As the UK moves forward from a high inflation cycle, there are emerging opportunities for growth in consumer and retail. However, consumers remain cautious about spending, so retailers must deliver real value and an exceptional customer experience to stand out and inspire spending. Retailers need to create seamless omnichannel operations and build a deep understanding of the customer journey, particularly in social commerce, as consumers increasingly use social media to find and buy what they want. Leveraging data and AI is key to unlocking much of this potential. AI is also set to play a bigger role in retail surveillance to help reduce in-store and online theft.
Consumer and retail
With so much competition, delivering genuine value, personalised service, and being relevant to the customer journey at every touchpoint are integral to success.
Grocery retail companies in the UK top 100
Source: Based on the views of 13,053 UK consumers interviewed in 2024/25
An interview with Steve Knights at Lakeland in 2023
Lakeland performs well in our customer experience index - what improvements have you put in place for customers over the past year?
We have focused on our position as a product specialist by investing further in our in-house product training programme. This has resulted in record customer feedback scores of 98% for Colleague Product Knowledge.
Lakeland performs above the non-grocery retail average for all Six Pillars, in particular for Time and Effort. Have there been any specific initiatives to make life easier for the customer?
With the ever evolving customer journey across multiple touchpoints and channels, Lakeland have invested heavily in a unified view of both our supply chain and the customer, enabled by our myLakeland membership scheme. This unified view allows colleagues to help and support our customers across all channels for example by ordering products not in store to be delivered free to a customer's home.
Customers are looking for a mix of technological convenience but with a human touch - how are you managing this?
At Lakeland technology is used to drive greater efficiency for simple transactional customer touch points e.g. automated tracking prompts for delivery progress. These efficiencies are enabling increased 'human investment' in the more complex and emotional customer touch points e.g. advising a customer which Lakeland heated airer is best for their needs.
Companies that make big advances technologically have had to harness data and often describe having to create a “data driven culture” - is this an area that you have focused on?
Like many retailers over the past few years, Lakeland has increased investment in our in house data and insight capability, but we prefer to see this capability as an enabler of a 'customer driven culture'. This is epitomised by the fact that all Lakeland colleagues, from IT and Data to Customer Services, have the same shared objective regarding 'customer happiness', which is reported on weekly across the business.
Our consulting insights
Something went wrong
Oops!! Something went wrong, please try again
Download the 2024/25 Customer Experience Excellence report
This year marks the 15th anniversary of our Customer Experience Excellence (CEE) research in the UK. Building on last year's study, “Say hello to your new AI colleague”, this report examines the transformative role of digital and AI technologies in reshaping customer experience. Explore how these technologies can be designed to connect emotionally with customers, build trust, and create a new era of cost-effective, AI-enabled CX.
Our people
