2024 SNAPSHOT: Will the future of retail and commerce be defined by predictable terms like AI and self-serve? Or is there another journey mapped out for it?
Commerce, in recent years, has been dominated by three prominent trends—AI as an assistant in customer-facing functions, the use of data for all customer-facing services, and use of technology to skip the human check-out and implement self-serve options. These shifts have further solidified in 2024.
Over 54% of CMOs have increased their investment in genAI-powered technology to improve their marketing performance. AI is everywhere, and fueling its performance is data—the catalyst of all operations.
Before the age of constantly incoming data, retailers would depend primarily on “price” as the key driver of sales during peak shopping seasons. However, with year-round availability of data that provides insights into customer behaviour, retail success is no longer defined by heavy discounts.
“Fed a constant stream of customer data, AI-powered virtual shopping assistants can offer help and advice to turn online window shoppers into confirmed sales,” says Richard Timperlake, SVP, EMEA at Confluent. He explains that for those at the forefront of this retailing revolution, nothing highlights the role of data streaming better than hyper-personalisation, which, of course, can be achieved with real-time data streaming.
On the other side of the retail equation, customers are showing mixed reactions to self-service. Retail giants and online marketplaces like Walmart, Amazon, Aldi, etc., are increasing their self-checkout offerings, powered by technology like AI and machine learning.
While some customers appreciate the quicker service, others are frustrated with challenges that follow the lack of human assistance, and the implications of store theft. Where do we see these trends move as we prepare for the next commercial year?
CXM Today flips through the 2024 library, which contains works by industry experts and in-house writers, to present the trends and attitudes of the industry’s current state. The following three stories discuss retail and commerce.
Since its inception as a means to deal with labour costs, self-checkouts have gained wide popularity, but a number of customer errors are making the entire shopping experience chaotic and challenging. On the bright side, the technology offers cost saving for retailers, while on the other hand, it presents challenges like heavy investments. Retail experts believe, however, that these investments are sure to bring long-term savings upon fruition.
2. Top GenAI Tools For Optimal Campaign Performance
AI is now a pocket tool for every marketer. Can your AI tool natively integrate all the potential channels? If not, how much time, effort, and budget will integration require? Does your vendor have a defined path toward increasing marketing maturity? These and more questions, define the right genAI-powered campaign orchestration tool for your business. Read a list of best-performing genAI tools for optimal campaign performance.
3. Black Friday 2.0: Why Retailers Are Betting on Data Over Discounts
When Black Friday first took off as a retailing event, it was almost entirely focused on headline-grabbing sales and doorbuster deals. Price—above all other commercial considerations—was the primary battleground between retailers as they discounted heavily to get customers through their doors. Thanks to the advent of comparison tools, apps and year-round comparison and monitoring, price no longer commands the dominance it once had.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 represents a robust cloud-based CRM solution with features such as pipeline assessment, relationship analytics, and conversational intelligence. It utilises AI-powered insights to provide actionable intelligence via predictive analytics, lead scoring, sentiment analysis, etc. Currently, Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of more than 220,000 employees worldwide.
HubSpot is an inbound marketing, sales, and customer service software provider, offering robust CRM and automation solutions. Some of its products include Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Operations Hub, Content Hub, Commerce Hub, Marketing Analytics and Dashboard Software. Guided by its inbound methodology, HubSpot enables companies to prioritise innovation and customer success.
Monday.com is a project management software company, offering a cloud-based platform that enables businesses 
Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Freshworks is a global AI-powered business software provider. Its tech stack includes a scalable and comprehensive suite for IT, customer support, sales, and marketing teams, ensuring value for immediate business impact. Its product portfolio includes Customer Service Suite, Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshcaller, Freshsuccess, and Freshservice. Freshservice for Business Teams has helped several global organisations to enhance their operational efficiency.
Talkdesk offers an innovative AI-powered customer-centric tech stack to its global partners. The company provides generative AI integrations, delivering industry-specific solutions to its customers. Talkdesk CX Cloud and Industry Experience Clouds utilise modern machine learning and language models to enhance contact centre efficiency and client satisfaction.
The company offers comprehensive cloud-based solutions, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Gaming Consoles, Microsoft Advertising, Copilot, among other things, to help organisations offer enhanced CX and ROI. Its generative-AI-powered speech and voice recognition solutions,such as Cortana and Azure Speech Services empowers developers to build intelligent applications.
IBM is a global hybrid cloud and AI-powered 
Uniphore is an enterprise-class, AI-native company that was incubated in 2008. Its enterprise-class multimodal AI and data platform unifies all elements of voice, video, text and data by leveraging Generative AI, Knowledge AI, Emotion AI and workflow automation. Some of its products include U-Self Serve, U-Assist, U-Capture, and U-Analyze. Its Q for Sale is a conversational intelligence software that guides revenue teams with AI-powered insights, offering clarity on how to effectively keep prospects engaged.
Google Cloud accelerates every organisation’s ability to digitally transform its business. Its enterprise-grade solutions leverage modern technology to solve the most criticial business problems 
8×8 offers out-of-the-box contact centre solutions, assisting all-size businesses to efficiently meet customer needs and preferences. It offers custom CRM integrations support and integrates effortlessly with third-party CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, and more. Offering global support in all time zones & development teams in 5 continents, its patented geo-routing solution ensures consistent voice quality.
Sprinklr is a comprehensive enterprise software company for all customer-focused functions. With advanced AI, Sprinklr’s unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform lets organisations offer human experiences to every customer, every time, across any modern channel.
Upland offers a comprehensive suite of contact centre and customer service solutions with products including InGenius, Panviva, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers. InGenius enables organisations to connect their existing phone system with CRM, further enhancing agent productivity. Panviva provides compliant and omnichannel capabilities for highly regulated industries. Whereas, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers are its AI-powered solutions, 
Zoho Social, a part of Zoho’s suite of 50+ products, is a comprehensive social media management platform for businesses and agencies. The Zoho Social dashboard includes a robust set of features, such as Publishing Calendar, Bulk Scheduler, and Approval Management to offer businesses all the essential social media publishing tools. Its monitoring tools help enterprises track and respond to relevant social conversations.
Hootsuite, headquartered in Vancouver, is a social media management platform that streamlines the process of managing multiple social media accounts. Some of its core offerings include social media content planning and publishing, audience engagement tools, analytics and social advertising. Its easy-to-integrate capabilities help marketing teams to schedule and publish social media posts efficiently.
Brandwatch enables businesses to build and scale the optimal strategy for their clients with intuitive, use-case-focused tools that are easy and quick to master. Bringing together consumer intelligence and social media management, the company helps its users react to the trends that matter, collaborate on data-driven content, shield the brand from threats and manage all the social media channels at scale.
Zoho Corporation offers innovative and tailored software to help leaders grow their business. Zoho’s 55+ products aid sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance, and recruitment requirements. Its customer analytics capabilities come with a conversational feature, Ask Zia. It enables users to ask questions and get insights in the form of reports and widgets in real-time.
Salesforce-owned Tableau is an AI-powered analytics and business intelligence platform, offering the breadth and depth of capabilities that serve the requirements of global enterprises in a seamless, integrated experience. Marketers can utilise generative AI models, AI-powered predictions, natural language querying, and recommendationsons.
Fullstory is a behavioural data platform, helping C-suite leaders make informed decisions by injecting digital behavioural data into its analytics stack. Its patented technology uncovers the power of quality behavioural data at scale, transforming every digital visit into actionable insights. Enterprises can increase funnel conversion and identify their highest-value customers effortlessly.
Contentsquare is a cloud-based digital experience analytics platform, helping brands track billions of digital interactions, and turn those digital 
Amplitude is a product analytics platform, enabling businesses to track visitors with the help of collaborative analytics. The platform leverages the capabilities of 
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirement for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its platform helps play an essential role in managing different digital content or assets to improve customer happiness. Its easy-to-optimise content gives users appropriate marketing streams, ensuring product awareness.
Started in 2005 in a Sweden-based small town, Norrköping, Voyado offers a customer experience cloud platform that includes a customer loyalty management system. This platform helps businesses design and implement customer loyalty programs, track customer 
TapMango provides a comprehensive, customisable, flexible and feature-rich customer loyalty program. The loyalty tools include an integrated suite of customised consumer-facing technology, easy-to-use merchant tools, and automation algorithms, all aimed at enhancing customer experience. Adaptable to any industry, TapMango’s platform helps merchants compete with larger chains, converting customer one-time purchases into profitable spending habits.
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirements for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its innovative platform has played an essential role in managing different digital content or assets, to improve customer happiness or satisfaction. Some of its products include Adobe Gen Studio, Experience Manager Sites, Real-time CDP, and Marketo Engage.
