65 Retail Customer Service Statistics You Need to Know for 2022

As we gear up for a busy holiday season and get ready to fly headlong into 2022, we’ve dug up some retail customer service statistics to help enhance your customer journeys and boost customer experience in the new year.  

These ecommerce retail statistics trends help shine a light on what factors influence whether consumers choose your business, products or services over the competition, and we’re here to break them down for you.

65 retail customer experience statistics

What is good retail customer service?

1. Nearly 80 percent of American consumers point to speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and friendly service as the most important elements of a positive customer experience. (PwC)

Gaps between customer expectation and reality

2. Just 31 percent of marketers think they are exceeding customer's CX expectations. (Martech Alliance) 
3. Seventy-three percent of all people point to customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions. Yet only 49 percent of U.S. consumers say companies provide a good customer experience. (PwC)

How important is good customer service in retail and customer loyalty?

4. Fifty-four percent of retail CX professionals cite improving customer loyalty as a top CX-related business priority. (Talkdesk)
5. Eighty percent of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. (Salesforce)
6. Among U.S. customers, 65 percent find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising. (PwC)
7. Ninety-two percent of consumers agree that a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to make another purchase. (Salesforce)
8. Thirty-two percent of all customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience. (PwC)
9. Among customers threatening to defect, those who had experienced a difficult interaction had less than a 4 percent chance of accepting the company’s “save offer” (a promotion to entice them to stay) as compared to a 20 percent probability for customers whose interactions were scored as easy. (Harvard Business Review)

The power of customer reviews

10. 79 percent of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family. (BrightLocal)
11. During the consideration stage, the importance of online channels continues to prevail, with the top two channels for research being online reviews (cited by 55 percent of respondents) and company websites (47 percent). (KPMG) 
12. Negative reviews can have a significant impact on consumer behavior, making 92 percent of consumers less likely to use a business. (BrightLocal)

The influence of social media and social commerce

13. In 2021, US social commerce sales will rise by 35.8 percent to $36.62 billion. (Insider Intelligence)
14. Seventy-eight percent of consumers are more willing to buy from a brand and 77 percent will choose a brand over a competitor after a positive experience with a brand on social media. (Sprout Social)

Emerging trends in AI and technology

15. Twenty-eight percent of the top 250 global retailers were already deploying AI into their organisations in 2018. (Capgemini)
16. During the 2018 holiday season, average order value increased by 14 percent when shoppers acted on AI-powered product recommendations. (Salesforce) 
17. More than 3 out of 5 consumers say retail technologies and innovations improved their shopping experience. (NRF)
18. Seventy-one percent of respondents were already using or wanted to try searching by visual means in 2020; close behind were 69 percent who used or wanted voice search options. (IBM)
19. Shoppers’ biggest expectation of retail brands is the addition of new features to enhance the digital shopping experience (85 percent). Customers also expect virtual assistance to become more common (72 percent), and more immersive experiences through virtual or augmented reality (68 percent). (Appnovation)

When retailers personalize experiences

20. Ninety-one percent of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognize, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations. (Accenture)
21. Sixty-three percent of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies whose mobile sites or apps offer them relevant recommendations on products they may be interested in. (Think with Google)
22. When the shopping experience was highly personalized, customers indicated that they were 110 percent more likely to add additional items to their baskets and 40 percent more likely to spend more than they had planned. (Boston Consulting Group)
23. 64 percent of shoppers say they feel retailers don’t truly know them. (Salesforce)
24. When asked to rate a particular retailer, customers who experienced a high level of personalization provided net promoter scores that were 20 percent higher than those of customers who experienced a low level of personalization. (Boston Consulting Group)
25. With individualized experiences, consumers say they would feel more valued as a customer (71 percent), say more positive things about the brand to others (70 percent), be more likely to buy from them (70 percent), trust them more (64 percent) and spend more money with that brand (61 percent). (CloudIQ)
26. Among U.S. consumers, 63 percent say they’d share more information with a company that offers a great experience. (PwC)

Mobile retail statistics

27. Forty-seven percent of retailers said they have placed a significant focus on retailer apps, while 83 percent of consumers said they are happy with the experience of their retail app. (Synchrony)
28. Seventy-two percent of consumers believe that experiences will become more personalized thanks to data collected by retailers. (Appnovation)
29. Fifty-eight percent of smartphone users feel more favorable toward companies whose mobile sites or apps remember who they are and their past behavior. (Think with Google)
30. On average, mobile shopping sessions are 32 percent shorter than desktop sessions. (Salesforce)
31. Close to half of all consumers (across all generational age groups) use a mobile device to enhance their in-store experience by comparing prices, checking inventory and reading product reviews. (Windstream Enterprise)

Digital retail ecommerce statistics and user experience

32. Eighty-seven percent of shoppers now begin their hunt in digital channels. (Salesforce)
33. Retail websites or online shops were the most common source of initial product awareness, cited by nearly a third of consumers. (KPMG) 
34. Seventy-one percent of consumers shop in “micro-moments” (shopping while doing something else). More than one in three say they do so at least weekly and up to multiple times daily. (IBM)
35. After up-to-date inventory (15 percent), ease of usage, including things like easy navigation (13 percent) and user friendly design (12 percent), emerge as top factors of a memorable online experience. (Appnovation)
36. Nearly half (48 percent) of all consumers have left a business’ website and made a purchase elsewhere because the experience was poorly curated. (Accenture)
37. Customers’ biggest frustrations in their digital experiences are out-of-date inventory (14 percent), difficult navigation (11 percent) and a poorly designed interface (9 percent). (Appnovation)
38. Ninety percent of survey respondents say they expect brands and organizations to offer an online portal for self-service. (Microsoft)
39. As to what makes up a great online experience: the key contributors are – the Three Ss – Speed (94 percent), Seamlessness (92 percent) and a Sense of Control (92 percent), combined with an individualized experience (83 percent). (CloudIQ)

The post-purchase experience: delivery, fulfillment, and returns

40. Forty-one percent of consumers cite fast/reliable delivery as one of the most important factors when shopping online, above in-stock availability (35 percent) and a good return policy (31 percent). (PwC)
41. As shoppers require speedy home delivery, stores have become a critical component in meeting this demand, which explains why BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store) grew over 4x between 2014–2019. (IBM)
42. Of the 71 percent of consumers who tried to use buy online, pick up in-store services, 67 percent were satisfied with the experience. (NRF)
43. Eighty-two percent of shoppers say they purchase additional items when they come into the store to pick up an online purchase. (IBM)
44. Sixty-eight percent of consumers are more likely to shop at a retailer that offers automated returns capability versus one that doesn’t. (Windstream Enterprise)

The vital role of customer support agents

45. Eighty-two percent of U.S. and 74 percent of non-U.S. consumers want more human interaction in the future. (PwC)
46. Fifty-nine percent of all consumers feel companies have lost touch with the human element of customer experience. (PwC)
47. Sixty percent of all consumers said they’d stop doing business with a brand if the service they received was not friendly. (PwC)
48. Eighty-six percent of retail CX professionals anticipate that customer relationship growth will be part of agent KPIs within the next five years. (Talkdesk)
49. Only 38 percent of U.S. consumers say the employees they interact with understand their needs; 46 percent of consumers outside the U.S. say the same. (PwC)
50. Seventy-six percent of customers expect consistent interactions across departments. However, 54 percent say it generally feels like sales, service, and marketing don’t share information. (Salesforce)

Internal challenges to improving CX

51. The hurdles cited most frequently by retail marketers were poor data centralization and the failure of their company’s technology to support one-to-one communications with customers. (Each of these barriers was cited by 14 percent of the respondents.) Nearly as many (12 percent) said their company’s technology wasn’t sufficiently integrated. (Boston Consulting Group)
52. More than half of retailers (52 percent) cite lack of sufficient budget as the #1 challenge impeding their ability to invest in upgrading the experience. (Windstream Enterprise)
53. About four in ten retailers cite lack of an integrated consumer experience strategy as a top challenge. (Windstream Enterprise)
54. A third of retailers cite the inability to build and justify the business case for investment as a top challenge. (Windstream Enterprise)

The impact of ethics, sustainability, and company values on retail sales

55. Seventy-one percent of customers paid more attention to corporate values in 2020 than they did in 2019. (Salesforce)
56. Eighty-nine percent of retail CX professionals say their agents are expected to be better versed on their brand’s stance on social issues compared to a year ago. (Talkdesk)
57. The majority (62 percent) of customers say they have stopped buying from a company whose values didn’t align with theirs. (Salesforce)
58. Nearly eight in 10 respondents indicate sustainability is important for them. (IBM)
59. Fifty-seven percent of consumers are willing to change their purchasing habits to help reduce negative environmental impact. (IBM)
60. Ninety percent of customers are willing to pay more for ethical retailers. (KPMG)

Christmas retail statistics 2021

61. Sixty to seventy percent of consumers say they are shopping in an omnichannel way. (McKinsey) 
62. Twenty-five percent of U.S. adult consumers will do all their shopping from a mobile device. (Quantum Metric)
63. Approximately 40 percent of survey respondents say they expect to shop and spend earlier than they did in 2020 because they anticipate shortages, longer shipping times, and unexpected supply-chain challenges related to COVID-19. (McKinsey) 
64. Among the 60 percent of consumers who have faced out-of-stock products in the last three months, only 13 percent say they waited for an item to come back in stock. About 70 percent switched retailers or brands instead. (McKinsey) 
65. Fifty-eight percent of consumers say social media will influence their holiday buying decisions, and of those consumers, including Facebook (67 percent), YouTube (57 percent), and Instagram (52 percent). (McKinsey)

5 key takeaways from these retail customer service statistics

There’s no denying the immense impact customer service experiences have on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Here are some of the most important insights to draw on as you plan your next steps:

1. Gaps and opportunities. Customers report a distinct gap between their customer experience expectations and how well businesses are meeting them. For companies that get it right, there’s a big opportunity to get in consumers’ good books.
2. Customer expectations and technology. As technology evolves and changes how we interact with the world, consumers will expect more digital transformation and new tech to enhance the customer experience. Customers are looking to retailers to make the shopping experience more convenient with technology and are open to trying new solutions.  
3. Omnichannel experiences. Not only are consumers switching between multiple channels and devices to interact with businesses, they're also increasingly blending their digital and mobile experiences with their physical store experience. Businesses have to maintain omnichannel experiences that connect the digital and physical worlds to cater to this trend.  
4. Personal experiences. Customers don’t want to feel like just another number or transaction. So, personalization continues to be a significant driving factor in customer satisfaction. Consumers value a consistent, seamless experience throughout their journey — and, above all, experiences that feel human.
5. Corporate responsibility. Consumers are more aware of how businesses address ethical and sustainability issues. They're willing to devote more time and resources to ensure they're doing business with companies whose values are clearly defined and align with theirs, especially regarding environmental impact.

Katrina Santa Ana 

Guest Author

Katrina is a New York-based content and technical writer specializing in customer experience, marketing automation, and knowledge management topics and technologies that help businesses scale.