Customer Service

Seven months on and, for most brands, online sales are still rising while the overall retail landscape is challenged with plenty of uncertainty. Travel restrictions remain in place, lockdowns are lifting and returning, and the need to wear masks in indoor spaces is contributing to a marked decline in physical footfall. This is resulting in…

Beginning in late July, a number of major retailers announced they will be closing stores on Thanksgiving Day for the first time in years. Walmart kicked it all off, stating it will be closing its stores on the U.S. holiday for the first time in 30 years, with many other retailers, including Target, quick to…

After years of steady growth, COVID-19 has massively accelerated e-commerce penetration. According to an eMarketer report, U.S. e-commerce sales will jump by 18 percent this year due to the impact of the pandemic. This increase in sales has obviously been a relief for retailers, but it’s also brought with it something less profitable and more…

There’s no doubt that recent circumstances surrounding COVID-19 have reshaped the way retailers operate and connect with their customers daily. Shelter-in-place ordinances and stay-at-home mandates have forced retail brands to rely on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and chatbot technology to manage much of the workload required for servicing their customers’ needs. In fact,…

While the impact of COVID-19 has put substantial stress on the retail industry, savvy brands have realized that a strong customer care strategy is a retailer’s first line of defense against disruption. In the wake of the pandemic, more consumers are shopping online, and as a result the demand for timely customer care has significantly…

This past quarter, retailers discovered what happens when a robust omnichannel strategy is forced down to one storefront: digital. Players in every industry have accelerated their timelines and poured resources into their online experience, and are learning as they go. We see firsthand the strain our own customers are feeling as they stare down a…

For the past four years, the Gladly team has released its annual Customer Expectations Report to better understand today’s customers — e.g., the types of experiences they want and expect from the brands they love. But as we all know, the world is a very different place today, one where we talk about social distancing…

Retail call centers are an important step in many customer journeys, and for online customers they may be the only human interaction with the brand. Retailers have multiple ways to operate to fulfill the customer need. Should they be in-house or outsourced? Offshore or home-based? How do you expand capacity for business peaks? Whatever route…

Retail sales over the past year have declined 21.6 percent, with recent months piling on additional unprecedented challenges. Not only are consumers embracing e-commerce, but how they seek out support is also changing. Even though these trends started to emerge before the global pandemic, they're now playing out on an accelerated timeline and putting retailers…

In times such as these, when we're asked to stay at home and do our part to #flattenthecurve and help combat the COVID-19 pandemic, retail businesses around the world are experiencing changes in their usual ways of doing business. With more and more cases of coronavirus reported on a daily basis, people are reluctant to…