Review: Omnichannel Futures 2025
As AI commands increasing attention within the retail industry there should remain a focus on the sector’s fundamental components of people, physical stores and its position serving communities.
This was the message that came through loud and clear at the recent The Retail Bulletin Omnichannel Futures Conference 2025 held in Central London. Ryan Llewellyn-Pace, Founder & Chairman of Hay Life Clothing, told a packed room of delegates: “It is people before technology. Tech is just the enabler. We talk about AI, which scares and excites, but we’re not there yet [with its development]. People like dealing with people.”
He suggests retailers need to walk before they run with such technology and points to the situation with omnichannel that still involves many companies operating with separate siloed retail and e-commerce teams.
People are the differentiator
Never Miss a Retail Update!Amid the rise of technology, and AI specifically, on retailers’ agendas Jo Causon, CEO at The Institute of Customer Service, suggests the role of people has just got more exciting as they can use tech to support them but it is the personal aspect that is now the differentiator. “Retailers can employ people who connect to the organisation, have empathy and are knowledgeable. The roles are not about servicing but about being personal.”
This is very much the approach taken by Fortnum & Mason where Sam Bleazard, Employer Brand Content Producer at Fortnum & Mason, says: “Fortnum’s has a history and the brand pre-dates the industrial revolution…but we can’t rely on tradition. We have to be a modern brand and we give people permission to talk about F&M. There are few official channels so we have a series of ambassadors telling the story. You have to populate the story yourself [through your people].”
For David Williams, Digital Director at DCC Vital, it is the customer service and sales teams who truly represent brands rather than the people in head office and he says it is therefore important to have systems in place to listen to these groups. He advocates feedback loops and the use of AI-powered co-pilot solutions to pull together the information from across the business.
Emotional connections
James Rutter, Chief Creative Officer at COOK also recognises the use of AI – as a way to provide access to information on the shop floor that “opens up the space [for the team] to be more human”. This helps create a stronger emotional connection with customers in the stores, which helps create loyalty.
“It’s not about points as rewards but is about the connection to the person through the brand. Retail is a people business so it’s about how to maximise human connections. When you have this then even if there are cheaper options out there people will still come to you,” he says.
The emotional connection is recognised by Scott Taylor, Executive Director of Marketing at American Golf, who says when the weather has been bad then the company has offered free virtual driving days, which has been a great driver of people into its stores. This has been aligned with empowering employees more: “If a customer spends £2,000 on clubs then we should give them a box of balls.”
Maximising data
This empowerment is being helped by greater use of data in the business that is being generated by its loyalty programme, which is being overhauled by Taylor: “It’s a points-based programme and over the past year we’ve been contextualising the data so we know all about the customer as a golfer and considering how we encourage behaviour change from this data…such as buying new clubs at the start of the season?”
Brittany Wright, Senior Partner Growth Manager for EMEA at Lightspeed Commerce, says it is all about how retailers use this data and leverage the whole technology stack to maximise the value from the information they have gained on their customers.
What this data should show is the most engaged customers. Clare Olding, Head of Loyalty at Topps Tiles, says: “It’s not normally the biggest spenders, it’s the people who are in the stores regularly. We look at customers differently and it’s not just their spending.”
Catherine Loftus, Brand Director at Bird & Blend, agrees: “The most loyal customers are not necessarily the biggest spenders. They could be people who are on the community website frequently.” With these customers segmentation will determine who is invited into certain stores to try samples that very much helps drive omnichannel activity, with online sales boosted from it having a store portfolio and initiatives within them.
Cross-channel journeys
John Lewis is also very much omnichannel, with Andrea Nunn, Partner & Customer Experience Senior Manager at John Lewis & Partners, suggesting 67% of sales are undertaken across multiple channels. More work is being done on the various touch-points as the company shifts its focus away from margins and profits to one of enhanced customer service. “We’re linking business metrics to customer metrics. When we communicate an initiative to staff then it’s reflected in the results. There’s an immediate correlation,” she says.
Nunn admits John Lewis has not been performing as well as it should but contributing to this is undoubtedly the tough economic backdrop. Helen Dickinson, Chief Executive of the BRC (British Retail Consortium), says customers are conscious of their spending and are more likely to be outlaying on holidays or saving.
“The net profit of retail has reduced by a third over the past 10 years and the cost challenges will be that much harder with National Insurance Contribution (NIC) changes, National Living Wage and extended producer responsibility legislation [on the near-term horizon]. There will be fewer job opportunities and hours are coming down. The outlook is quite challenging,” she explains.
Adapting to market changes
Maria Hollins, Chief Executive of Ann Summers, recognises the challenges and highlights how Ann Summers has had to be agile to not only adapt to broad market conditions but also dealing with safesearch online whereby many of its products are blocked when customers undertake searches with Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram).
“This has made our stores very important. They are a customer acquisition tool and they drive online sales. If we open a store then within a 10-mile radius online sales increase by 10% and if we close a store then it goes down,” she says, adding that third-party partnerships with the likes of Asos and Debenhams have helped it overcome the search limitations. “Unless something adds value then we’re not going to do it. It’s made us more agile. We normally find a way through,” says Hollins.
With responsibility for the third-party relationships Leanne Oddy, Third Party Lead at Ann Summers, says retailers following it down this route need to weigh up the pros and cons of the various platforms: “Some have great insights, some provide good service, have credit facilities or other elements. It’s about getting your brand out there. It expands our product reach and we can also sell some of our more risqué products.”
Boosting reach
Rhea Fox, former Digital Director at Ted Baker, is an advocate of using various channels to maximise the reach of the business to “access different customer pools at the greatest level of profitability”. She suggests marketplaces can be expensive but selling through the likes of the Next marketplace could be cost effective because of the limited cost to service the channel. “Such collaborations are hugely important,” she adds.
Such activity highlights the advantages to selling across multiple channels. Zara Harding, head of sales, business intelligence and projects at Oriflame, says: “We now have brands doing pop-ups for launches and the new ‘micro entrepreneurs’ who want to sell in all sorts of ways. We ripped up the strategy and started again.”
Michelle McWhinnie, Operations Director at Usborne, has had to adapt to the changing market too, having set up a Direct to Consumer arm to the business when it was regarded as competition to the company’s bookstore clients. “You are in competition but customers might want to buy other books in a series etcetera [from a bookstore]. It all goes to the same bottom line,” she says.
Raishma Islam, Founder & CEO of Raishma, has also taken a multi-channel approach having initially been online-only but she recognised the importance of touch-and-feel to customers. “They can see what we are all about and it helps us improve the product. People like being part of the brand,” she says.
Improving the workplace
For Linda Campbell, former Managing Director of Laser Clinics UK, another upside of the stores is to engender team engagement especially among the 18-to-25-year-olds and make it attractive for these people who do not want to work nine-to-five all week: “We need to find the retailers of the future and with stores we can identify talent if they have just come in as a Christmas temp.”
Helping this grouping work the flexible hours of their choosing is Sanish Mondkar, founder & CEO of Legion, who suggests retailers use technology and AI to improve workforce management. “Automation is the answer to giving employees choices of when they want to work. If you improve labour efficiency for the employer then you improve the experience for employees. If they are happy then everything else follows on,” he suggests.
The solution involves employees using self-scheduling via an app and managers being able to take back the time that they had previously spent on time sheets, schedules and pinning them up on boards in the staff canteen.
As well as empowering these front-line employees, technology is also being deployed to provide protection. Matthew Heptonstall, Strategic Development Executive at Reveal Media – that provides body-worn cameras to employees, says: “No one should fear abuse or violence ahead of their shift. The camera is a tool to use for protection and we’ve had incredible results. It’s used in 600 Boots stores and in the proof-of-concept trial over three months all employees felt safer and there was a 54% reduction in violence to staff.”
Flexibility through technology
This flexibility brought on by technology has been liberating for smaller retailers, according to Greg Tufnell, Founder of Prime Advantage Capital Partners, who says digital has been massively impactful: “It has made for a much fairer playing field. It makes such companies more appealing for investors. Larger companies have to embrace it too.”
These investors also want to see sales increase and costs decrease, with AI regarded as a key driver for retailers being able to deliver on both these potentially conflicting fronts. Tufnell points to the high amounts of investment being put into AI solutions by private equity and says these tools should be adopted by retailers.
He cites the use of chatbots for answering the bulk of queries and maybe serving higher value customers more personally. Training of disparately located employees and on-boarding them quickly can also be helped by AI tools and for product discovery the likes of Marks & Spencer’s AI-powered wine finder can be helpful to retailers.
Titus Trossel, Retail Strategy Principal at Metyis, agrees that advanced chatbots and other customer communication activity are ideal early areas of focus for AI in the retail sector and he recognises the improved levels of personalisation it will be able to deliver. “Digital avatars are also around but cost a bit too much at the moment. The tech is there but it’s the cost.”
Greater personalisation
For Mark Guest, Managing Director of Retail Sector at Concentrix, says the next stage for chatbots involves complex voice interactions. “Conversational AI will be seen on the front-line. Retailers need to be conscious of how the customer base wants to interact. The question is how to add personalisation to the interactions and drive sales.”
Part of this move towards greater personalisation in-store could involve employees being equipped with devices serving up information about products that makes every in-store person an expert in all categories. The tech would enable them to deliver a very personal service to the customers, which is particularly applicable for higher-price point products.
Equally desirable for higher-priced products, according to Pim Vellenga, Senior Launch Manager at Emma – The Sleep Company, is the ability of customers to physically try products in-store. The old school methods of retail are also appreciated by Tim Curtis, Chair at Cotswold Collections, who says: “We use good old direct mail. We can still make a living through direct mail. Mail-outs are still highly productive and this has not changed.”
He says the company has not started on its AI journey as it lacks scale and the potential upside to make the step just yet although he reveals it does use third-party tools that include AI capabilities.
Starting the AI journey
It is a similar story for Desi Reuben-Sealey, Senior Manager of UX at Victorinox, who says he has just started the AI journey and is currently evaluating many tools having only recently moved away from a “monolithic” architecture. It is now in a position to take advantage of the capabilities of AI.
Although Katheryn Thomas, Senior CRM Manager at L’Occitane, says AI is a buzzword but that the company is enjoying the benefits of the technology through its ability to intelligently deliver product recommendations to customers. This followed the company successfully aligning its online and offline data.
Nicole Greer, Vice President TP Digital (Digital Transformation) at Teleperformance, is more gung-ho about the impact of AI calling it a “game-changer when done well” and suggests the myth that AI will replace people has been dispelled: “It’s about supporting people to improve the customer experience and drive up satisfaction.”
Whether it is AI implementations or other digital transformations being undertaken Ed Duggan, Financial & Commercial Director at Fishpools, says they need whole organisations to buy into the strategies otherwise silos will prevail. “Listen to your people and see where the problems are and get buy-in to fix them…and find out from the customers what they want from the business,” he recommends.
