Exclusive Report
The retail customer engagement report: Speed, AI & personalization by the numbers
Over the past few years, customers have become noticeably less tolerant of waiting, a shift driven in large part by AI, which has normalized the expectation of instant responses. For retailers, success will increasingly depend on their ability to meet a strong demand for both speed and personalization. The proof is already there: the highest-grossing stores are consistently achieving 90% answer rates.
In this report, we explore the trends that are currently reshaping the industry and the practical tools helping retailers rise to meet them. You will learn: what’s working, what’s falling flat, and what it takes to stay ahead of the curve.
- Speed, Personalization & AI: Trends defining today’s retail customer
- The difference between successful and unsuccessful stores
- What should retailers’ next move be?
Speed, Personalization & AI: Trends defining today’s retail customer
In recent years, consumer behavior around product discovery has shifted significantly. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in everyday life, people have grown accustomed to getting immediate answers to their needs. This new reality has led to shorter attention spans and heightened expectations of instant response. This new phenomenon has also been observed in retail customer engagement. We underlined what this means for retailers, and how to adapt to their changing demands.
Customers engaging on the web are looking for quick answers
Over the past year, we have noticed a strong correlation between response time and overall sales conversions across both the footwear and apparel industries. Responding to customers in real time has been shown to be nearly as predictive as pipeline size. Overall response rates also showed significant differences in attributed sales per store.
When we analyzed the difference between top-tier and mid-tier stores, top-tier stores with higher sales volume consistently achieved response rates of >90% in a timely manner. Those below the 63% mark were the lowest-performing stores in sales volume. For two stores with comparable requests volume, the one who answered more than 90% of customer requests was amongst the most successful and the one below the 70% mark consistently had significantly lower sales volume.
Ensuring communications are consistently high-quality and timely
Adopting clienteling tools is one of the most straightforward ways to strengthen customer communications. These tools equip sales associates with the context they need, such as purchase history, preferences, and past interactions. This enables them to respond consistently and effectively. Without the proper tools, associates risk missing engagement opportunities due to limited customer knowledge, information gaps, or simply never being alerted in the first place.
Two features in particular that can boost the effectiveness of your chats with shoppers:
Team mode feature and AI messaging tool
Salesfloor offers a team mode that enables sales associates to respond to customer chat messages and access the full chat history and customer profiles. By giving whole teams access to this important information, they are empowered to deliver relevant and highly personalized recommendations. Team mode is especially practical when a store has a lean team that works different shifts and doesn’t have many opportunities to follow up with each other. IIt empowers every team member to respond, driving faster reply times and ensuring fewer conversations fall through the cracks.
Using the team mode feature along with the AI messaging assistant removes friction and allow teams to keep the message consistent and on-brand.
Team mode along with the implementation of AI Messaging assistant, enabled GNC to achieve
3x increase
in year-over-year sales
attributed to Salesfloor (2026 data)
“This tool has been a game-changer for us because it lets our teams deliver personalized recommendations without losing that human touch, even as we scale. Since our coaches work collaboratively, it’s important that everyone can maintain a consistent voice and approach with our customers.
What matters most to us is building those relationships in a way that feels cohesive across the entire team. We’ve found that when customers come back for a second purchase, they tend to become loyal, so making each person feel genuinely cared for is absolutely central to what we do.“
— James Inlow, Vice President of North America Field Operations at GNC
Agentic AI as a 24/7 stylist
Most shoppers browsing online at 11pm aren’t going to wait for a store to open to get their questions answered. That’s where conversational AI starts to fill a gap. Salesfloor’s AI Stylist is built specifically for retail, trained on over a decade of real conversations between shoppers and associates. It understands how people actually shop, not just how they search. Rather than returning a list of filtered results, our AI stylist engages shoppers in a natural back-and-forth, asking the right questions, surfacing relevant products visually within the conversation, and refining recommendations based on what the shopper shares along the way. It’s connected to live inventory, so suggestions are always actionable and never unavailable. And because it picks up on preferences expressed during the conversation, it continues personalizing the browsing experience even after the chat ends: tagging products based on what mattered to that specific shopper. The effect is less “chatbot” and more like having access to a knowledgeable sales associate whenever you need one.
The difference between successful and unsuccessful stores
Recent data points to a clear truth: for retailers, the gap isn’t the lack of sales opportunities. It’s execution. Shoppers are ready to engage, but when sales associates can’t respond in time or lack the tools to scale their expertise beyond the shop floor, that momentum stalls.
That’s why the two capabilities we see driving the greatest impact are about removing friction from everyday execution, and creating curated channels where sales associates can showcase their personal picks and step into the role of local brand influencers.
AI tasking tool as a catalyst to transform opportunities into actions
The Tasking Agent is designed to generate contextual, high-impact tasks that maximize revenue while fostering personalized customer relationships. By identifying key customer opportunities, it empowers associates to reach out at the right moment with the right message. The system increases the variety of tasks presented to associates, ensuring engagement remains dynamic and meaningful rather than repetitive. Through a focus on relevance and convenience, associates are equipped to act efficiently and confidently in their customer interactions. Underpinning all of this is a continuous learning and optimization engine, which refines task generation over time to improve outcomes and drive sustained performance.
Shoppers are looking for inspiration
Based on our exclusive data, Storefronts represent a significant, mostly untapped opportunity for retailers. In the apparel and industry in particular, Storefronts consistently showed a superior average order value than other channels. Why? We believe multiple factors could explain this:
Our clients used Storefronts in social media contexts
The results from Storefronts reinforce a simple truth: when consumers are in discovery mode, the window to convert is immediate. Whether accessed through a live broadcast or a shared link, the most effective retail moments are the ones that meet shoppers with a seamless path to purchase right when inspiration strikes.
The trusted advisor effect
The same rule applies to storefronts as other communication channels: Consumers find it is more relevant to get product recommendations from a person, or a trusted advisor, than from an anonymous marketing communication.
Macy’s has used this strategy by using digital storefronts to enable in-house experts to curate their favorite selections per department. Branded as a “stylist service,” each expert has their own storefront page, where customers can explore personalized recommendations.
This initiative has been highly successful, as studies show that customers are 4X times more likely to purchase items recommended by an expert or another shopper. Due to its success, Macy’s has:
- Expanded storefronts to luxury lines, catering to high-end shoppers.
- Launched a national storefront directory, allowing shoppers across the U.S. to explore expert-curated selections.
- Integrated live chat and messaging, enabling customers to ask experts questions and receive quick responses.
Email communications: More does not always mean more
Email volume alone does not drive short-term sales nor longer-term success. This has been shown consistently across different verticals: the quality, timing, and personalized communications always drive more results than generic content. For a broad audience, untargeted communications will most likely result in customer fatigue rather than long-term success. Today’s shoppers are under constant stimulation and receive a lot of different communications; it has become critical for retailers to adapt to this reality.
The data is clear: personalized, relevant recommendations coming from a person consistently achieve better results than generic marketing communications. Outbound communications from sales associates to multiple recipients may also yield strong results, but only when messaging is personalized, for example, based on prior purchases and individual preferences. That’s the thinking behind Salesfloor’s newest features: the ability to target, segment, and automate clienteling is what gives retailers a genuine edge in outreach today. Campaigns and audience segmentation have long been staples of the marketing toolkit, it’s time they were put to work at the store level too.
Using Salesfloor to run store-to-consumer campaigns
Salesfloor’s Campaigns feature gives retailers a structured bridge between marketing initiatives and personalized associate outreach. Where traditional campaigns broadcast to the masses, Salesfloor turns that message into conversations that builds real, lasting relationships with shoppers.
It gives the ability to communicate branch-wide initiatives such as a specific denim sale, to consumers that are most likely to be interested.
Individual tasks will be automatically assigned to associates based on which of their clients are the right fit. Each associate then reaches out to those specific customers directly, choosing the channel that makes the most sense: email, SMS, or phone. The message stays personal because it comes from someone the customer already has a relationship with, not from a generic sender. And because every interaction is tracked within the platform, teams can see what’s working at both the campaign and individual level. This allows retailers to get the most out of their localized efforts, along with embracing marketing global initiatives.
What should retailers’ next move be?
The data is clear: retailers who combine speed, personalization, and AI-powered tools are pulling ahead, and the gap is only widening. Winning in today’s retail environment isn’t about choosing between technology and the human touch: it’s about using the right tools to make every associate more effective and every customer interaction feel personal. From real-time response rates to agentic AI and intelligent tasking, the opportunity is there, the gap to fill lies in retailers’ ability to execute. The stores that act on it will be the ones customers keep coming back to.
Want to learn how to use Salesfloor engagement and AI features to boost your sales? Don’t hesitate to book a free consultation with one of our retail experts.
