The real story behind customer experience in retail and ecommerce

Customer expectations in retail and ecommerce have shifted quickly over the past few years. Faster responses, smoother journeys and always-on convenience are no longer seen as nice extras. For many customers, they’re simply part of what good service looks like.

That creates a particular challenge for retail brands. It’s not that customer support is getting everything wrong. In many cases, it’s that businesses may be judging the experience very differently from the customers they’re trying to serve. And those gaps, while easy to miss internally, often point to the most commercially useful opportunities.

Moneypenny’s latest Customer Experience Divide research helps bring that into clearer focus. Conducted with Censuswide among 2,000 business decision-makers and 5,001 nationally representative UK consumers, it compares what businesses believe they’re delivering with what customers say they actually experience.

For retail and ecommerce brands, that makes the findings especially useful. In a sector where speed, convenience and confidence can all shape conversion, loyalty and repeat purchase, even small disconnects in the experience can have a much bigger impact than they first appear to.

What the research shows at a glance

• ‍40 percentage point gap: 74% of retail and ecommerce businesses say social media meets expectations well, versus 34% of consumers.‍
• 33 percentage point gap: 71% say web forms are working well, compared with 39% of consumers.‍
• 22 percentage point gap: 77% are comfortable with AI booking appointments or reservations, versus 56% of consumers.‍
• 11 percentage point gap versus all UK businesses: 37% of retail and ecommerce businesses say loyalty is driven by consistently positive experiences, compared with 26% across all UK businesses.

Where retail businesses may be overestimating customer support performance

One of the clearest patterns in the research is how retail and ecommerce businesses rate their support channels compared with how consumers actually experience them. Across multiple touchpoints, business confidence is much higher than customer confidence, which suggests that some of the channels retailers rely on most heavily may not be landing in the way they expect.

The biggest channel perception gaps

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📱Social media

74% retail vs 34% consumers ‍

Gap: 40 percentage points

🌐Web forms

71% retail vs 39% consumers ‍

Gap: 33 percentage points

💻Chatbots

59% retail vs 28% consumers ‍

Gap: 32 percentage points

🤖AI receptionist

52% retail vs 25% consumers

Gap: 28 percentage points

What's striking here isn't just the size of the gaps, although some of them are substantial. It's how consistent the pattern is. Retailers are leaning hard into digital-first support, but customers aren't always experiencing those channels as smoothly, clearly or helpfully as intended.

For a sector where speed and convenience are so closely tied to conversion, that's a big deal. A channel can look efficient from the inside and still feel clunky, confusing or frustrating to the person using it.

How should retailers use AI in customer service?

The AI data gets closer to a more strategic question. It's less about whether retail businesses are interested in automation, because they clearly are, and more about where customer trust still has some catching up to do. Confidence is highest when AI feels practical, useful and low risk, but the business view remains noticeably more optimistic than the customer view.

Where AI confidence rises

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AI understands what the customer wants easily

77% retail vs 57% consumers

Gap: 21 percentage points

AI books appointments or reservations

77% retail vs 56% consumers

Gap: 22 percentage points

‍

Human handoff available at any point

78% retail vs 68% consumers

Gap: 10 percentage points

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There's a useful lesson here - retail businesses are moving ahead with automation, but customers are still judging it on whether it feels effortless, understandable and easy to step away from when needed. The brands most likely to benefit from AI will not simply be the ones that automate more. They'll be the ones that make automation feel reassuring as well as efficient.

In a fast-moving retail environment, where the cost of friction can be immediate, that's a meaningful opportunity.

Why personalisation still matters in retail customer experience

Personalisation is still seen as a key part of strong customer experience in retail and ecommerce, and businesses clearly believe in its value. The interesting nuance is that, while consumers also care about it, the level of importance retailers place on personalisation is noticeably higher.

The personalisation gap

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Retail and ecommerce businesses rating personalisation as important: 87%

Consumers rating personalisation as important: 68%

Gap: 19 percentage points

That doesn't necessarily mean retailers are wrong to prioritise it. It does suggest, though, that personalisation isn't always being felt in the way businesses assume it is. In a crowded ecommerce journey, where customers are moving quickly and making decisions fast, relevance has to be obvious in the moment or it risks fading into the background.

The opportunity here is not simply to personalise more. It's to personalise more meaningfully, in a way that customers actually notice and value.

What drives loyalty in retail and ecommerce

One of the more commercially useful findings is how retail and ecommerce businesses think about loyalty. Compared with the wider UK business picture, retailers are more likely to link loyalty to consistently positive experiences, which points to a stronger recognition that retention is built over time rather than won through one standout moment

What keeps customers loyal

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Consistently positive experiences

37% retail vs 26% all UK businesses

Gap: 11 percentage points

That matters because retail is often shaped by repeated interactions, not just one purchase. When loyalty is built on consistency, even small points of friction become more significant. A delayed response, a poor handoff or a support channel that looks good on paper but feels awkward in practice can all chip away at confidence over time.

For retail brands, that makes customer support more than an operational function; it becomes part of the experience customers remember, compare and come back for.

What retail brands should take from these findings

Taken together, the findings point to a clear challenge. The biggest risk for retail and ecommerce businesses isn't that they're ignoring customer experience. It's that they may be overestimating how well parts of it are landing. That's where blind spots tend to form, and it's also where the biggest opportunities to improve conversion, trust and loyalty often sit.

The brands most likely to stand out will be the ones that stay close to what customers are actually experiencing, rather than relying too heavily on internal confidence or assumptions. In retail, customer support doesn't sit alongside the product, it's a fundamental part of the product.