183M shoppers, 27 days: Retailers gear up for holiday sprint with shorter season 

As the ink dries on holiday wish lists, retailers are zeroing in on a steady market with strong signs of buying growth. This year’s outlook suggests a measured optimism—a landscape where consumer spending maintains its course.

Even with fewer shopping days this holiday season due to the later U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, there appears to be pent-up retail demand. A record 183.4 million people are planning to shop in-store and online from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday this year, according to the annual survey released today by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics. That marks an increase from the previous record of 182 million (2023) and represents an increase of more than 18 million additional shoppers than five years ago right before the global pandemic.

Emerging economic indicators point to a resilient retail environment. Shoppers are expected to approach their holiday purchases with strategic intent, balancing a celebratory mood with calculated spending. Despite the first rate cut from the U.S. Federal Reserve in four years, industry analysts expect a deal-heavy holiday shopping season yet again. While not a breakout year, the season offers retailers a stable platform for engagement and strategic planning.

Digging into the findings of the 2024 Deloitte holiday retail survey reveal the trends underlying the 2024 holiday retail season. Here are the survey’s top three findings:

1. Merry and bright outlook: Shoppers are more optimistic and plan to increase their spending by 8% compared to last year.
   
   
2. Celebrate the season of seamless: Multichannel presence is becoming table stakes for retailers with 48% planning to shop on their smartphone, and 13% planning to purchase gifts on social media. Retailers could consider shoring up loyalty programs and investing in omnichannel experiences to provide the value and convenience that price-wary that consumers will likely be looking for.
   
   
3. Experiences are the reason for the season: Perhaps most notably, there is a shift toward experiences this season with data showing over the last 18 months surveyed consumers have favored experiences, such as travel, events, concerts and socializing with loved ones, over goods. That’s the case during the holidays as well, when spending on experiences is expected to increase 16% this year.

Even for many retailers that can’t offer “experiences” as defined by Deloitte, the simple fact is that the shopping experience is just as prized today, and consumers will buy from brands based on the quality of their customer experience.

A dazzling customer experience tops the wish list

As these economic headwinds and consumer enthusiasm converge this holiday season, success hinges on more than just competitive pricing or product selection.

The true differentiator lies in the holistic experience a brand creates—the intangible yet powerful connection that transforms a transaction into a lasting relationship.

Retailers must now view customer experience as their most strategic asset. Some retail brands have embraced this view and reaped the benefits over the last few years, including higher CSAT scores, lower customer churn and better-than-average company performance. Other brands are just starting to pivot here. When leveraged wisely in conjunction with internal transformation, technology becomes a great equalizer. It becomes a force to help CX laggards close the distance with CX leaders, and help CX leaders constantly stay ahead of the pack.

This approach requires a fundamental reimagining of how brands interact with consumers, moving beyond traditional metrics to understand the emotional and practical touchpoints that truly resonate with customers. Whether through seamless digital interactions, personalized service, or consistent brand messaging, the goal is to create an experience that feels uniquely tailored and genuinely valued.

Afterall, why risk losing lifelong customers by offering a haphazard customer experience when one unified AI platform can solve for barriers by completely transforming the customer experience?

Holiday hiccups – 3 retail CX pitfalls to avoid self-sabotage

The holiday retail season is a critical make or break moment for brands to distinguish themselves through exceptional customer experience. In a market packed with options, every interaction becomes an opportunity to either solidify customer loyalty or lose ground to more attentive brands.

Consumer expectations continue to evolve, as they demand seamless, personalized experiences that extend far beyond traditional transactional encounters. For retailers, navigating this complex landscape requires strategic foresight and a nuanced understanding of potential pitfalls that can derail even the most well-intentioned customer engagement efforts.

Here are the top three must-dos to prevent blockers to flawless customer experience this holiday season:

1. Keep your agents updated on holiday promotions: Shoppers seeking deals continues to be a top call driver during the holidays. Unfortunately, it can also be a point of angst for consumers as well as agents. Agents are often the ones who have to help “troubleshoot” promo codes or other offers, and it's even worse when they have no idea what the offers even are. That’s not to say they need to know every single product SKU promo. They do need to know, however, all the different macro campaigns going on. A singular platform with robust AI offering real-time guidance can make all the difference so your agents are never in the dark.
   
   
2. Give your agents autonomy: Brands will reap the benefits by giving agents more latitude in specific areas to empower them to take on more sophisticated requests separate from rudimentary calls that an AI-powered agent can handle. In this scenario, empowered agents are oftentimes more lauded by customers, gain efficiency and perform better. By bridging operational silos and empowering both AI and human agents with comprehensive, real-time information, a specialized AI-powered platform makes sure businesses can have AI and human agents working together as one team on the same platform.
   
   
3. Loosen the screws on quantitative, operational metrics: Controlling these types of metrics tightly during the holiday season (which is already an extra-stressful time for agents) can have unintended consequences like focusing agents on too much operational minutiae, which can negatively impact customer experience. Instead, put the focus on qualitative metrics such as first contact resolution (FCR) and customer sentiment/satisfaction. Long wait times can indicate agents needing help keeping up with a high-ticket volume or that processes need to be updated or automated. Real-time AI guidance during interactions, and AI-powered automation gives agents a boost by helping them reduce back-end tasks.

3 top actions to troubleshoot post-holiday peak CX fails

Once the busy holiday season winds down, it’s time to formulate next steps so your brand can emerge with a stronger, more efficient customer service strategy. Troubleshooting and identifying technology solutions can solve issues impeding a strong customer experience beyond the holidays. Afterall, consumers demand seamless customer experience in their day-to-day lives as well as those special moments.

Here are the top three actions your brand can take for post-holiday CX success:

1. Learn from 100% of interactions to increase customer loyalty and lifetime value: Brands face a challenge that can require many professional developers, and cost time and money to build custom analytics models. One overarching all-in-one AI-driven solution features patented AI technology can identify trends and root causes across 100% of interactions. This allows businesses to streamline analysis to best fit your organization, processes and terminology with a guided process for quickly adjusting intent structure as well as adding and updating intents and actions. This makes it easier to automatically discover the unknowns in your data.
   
   Whether it’s a voice, text or digital conversation, you can analyze, measure and uncover insights to drive improvements to CX and provide the best experience for every customer. By using AI and analytics to act on structured and unstructured data from 100% of interactions, customer surveys and operational data, your brand can increase customer loyalty and lifetime value. Examine interactions across channels, identify how to improve customer satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS), and take meaningful action.
   
   
2. Initiate self-learning, smart self-service: When it comes to self-service, many brands find a struggle to get off the ground. Traditional chatbots can take some effort and time to setup, and there is an "impact cliff" where the project gets abandoned before it can provide value. As a best practice, brands can consider a gen AI-based solution that feeds directly off knowledge within a brand with added guardrails to prevent hallucinations. This interim step removes the need for heavy virtual agent flow builds, which is usually where all the time and effort needs to happen in a traditional approach. This type of AI agent is much quicker to deploy and to provide value and can create customized self-service when and where consumers need them with trusted company knowledge to align every response with brand and business goals.
   
   
3. Fill gaps in contact center operations: Self-service and workforce planning are two key points to address to streamline contact center operations. Better anticipate and plan for uncertainties today, tomorrow and in the future in your contact center. Delve into planning around AI-based near- and long-term planning for an enhanced workforce. Meet your customers wherever their journey begins and empower them to intelligently solve problems faster on their own.
   
   Flip the switch to proactive CX. Proactive conversational AI solutions can supercharge customer satisfaction and business results. Smart engagement means knowing exactly when and how to connect with customers at pivotal moments. Understanding their needs and anticipating next steps helps businesses eliminate friction points before they become roadblocks. This proactive approach transforms the customer journey from a series of interactions into a seamless experience, reducing effort and frustration at every touchpoint.