Retail CX Is Up, But Consistency Is the Real Battleground

Retail customer satisfaction climbed to 94.6 percent in Q1 2026, but the headline figure only tells part of the story. In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Tim Waterton, Chief Revenue Officer at HappyOrNot, about what is really driving improvements in retail CX and where performance still breaks down.

Waterton explains why retailers are getting better at managing tough operational environments, how real-time microfeedback is changing decision-making on the shop floor, and why consistency matters more than averages. The discussion explores why CX is strongest in the morning and weakest in evenings and weekends, how staffing experience and store layout shape outcomes, and what retailers can do to improve price perception without cutting margins.

The conversation also looks at checkout innovation, from rapid lane management to the rise of slow lanes, and what proactive planning retailers need as traffic increases in Q2.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello everyone and welcome back to CX Today. My name is Francesca Roche, and I'm a technology journalist today discussing the latest findings from Happy or Not Rated Retail CX Pulse Report for E1 2020 states. Now, overall, retail customers have exception has increased to 94.6%, supported by more customers reporting very positive experiences and a decline in dissatisfaction. However, the report also highlights clear operational patterns across the customer journey, with mornings performing strongly, while the evening and weekends afternoons for weaker satisfaction levels. As a result, many retailers will need to refocus their efforts to address the ongoing pressure points in value perception and in-store operations. Today I'm joined by Tim Waterton, the Chief Revenue Officer at Happy Or Not, is going to walk us through what is driving this improvement in global customer satisfaction and what retailers are doing differently on the ground to achieve these results at scale. But before we get into the discussion, Tim, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

I'm fine. How are you, Francesca?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

I'm great, thank you. It's lovely to meet you. Now, one of the most standout statistics for me from the report was that global satisfaction rose to 94.6% in Q1. Can you explain what operational changes are most effective in driving measurable improvements in CX at scale?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah, sure. Would it help if I just gave a little bit of background on Happy Ornot and how we capture the data and the sort of basis of this stuff? Just a little bit of context, right? Absolutely. Thank you for that. So as I said, I'm with Happy Or Not. Last 15 years, we focused on one single thing, which is capturer experience in the moment, right? So at the point of experience itself. You might have seen the kind of kiosks. The one that I most commonly hear replayed to me is Heathrow Airport, which obviously everybody goes through. So in that time, I guess we've collected over two billion feedbacks across about 30,000 locations. Retail, transport, healthcare services. We're obviously going to focus on retail today. The difference in the way we do it is we focus on microfeedback. So very fast, very simple signals, captured, absolutely a point of experience. So it's critical, really. That's the shift. It's the difference between analyze experience after the fact versus managing it in real time. So that's where we've got the, I think in this quarter it was something like 3.6 million particular feedback events contributed to that particular Pulse report. So onto your question, by the way, I wasn't doing the politician thing and jumping on and answering a different question. Yeah, what's driving that improvement? Um I think the headline number is very, very high. That that's for sure. And that's moved up, and that's great. The real key is operators have got better at delivering a quality experience. They understand what they're doing in tough environments, right? So these tough operational environments, they're flexing staffing, they're opening lanes, they're they're managing flow probably more efficiently than they were beforehand. But the challenge is that the headline number hides something in the fact that there's quite a lot of variability in there. And I think what they're really striving for is consistency. So, you know, customers don't experience an average, they experience a moment. And the real focus for them is to try and provide that kind of consistency now and try and eliminate variability. So that they're doing a great job, and things have definitely improved. But if they go on to that consistency point, it's going to be incredibly helpful.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Absolutely. I think there's definitely we're seeing a clearer breakdown in how operational focus can translate into measurement CX gains, but as you said, uh consistency is the real target here. And as I previously mentioned, CX performance varied significantly by time of day with strong mornings and weaker evenings. What factors typically cause this pattern and how would you address it?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

I think it's pressure points appear, as we know, related to footfall and bursts in activity. We always tend to talk about essential retail rather, you know, discretionary retail. So a lot of the conversation tends to be around supermarkets and grocery uh environments, but discretionary's got a slightly different balance to it. But the thing is, is that suddenly in those fast flow environments, performance doesn't drop randomly, kind of it drops actually predictably. And what we see is later in the day, things just start to pile up. So small issues compound and they become bigger issues, things then get replenished. Uh, you kind of get behind the pace, and and that's why things tend to drop off. In fact, we had a we had a customer who's a very large convenience store chain in the US, and they had a similar issue. Actually, theirs was slightly related to staffing and staffing allocation. What they identified was a really core issue that was happening in the afternoons, and because there are particularly long opening times in the convenience store, what was actually happening is that typically managers would do the morning and the early afternoon shift, and then the managers would leave and assign the store to the the other most senior person who actually hadn't been trained. So their response was to actually create an associate manager role and run out a program across the the entire fleet for these associate managers to actually give them the experience to take the decisions and do what they needed to do because it was just uh it was just relying on the best intentions of people who hadn't been trained to deal with it. So sometimes it's about staffing, staffing allocation, but I think it's uh it's kind of death by a thousand cuts, right? It's lots of little things start to compound, it just gets harder. Slightly analogous to the fact that people turn around and say, When do you want to fly? Fly in the morning, not in the afternoon, because everything has compounded by the afternoon, you're more likely to experience a delay. Retail, it just gets harder and harder as the day goes on.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

That's true. And as the results also reveal that weekend afternoons show the lowest satisfaction levels. So, how should retailers adjust staffing and service delivery during these peak periods?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Yeah, that's uh that's a tough one. I think sometimes it's a little bit of a management one over weekends. Let's be honest about it, is a bit of a bit of a structural issue. I mean, I mean, the experience doesn't collapse, it just kind of stops keeping up. And that's exacerbated at weekends where you tend to have a lot more part-time and temporary staff who are working, and they're doing their best, but the reality is they don't have the same level of experience at coping with the pressure points and taking the quick decisions that you need to uh as the staff that are operating full-time during the week. So it's not really about headcount. In fact, I'll give you an example, and this is a discretionary retail example, and it's a personal one. I went into a shoe store, um, mid-brand shoe store, long store, very narrow. Point of sale was at the back of the store. It's a Saturday, there are five staff on, they're behind the point of sale. They're not actually engaging with customers. Now, I was fine. I picked out what I wanted, I went and spoke to them, I bought two pairs of shoes, I got wonderful service, they were incredibly helpful, did a really good job. In the same period of time, at least ten other customers came in, browsed, picked up shoes, looked at them, looked around, wondered what happened, and walked out. Simply because they didn't bridge the gap to the staff that were there. So it's slightly slightly store layout, but it's a massive missed opportunity just to walk out and offer to assist. It's fine for me. Great shoes, really good service. But for other people, they just walked out.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Absolutely. I think um that's quite an interesting point about the shoes. Stores there, I think, across both um corporate and independent, that same structure seems to follow. That's so that's quite an interesting point to put um to show. But um I think, yeah, I think definitely um ensuring that flexibility in structure and flexibility in the schedule will allow um these businesses to operate on those weekends. Um now price perception remains remains the weakest CX pillar. So, what practical actions can improve perceived value without reducing margins?

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah, we focus on price. Gosh, um, everybody's focused on price right at the moment. It's a tough one. Uh limited amounts people can do about price, but I'd rather target the word perception. So it's about value and it's about matching expectation. So we've got lots of things in play: promotions, uh, multi-buy offers, but increasingly these days, entirely different pricing structures for essential goods if you're a member of a loyalty program. And of course, everybody's a member of all of the loyalty programs. It doesn't mean you're loyal, it just means you have to be a member of the loyalty program to get a sensible price. But it's about clarity and transparency. So if signage is confusion, you're not sure if the multi-buy applies to the loyalty price or the something else, etc., etc., etc., people feel confused. Confusion tends to translate to lack of transparency. Lack of transparency is a little bit lack of brand trust. So I think it's price perception. And of course, you've got the ghost of shrimpflation in the background, but there's not too much people can do about that. I think that's just a general trajectory. But people are looking for value, but they're looking for consistency as well. And if they if they feel something slightly off, that's a negative impact on the brand. So I don't know if you would feel the same or you experience that kind of slightly confusing pricing, signage, different values for different people, etc.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Absolutely. I think perceived value should be perceived by that experience, by that transparency between the um the company and the customer, not just by the cost. Um now, transaction friction has improved the most in Q1. What are the key components of a smooth in-store checkout experience?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Uh again, I'm gonna come back to consistency uh and and matching expectations. So I'll use a grocery example. I uh I I think that's probably the easiest one where you know we we're not browsing in there, we go in, we're on a mission, we basically want to get the job done and complete a process. So managing checkout experience is key. Everybody's making decisions based upon the way they want to check out. So do they want to go to belted checkout? Do they want to go to self-checkout, etc.? Are there enough checkout lanes available? I would call that Aldi actually has been really impressive an example of where retailers got good on this. And I think all the grocery stores have got way, way, way better on this. But ALDE are phenomenal at the rate at which they open new lanes when required and close them down quite quickly and then open them up quickly at a phenomenal rate. And that tends to be governed by a single member of staff who's actually supervising authorizational self-checkout, but they're on an intercom, and in seconds, when they can see a bunch of trolleys and carts build up, they realize that's wholly inappropriate for self-checkout, so they open belted checkouts. So I think it's matching people's expectation of being seen to be taken action. Uh, people are quite happy for things to be busy and to have to wait a little bit if they're busy, but if they have to wait too long and there's no intervention and no action, I think that's where prostration builds. The the country cheersy one here is the the slow lane. Um and I think that was introduced originally by Jumbo over in the Netherlands and has now been adopted in quite a few grocery outlets. And is is it's an example where doing something different can actually solve a problem. Some people don't necessarily want to be fast. Fast isn't good for everybody. Some people are quite happy to take their time and go through a slow lane and have a conversation and pack more slowly. So by opening a designated slow lane, they improve the satisfaction for the people that don't want to feel rushed. But they also, in the same same move, remove, if you like, somebody who would have been perceived as a blocker behind other people who want to move at pace. So it solves two problems. People who want to go slowly get a more satisfying experience there, and the people who want to move quickly don't have that experience of standing behind somebody who wants to have a long conversation with a checkout operator. So I think people are getting a lot better at managing that checkout experience right now. It's it's one of those areas that I think has improved dramatically.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Exactly. I think um uh a a groceries ought to be able to instill those small efficiencies or even where possible those per those personalization at checkout can have a significant impact on overall satisfaction. And just before we end our discussion today, looking ahead to Q2 with higher traffic expect expected, what proactive measures and metrics would you put in place to maintain or improve CX performance?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah, I think this is about again I'm gonna come back to it, matching expectation and consistency. Uh as I say, things don't break randomly, they break predictably. So it's knowing what shifts, what time of day, where your pinch points are going to be. They're reasonably predictable, and planning for those ahead of time. So not being surprised when that stuff happens. And it's not just about checkouts, that's about replenishment, etc. So when you have a quiet time, make sure your staff are allocated to replenishing, filling shelves, because there's nothing worse than replenishment going on during the peak because everybody's trying to pick their way around things. So it's thinking an hour, two hours a day, two days ahead, and understanding, and and really experienced managers kind of have this down anyway by instinct. But there's data there that can tell you quite clearly when it's going to happen, what's going to happen. And busy is not a problem. Busy people know they're shopping in a busy time. They go in the shop, they know it's busy. They're quite happy to tolerate a little bit of delay, but they really want people to be on it and in front of it. And it's consistency more than anything else. I genuinely believe that's the case. And if you're in discretionary retail, where people want advice and confirmation and uncertainty removed, that's not about speed. That's about engaging, sharing, providing product knowledge, and removing doubt and uncertainty from people's minds when they're purchasing. So we've talked a lot about you know essential retail, but in discretionary, make sure you engage. Just really make sure you engage and stop those other shoe purchasers, potential shoe purchasers, walking out the door because they just and I feel very bad now, but I I picked that one example. Shoe stores are probably very good in general, but it's a good example of where you just simply fail to convert very, very hard-earned foot traffic.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Absolutely. I think it'd be really helpful if um retailers are able to pick where they can put that personalization in, ensure that proactive planning, and ensure staff readiness. Uh now, unfortunately, that is all we have time for today, but I would like to thank Tim for being here. It's been very insightful to get an idea of what is driving retail six performance improvements and the operational levers behind satisfaction trends across time of day, pricing perception, and in-store execution. So thank you so much for joining me, Tim.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Thank you very much, Francesca. Really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

And from all of us at SIC today, thanks for watching. Goodbye.