At the Empathy Lab offices in Amsterdam, we hosted one of the world's largest grocers to celebrate the launch of an employee assistant. This tool has been made available to over 100,000 associates and operational staff – the front line of 1,200 stores across the Netherlands. There was a palpable buzz in the room as the first results came in, pointing to a clear shift in how our client works with front-line staff and engages with customers.
The feature, pushed into the app – accessible on every employee’s personal device – is a multi-lingual, conversational interface meant to solve the most time consuming questions coming from associates and customers. “Where do I stock this item?”, “Where is the item on my list?” Powered by AI, it includes a barcode scanner and a trained model connected to store floor plans and inventories. Whether by voice or text, it can solve in seconds what used to take one or even two employees up to minutes. With AI working in the background, front-line associates can serve customers faster, remain the heroes of the brand, and dramatically boost overall productivity.
This story is one of many across our portfolio of retail clients that shows how a Total Commerce approach can support both operational goals and customer experience. While increased productivity naturally impacts brands’ bottom line, their customers benefit too – through added convenience, more personal service, better rewards or a stronger emotional connection on the shop floor.
The top-line impacts are real too. In our work with brands, we’re seeing that engaging customers on more digital touchpoints, with more personal experiences, is driving real results. In quick-serve restaurants and grocery stores, adding an app more than doubles customer lifetime value (CLV). Similarly, adding kiosks and delivery channels accesses new audiences rather than cannibalizes existing ones, contributing to greater in-store productivity.
Creating personal offers also captures an additional share of wallet. Whether it’s a discount or a “money can’t buy” incentive, when it’s personal and relevant, it’s effective in increasing engagement. In fashion retail, we’ve seen a double digit increase in engagement and basket size.
All of this, of course, needs investment. Adding and maintaining digital channels requires new skills and capabilities. Providing personalized offers to customers means new ways of working between procurement, pricing/promotions, marketing, retail, and technology teams.
This investment opens new opportunities as well. Digital touchpoints create a sizeable retail media opportunity, which is a rapidly growing space. In fact, global retail media spend topped $140 billion in 2024 and is growing 22% year over year (eMarketers). With over 20 retail media networks now in the space and healthy margins of 70%, this incremental revenue stream far outstrips typical retail margins and creates a sound investment case for further digital development.
Across the Channel from Amsterdam, at our Retail Race event in London, the CIO of the world’s leading beauty retailer described their mobile app as their flagship store and shared plans to double down on ‘AI-augmented exceptional experiences’ in store. That includes products like Empathy Lab’s in-store mobile application that evaluates skin type and assists employees in creating real-time, personalized recommendations for their customers, driving those exceptional, brand infused, bond-building moments.
The language of business, as with technology, often strips the humanity out of the brand experiences we aim to deliver for consumers. It is sometimes easy to forget that shopping is fun — an aspirational, socially bonding form of entertainment for many.
Our experience shows us that fine-tuning five areas — a customer app, intelligent operations, associate experience, generative loyalty, and retail media creates a flywheel of productivity in stores, allowing brands to deliver exceptional experiences that create a lasting emotional connection with shoppers.
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