustainable practices.

Why trending?

1. Consumer expectations are shifting: 79% of consumers now prefer sustainable packaging, highlighting the shift toward eco-conscious shopping habits (Zippia). Plus, 63% of consumers report being less likely to purchase products with environmentally harmful packaging.
2. Environmental impact of retail: Of the 353 million tons of global plastic waste generated annually, half comes from packaging, making it a key target for sustainability efforts. The retail supply chain contributes to 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Deloitte), underscoring the industry's significant ecological footprint.
3. Building consumer trust and loyalty: 43% of shoppers are willing to spend more on sustainable products (Nielsen), showing that sustainability is not just a trend but a long-term shift in consumer preferences. 

How to drive sustainability in retail?

1. Commit to sustainability and transparency: The first step is to make a clear commitment to sustainability and communicate this transparently with customers. This can include adopting eco-friendly packaging, reducing waste, and improving energy efficiency.
2. Understand customer needs and deliver values based experiences: By leveraging AI-driven data management platforms, retailers can create personalized, relevant experiences that resonate with customers’ eco-conscious preferences. 
3. Create dynamic and personalized sustainability personas: Traditional customer personas are no longer sufficient in a rapidly changing world, thus, retailers need dynamic, data-driven personas that reflect evolving customer behaviors. This can include subsegmenting sustainability buyers into categories such as "dark green" or "light green" consumers.

Immersive experience through AR, VR and metaverse

Studies show that 71% of consumers would visit stores more often if they could experience products through AR. Furthermore, 40% are willing to pay more for products that can be experienced in AR.

Why trending?

1. Personalized shopping experience: With AR, the amount of information retained in memory is 70% higher compared to traditional methods, making it a highly effective tool for consumer engagement (Harvard Business Review).
2. Data-driven insights: AR/VR experiences, such as virtual dressing rooms, provide retailers with real-time data on consumer preferences and behavior. This data allows brands to better understand their customers' tastes, etc., helping them gain a competitive edge and cater to evolving consumer demands.
3. A game-changer for B2B sales: By 2022, 40% of all virtual reality experiences in B2B environments were expected to boost sales opportunities, showcasing the untapped potential of AR/VR in non-consumer markets (Gartner).
4. Inclusivity across generations: While the younger generation is more immersed in virtual reality, 64% of Generation X (ages 51–69) also expressed a positive view of VR, indicating that the technology is gaining broad appeal across age groups (Pew Research).

How to utilize AR, VR and metaverse for success?

Best retail experience examples: Apple Vision Pro is an example of spatial computing that will provide a seamless gateway to immersive experiences, allowing retailers to engage customers across various touchpoints.

What to Consider When Adopting Emerging Trends?

Technology infrastructure requirements

As businesses pivot to retail customer experience trends, it is crucial to have the ability to use new technologies smoothly. 

Retailers should make additional expenditures into technology infrastructure that meets the needs of data storage, especially so given the surge in customer engagement and customer’s online transactions. 

Furthermore, the infrastructure setup has to be made in a way that is flexible. Unlike other industries, especially in the retail environment, companies need to adjust to changing technological requirements without the need to completely change their systems further. 

Tips: Cloud solutions provide an appropriate level of flexibility and scalability that enables the retailers to better their capacities when customer needs change or new devices and technology channels are available.

Change management considerations

In order to create seamless interfaces across the buying journey, retailers need to implement unified commerce technologies. However, adjusting to this new reality is much more than simply a matter of tech for retail, it’s in fact a matter of business management considerations. 

Retailers will also be more likely to adopt and embrace change management systems that are more agile and responsive to changes in the external environment. It goes beyond technology to a complete overhaul of business processes, organizational architectures, and the way customers are interacted with.

Tips: There should be synergies between change proposals and the company mission and values so that all stakeholders are not only familiar with them but are willing to adopt them. 

Find out What is change management process? 

Staff training and development

Staff retention is an issue that affects productivity in the retail sector when implementing these retail customer experience trends. 

Turnover rates can soar to about 95% in some instances, which indicates a failure to deal with staff development. Reversedly, building employees’ competence to adapt to new technologies and processes will facilitate expansion and bring about sustained benefits. 

Retailers can leverage internal knowledge base to boost employees efficiency and productivity. 

Tips: Employing personalized upskilling targets aimed at enhancing customer experience in retail and retention rates are more effective when retailers aim to foster customer loyalty as well.

Phased rollout approach

Once areas where customers are unhappy are established, and investments to address them are determined, the hard work of engaging with customers to resolve their issues promptly begins. 

Prior to any launch, there is a great need to state what success looks like and measure success against set targets. Then, a detailed rollout wishes to remain, and it follows that the customer is at the heart of every decision.

Tips: User engagement surveys and constant user engagement assist greatly in improving the overall strategy and fixing problems when they come up, thereby making sure that the strategies are responsive to customer requirements is critical.

ROI calculation framework

Lastly, the integration of modern devices can prove to be more difficult when it comes to calculating ROI as compared to investments of the past. The returns on such incorporating of the equipment and devices are long term and oftentimes intangible.

The barriers to entry include the proper utilization of human resources which includes time and effort to execute different systems in conjunction to the amount spent on devices and equipment.

Tips: Earnings should not be limited to financial gains and instead should include a broader and more strategic outlook revolving around business objectives, long term goals and competitive advantages to facilitate efficient ROI calculations.

Delve deep into how to develop a winning customer experience strategy.

FAQs about CX in Retail Industry

1. What is retail customer experience?

CX, also referred to as retail customer experience, describes how a customer views a retail business based on multiple interactions with it, for instance, while shopping, interacting with employees, using a business’s online interface, purchasing products, going through the rotation, or post-purchase. The best retail customer experience contributes to the satisfaction of customers where they are likely to remain loyal and increased sales occur.

2. Why is customer experience important in retail?

Customer experience is probably the most important aspect of the retail environment since it determines whether customers will stick to the business, what kind of opinion they have about the business and whether revenue would be generated. 

Given the market competition today, incorporating an effortless and customized experience can set a brand apart, win customers’ repeat business and generate referrals. Such brands that provide customers with excellent CX are able to capture their customers and build a relationship that lasts for a long time.

3. What are key elements of a great retail CX?

There are many things about a business’s CX that stand out and account for great retail CX:

• Convenience: How easy a business makes the navigation process of its website and the retrieval of desired items.
• Personalization: Which way a business can recommend and/or offer items to a customer depending on their peculiar needs.
• Consistency: The shared experience from a retail store to a website and call center.
• Engagement: The extent to which employees are friendly, knowledgeable, and considerate to a customer.
• Problem resolution: The degree to which issues or returns are handled quickly.

4. How can technology enhance customer experience in retail?

Technology contributes a great deal in improving retail CX by:

• Providing data insights: Using customer information to enable tailored shopping experiences.
• Operations optimization: Incorporating self-service kiosks and mobile applications to reduce service delivery time. 
• Omnichannel integration: Making it possible to move from online to offline shopping without hitches. 
• AR: Allowing customers to virtually try on clothes or furniture. 
• Chatbots and AI robots: Providing customer service or making product suggestions.

5. How to improve customer experience in retail?

To enhance CX in retail requires one to do the following: 

• Understanding customer needs: conduct surveys and gather feedback to know what problems to solve. 
• Enhancing staff training: prepare the personnel to be able to guarantee great customer service. 
• Bettering store layout: make the place hard to miss as well as easy to find items. 
• Utilizing online tools: implementing applications, customer reward systems, and social media to increase interaction. 
• Striving for consistency: providing the same look and feel to customers across different reach out points.

Bottom Line - Retail Consumer Insights

In today’s fast-paced retail environment, customer experience is essential for staying ahead of the curve, fostering loyalty, and meeting evolving customer expectations. Embracing retail customer experience trends will not only enhance customer satisfaction but also drive sales, stimulating long-term growth.

In case you need more insights and information about how to stay ahead in retail, drop Smart Tribune a line to get a free consultation, instant quotes and more best practices for elevating customer experience in the retail industry.