Apple, Design within Reach, Haier, Kay Jewelers, Pottery Barn, Room&Board, Wayfair, West Elm and Zegna all received the highest designation of an overall customer experience leader in the recently released report, The 2024 Retail Customer Experience Index, by consumer insights firm Incisiv and customer experience platform Talkdesk.
The index benchmarks 101 customer service and engagement capabilities from 131 leading U.S. retailers and brands across 11 industries, including apparel, home furnishings, consumer electronics and luxury. The index sorted the 131 retailers into four segments including the nine leaders, 39 challengers, 46 followers and 37 laggards. It also identified leaders in various sections of customer experience including engagement methods, personalized experience and resolution mechanism. Read the full report here.
Of the 101 capabilities accessed, retailers were most likely to have engagement capabilities, such as assistant from voice center agents and support via text, compared with personalized experiences, such as scheduling in-store appointments or product recommendations from a chat agent.
Retailers have continually adopted customer experience capabilities over the past two years, according to the report. At 96%, nearly all of retailers’ voice agents can support order modifications and returns, up from 74% in 2022. Artificial Intelligence-powered virtual assistant integration also increased substantially, to 59% of agents offering this, up from 38% in 2022. Plus, 49% of agents offer personalized recommendations, up from 27% in 2022.
Customer service
Shoppers expect to wait about two minutes for a customer service agent on chat or the phone, according to a Incisiv survey of 5,000 U.S. adults in July 2024; Yet, the average wait time from the 131 retailers was nearly double this for phone calls, with the average wait time at 4 minutes 5 seconds. On chat, retailers were more in-line with expectations with the average wait time of 2 minutes and 6 seconds.
“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,” said Dave Weinand, chief customer officer at Incisiv.
Customer service capabilities are paramount to brand loyalty, according to the report. Retailers need to offer multiple ways for shoppers to engage with the brand. For example, 52% of shoppers prefer automated self-service with chat bots for order status, product availability and store information questions. But, 62% of shoppers prefer a human agent for issues with payments, order cancelation and status of an open issue.
For the personalization arm of capabilities, luxury retailers such as Chanel and Burberry excelled with offering personalization features while non-luxury brands fell short. For example, 68% of luxury retailers offer personalized product recommendations via an agent, compared with the industry average of 49%, and 25% of footwear retailers.
Network
