Retail

Trust and Transparency Are Key to Hyper-Personalisation in 2026

Hyper-personalisation is a soaring topic of debate in 2026, powered by the rise in AI features across CXM platforms, with trust and transparency key to delivering a strong customer experience. From a clear need for better-quality consumer offers, to the risk...

Emplifi Brings Reddit Conversations into CX Decision-Making

Emplifi has partnered with Reddit to give brands direct access to real customer conversations and turn them into actions teams can use. The deal will see the integration of Reddit’s Enterprise API into Emplifi Fuel, Emplifi’s execution and intelligence layer. This...

Google Cloud Brings Agentic AI to the Front Lines of Retail and Service at NRF 2026

At NRF 2026, Google Cloud presented its most concrete view yet of where customer experience is heading. Across food service, home improvement, and enterprise retail, the company introduced a new generation of agentic AI tools designed to actively complete tasks...

Holiday Shopping Felt Easier This Year. Losing Customer Trust Was Easier Too

Holiday shopping in 2025 felt easier than in years past, with less searching and less back-and-forth. According to Talkdesk’s Post-2025 Holiday Shopping Survey, AI took work off consumers’ plates. Nearly 89% of U.S. shoppers turned to AI during the holidays, and...

AI Is Getting to Shoppers Before Brands Do, Survey Reveals

Shopping rarely starts where brands expect it to anymore. Long before a customer opens a retailer’s app, lands on a product page, or walks into a store, AI is already in the background helping them make sense of options, filter...

Walmart and Google Integrate Gemini Agentic AI For A Stronger Ecommerce Customer Experience

The news is flooding out of the US National Retail Federation’s Big Show, with the changing face of loyalty already a talking point, and plenty of examples of AI arriving on the shop floor. AI is boosting efforts in the...

Chatbots Delivered AI-Powered Results in 2025, What’s Coming in 2026?

With the news from CES that Amazon’s Alexa+ is finally escaping the company’s consumer hardware and becoming a wider-ranging, web-based, virtual assistant, chatbots are back in the news. That’s after fading in the massive headlights of the rush to all-things...

Who Was Really Shopping in 2025: You or AI?

Over the last 12 months, shopping no longer followed the familiar pattern of search, scroll, compare, and decide. For many consumers, that work had already been outsourced, whether they knew it or not, to AI. Across retail, ecommerce, and digital experience,...

Commerce is Changing Fast with Agentic AI and Social Shopping, But Customer Service and Trust Remain Top Buyer Priorities

In a world where consumers can buy a product using their chatbot or virtual assistant, without even visiting a webstore, that pace of retail evolution continues to change with agents helping make those transactions more nuanced. As AI agents, new...

Tesco Plans Customer Experience Boost With New AI Partnership

Tesco has been on a major customer experience push in recent years, working with a range of partners, like Eagle AI, to deliver new experiences in-store, online and for Clubcard shoppers. Having doubled the size of its technology team over...

Customer Experience 2025 Events Roundup, and the Big Shows Coming Your Way in 2026

2025 was a busy year for customer experience events. Analyst firms, vendors, experts and end-user markets all welcomed CXM to listen to the great and good speak, and show off the latest software and technology. And we’re revving up for...

Americans Spent More This Holiday Season, Across Stores, Screens, and Experiences

Holiday spending in the U.S. went up this year compared to last, even as people felt more uneasy about the economy. According to new data from Visa and Klarna, shoppers were still willing to spend, but they were more careful...