It’s crunch time: the busiest time of year for retailers. No other industry feels the approach of the year-end more intensely. But as the dust settles and 2025 begins, retail brands will have exciting opportunities (and a few challenges) when it comes to harnessing AI’s power to improve customer experience.
With more data and insights at their fingertips than ever before, brands have an unprecedented chance to understand their customers better, manage their contact centers more efficiently, and maximize the value of customer interactions.
Here are a few ways AI can uncover efficiencies, improve satisfaction, and drive revenue opportunities.
1. Managing sudden volume spikes
There’s no denying the value retailers can reap from social selling. TikTok Shop alone is revolutionizing how a generation of consumers shops. The platform lets TikTok users craft curated lists of their favorite products so other users can browse the lists and buy the products.
This trend brings enormous opportunities for retailers but also a major challenge: volume spikes have suddenly become much more unpredictable. You never know when an influencer might endorse one of your products and spur a deluge of customer inquiries.
Unpredictable surges can wreak havoc on retailers. AI-powered tools can help.
For basic inquiries that need fast, simple answers, AI bots can get customers the information they need. Beyond that, associate-assist tools can facilitate faster resolutions, AI can gauge customer sentiment, and AI agents can take over the bulk of Tier 1 interactions. Additionally, technologies like real-time translation and accent softening help brand ramp multilingual support (without additional hiring) from anywhere in the world.
2. Maximizing the value of customer interactions
Many retailers have a lot of untapped value in their CX operation. Whether they need to address cart abandonment issues or uncover hidden sales opportunities within service interactions, they’re missing out on potential revenue.
To decrease cart abandonment, retailers must determine why customers are leaving before they complete their purchases and have a proactive strategy for reaching out to them. AI can help streamline outreach efforts and reveal patterns in customer data.
Service to sales is another area that holds a lot of promise. Most (65%) service interactions have potential sales opportunities, but many companies don’t know how to identify and capitalize on them. A strong service-to-sales strategy is a must.
Use AI-enhanced quality and insights tools to listen to customer interactions and identify possible selling, upselling, and cross-selling opportunities. With the right tools in place, associates can stop wasting time on sales efforts that won’t be fruitful and instead focus those efforts on customers and interactions that are most likely to convert into sales.
3. Better, faster training and coaching
To deliver the type of personalized, proactive, and seamless interactions customers expect, you need associates with the right mix of hard and soft skills and ensure they’re ready to hit the ground running.
AI-powered training solutions can make associate training and coaching much more effective. And once associates are up and running, use AI-powered quality and insights tools to gauge how they’re performing, identify what separates top performers from bottom ones, and tweak coaching accordingly.
Invest in AI tools that can make employee onboarding, training, and coaching easier and more customized. You’ll reap the benefits of faster speed to proficiency, improved employee experience, and greater customer satisfaction.
Embrace the AI-powered CX era
As 2025 approaches, AI has evolved from theoretical to a contact center essential. AI-powered tools and the insights they produce are already proving their worth and driving real-world results in the retail industry. The positive outcomes they produce have become undeniable.
To learn more about the trends shaping CX in 2025 and how retailers can maximize them, check out our strategy guide, “CX Trends 2025: 5 ways customer experience ushers in a new era.”
