Retail, at its core, is all about connections between brands and their customers. Increasingly, AI is becoming the interface for these brand connections, and is also a necessary relationship facilitator as customer expectations evolve. Prioritizing the customer experience is now essential to driving loyalty and growing revenue, as retailers today compete on customer experience just as much as price.

It is common knowledge in the eCommerce market that the cost of acquiring a customer exceeds the cost of retaining one. Customer retention is of the most important variables that formulate the user base of your store, and thus, it shouldn’t be taken lightly. Getting your customer retention rate to go up simply means making sure your business excels in the digital market. But the main question is how to improve customer retention?

According to the latest McKinsey report, the pandemic has redefined online shopping for the customer. Enter, omnichannel retail. With a drastic move to online stores, around 40% of customers have switched brands to those who are better equipped – not just in back-end logistics, but in terms of their customer experience as well.

The world is changing and so is the way we shop. A few years ago, consumers made it clear that it’s no longer just about which tee is the softest. They wanted to know if the tee was made in a sustainable way, without using forced or underpaid labor. Now, coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and social uprisings of 2020, shoppers also want—and expect—brands to speak up for social justice.

In 2020, tens of thousands of retail professionals descended as usual on the Javits Center in New York City for the National Retail Federation’s Big Show. Barely a year later, the annual conference was entirely virtual, your parents knew what “Zoom fatigue” was, and the Javits was a Covid-19 vaccination center.

This is a guest post written by Stuart Cooke, Marketing Manager at Irish Parcels a courier comparison service that helps retailers and ecommerce providers find the best shipping solutions for their products. -- The Covid-19 pandemic has meant businesses around the world have had to close their doors for months, with many left with no choice but to adapt quickly and take their goods or services online.