Incisiv, Talkdesk 2024 Retail Customer Experience Index reveals retailers must keep pace with technology trends to meet shoppers’ demand for hyper-personalization and seamless omnichannel interactions

Retailers need to keep pace with advancements in artificial intelligence and data analytics to drive deeper customer engagement and loyalty

Incisiv, in partnership with Talkdesk®, Inc., today released the 2024 Retail Customer Experience (CX) Index, offering a comprehensive assessment of how effectively top retailers meet customer expectations in an increasingly digital-first shopping environment. The report highlights the growing importance for retailers to provide differentiated support and engagement capabilities to meet growing consumer demand for hyper-personalization, speed, and convenience in customer service across various retail segments.

The retail landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation, driven by changing consumer behavior, global uncertainty, and technological evolution. The 2024 Retail Customer Experience Index benchmarks customer service and engagement across 131 leading U.S. retailers and brands, covering 11 industry segments, including apparel, home furnishings, consumer electronics, and luxury.

Based on the index findings, retail's overall maturity in customer experience is on the lower end of the spectrum, with an average of 34% of all retailers personalizing just one-third of their shopper journey. While retailers are trying to keep pace with technology trends, gaps remain across capability adoption and customer expectations.

However, a bright spot emerged because as brands have prioritized customer experience strategies in recent years, maturity levels have trended upward.

Specific to customer experience technology adoption, index findings indicate:

• Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual assistant integration grew from 38% in 2022 to 59% in 2024.
• Personalized recommendations by support agents grew more than 80%, from 27% in 2022 to 49% in 2024.
• The home furnishings segment leads in retail CX maturity. With an adoption rate of 40%, it is 1.4 times more mature than other segments. The watch category, on the other hand, has an adoption rate of only 28%.

The 2024 Retail Customer Experience Index examined and assessed retailers’ capabilities across engagement methods, personalized experiences, and resolution mechanisms. Highlights of index findings include:

• Apparel, followed by luxury retailers, leads in the adoption of customer engagement strategies. Apparel retailers are at the forefront of customer interaction by effectively utilizing text messaging, voice communication, and an omnichannel live chat experience to enhance customer engagement significantly.
• Luxury and home furnishing retailers outperform others in providing advanced customer support capabilities, such as offering the ability to checkout using chat services and chat agent support on order modifications and returns.
• Luxury retailers lead in providing personalized experiences and assisted shopping services. These include personalized product recommendations, the ability to schedule one-to-one appointments, and providing relevant ads while on hold.
• Luxury and home furnishing retailers outperform others in providing advanced customer support capabilities.

Detailed information about retailer adoption rates of customer experience technologies across different segments and the brands leading the way in customer experience excellence can be found in the full 2024 Retail Customer Experience Index.

Supporting Quotes

Ed Durbin, vice president and general manager of industry strategy for Retail and Consumer Goods at Talkdesk, commented: “The evolution of customer experience in retail is nothing short of revolutionary. As consumers increasingly demand hyper-personalized, seamless interactions across multiple channels, retailers turn to AI-powered solutions to meet and exceed these expectations. At Talkdesk, we are proud to support this transformation with AI-powered customer experience solutions that help retailers keep pace with changing consumer behaviors and set new customer engagement and loyalty standards. Leveraging the latest AI technology, Talkdesk Retail Experience Cloud provides global retailers the ability to support their customers before, during, and after the sale. Our collaboration with Incisiv on the 2024 Retail Customer Experience Index underscores the critical role AI and automation will play in shaping the future of retail.”

Dave Weinand, chief customer officer at Incisiv, added: “Our findings reveal that while retailers have made significant strides in customer experience, there remains a critical gap between consumer expectations and what is currently being delivered. Retailers must accelerate their adoption of advanced technologies, particularly AI and automation, to deliver the hyper-personalized, efficient service today’s consumers demand. This index is a crucial benchmark for retailers to understand where they stand and what steps they need to take to enhance their customer engagement strategies.”

About Talkdesk

Talkdesk® is on a mission to rid the world of bad customer experience. With our cloud-native, generative AI-powered CX platform, purpose-built industry solutions, and extensible AI offerings, we empower enterprises in the cloud and on-premises to deliver exceptional customer experiences that make them more competitive, grow revenue, reduce costs, and provide operational efficiencies. With specialized workflows and integrations delivered out of the box for our Industry Experience Clouds, Talkdesk accelerates value for our customers faster and more simply than legacy or one-size-fits-all solutions.

Partnering with enterprises globally, we deliver continuous innovation and breakthrough results. Our commitment to reliability and security, paired with our track record of delivering on promises, sets us apart in the industry. Elevate customer experiences, streamline operations, and increase revenue with Talkdesk. Companies that love their customers use Talkdesk.

Talkdesk is a registered trademark of Talkdesk, Inc. All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

About Incisiv

Incisiv is a next-generation industry insights firm that helps retailers and brands navigate digital disruption in their industry. Incisiv offers consumer industry executives responsible for digital transformation a trusted platform to share and learn in a non-competitive setting and the tools necessary to improve digital maturity, impact, and profitability. For more information, visit www.incisiv.com.

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