Holiday shopping is here! Despite dire warnings about inflation and supply chain issues, all indications point to a strong holiday shopping season in 2025 – one that’s already in full swing. Amazon added a second “Prime Day” in October to capitalize on early holiday shoppers, and eCommerce is expected to continue its trajectory of massive post-pandemic growth.
How are brands setting themselves apart this holiday season – and how can you build loyal customers long after the holiday rush is over? That’s what this guide is all about! At Global Response, we’ve been dialing into customer demand for decades, and we’ve put together a comprehensive guide for Holiday eCommerce & Retail Customer Experience. Use this guide to explore the 2025 holiday shopping trends and eight tips for maintaining brand loyalty far beyond the holiday season.
With rich data from the 2024 retail holiday season, we already see trends shaping the holidays ahead. Some of what we saw in 2024 will be even stronger this year, while a return to in-store shopping will drive changes for eCommerce and retail in 2025.
To gather the trends for this year, we’ve pulled from our own experience across the eCommerce CX industry and explored studies by Deloitte, Google, and more. Here are the top five trends retail and eCommerce brands can expect for the 2025 Holidays.
Deloitte projected 2025 holiday retail sales to increase 2.9% to 3.4% in 2025, with eCommerce holiday sales projected to grow between 7% and 9%. Shoppers are placing more value on the flexibility of hybrid shopping. Gartner’s 2025 Consumer Community survey showed that options such as buy online, pick up in store or curbside, and same-day delivery gain traction for the value they add in convenience as well as potential cost savings.
Google reports that searches for “open now near me” have grown worldwide by over 400% yearly.
In short, shoppers expect a frictionless experience from Instagram to brand websites, in-store shopping, and customer support.
According to Gartner, early holiday shopping is the new normal, and nearly 30% of U.S. shoppers plan to purchase holiday gifts by October. Social media is playing an increasingly important role in gift inspiration, necessitating promotional campaigns in late summer or early fall.
What does this mean for eCommerce? It means the holiday shopping season just got longer – and bigger. Scaling your CX staffing up and down according to customer demand just got more complicated. And the competition is fiercer than ever.
Loyalty programs have become a leading source of new customer acquisition and long-term customer loyalty. With inflation and supply chain concerns, consumers seem more willing than ever to sign up for memberships if they ensure access to discounts and scarce products. However, 40% of all income groups are showing five or more signs of frugal behavior, which can turn them from brands even as loyalty program members.
Shopping is no longer a linear journey. Between comparing deals across platforms, in-app product discovery and purchases, streaming other content, scrolling, and searching, online shopping is happening everywhere. Think with Google’s Customer Insights points out that most shoppers hit at least 5 online touchpoints before buying. The shift in shopping habits has led to more value placed on three tenets: the right price, product confidence, and a seamless purchase convenience.
Today’s consumers expect responsiveness, ease, and an intuitive user experience. The
companies that do the best holiday business will be the ones that solve best for a seamless,
delightful customer experience.
With all this in mind, it’s clear that a robust customer service strategy is key to surviving the holidays in retail and eCommerce. But building amazing customer experiences is easier said than done.
Fortunately, amazing customer experiences are our wheelhouse here at Global Response. So we’ve developed a guide to the top eight strategies we use to build brand loyalty during the holiday shopping season – with results that last long after the holiday rush.
Customer service is so essential to eCommerce success that it almost goes without saying. But we’ll say it – over and over again!
The UK’s Institute of Customer Service found that customers can spend up to $65 more per transaction when treated with excellent customer service. Zendesk also found that 3 in 4 consumers will spend more with businesses that provide a good CX. Companies must ensure a seamless customer experience workflow and top-notch training and support for customer service representatives.
As FILA’s third-party contact center solution, Global Response flipped customer experience around and drove a 25% increase in online sales. How? By focusing on integrating a seamless, delightful customer experience.
According to Dawn Trenson,
FILA’s VP of E-Commerce in North America:
Shopping is online, on social media, and in-store. Customers commute and shop from their couches, beds, and offices. With each unique, complex shopping experience, customers expect to pick up where they left off — with ease built into every part of the journey. They expect it all to feel like one continuous conversation.
In other words, a “frictionless” shopping experience isn’t a luxury anymore; it’s an expectation. For eCommerce brands, it’s a strategy. You know it as “omnichannel.” Customers know it as “convenient.”
With LACOSTE, Global Response helped create just such a convenient, omnichannel CX solution. By integrating live voice, chat, and email response services, Lacoste delivered just-in-time, personalized, interactive assistance that increased online sales, improved CSAT, and served customers more efficiently.
Excellent customer experience is all about understanding what your customer wants. Are they seeking a high-touch, VIP shopping encounter? Or do they prefer the “Amazon” experience of low-touch, fast, convenient service?
Nuance Enterprise surveyed global consumers and found that 67% of respondents preferred self-service over speaking to a representative. 91% said they would use an online knowledge base or FAQ.
Put your customer in the driver’s seat this holiday season by developing a rich knowledge base and FAQ that enables customers to resolve issues themselves. User-friendly interfaces and omnichannel solutions can reduce call volume and free up your team while driving customer satisfaction at the same time.
While automation can seem cold or inhuman, it can increase the level of connection that customers feel to your brand. AI is reshaping the experience, connecting consumers between online and in-person experiences with personalized, intuitive assistance. Additionally, chat automation can address far more customer needs than one person can, on larger scales, with customers leaving feeling heard and satisfied with solutions.
Automations help brands connect with customers, building an impression that lasts long after the holidays are over.
Every leader in eCommerce knows: the holidays are the time to scale up! But scaling your team can be a nightmare of temporary contracts, unskilled workers, and customer satisfaction slumps.
One of the best solutions to the problem of scale is to outsource your customer experience to an expert. Outsourcing your contact center costs less than hiring in-house and provides highly skilled customer service representatives who can ramp up or down quickly.
At Global Response, we have decades of experience consulting with retail and eCommerce brands to help them scale for the holidays.
With one of our eCommerce clients, we helped them expand a CX team in less than half the standard training time during the chaos of the 2020 holiday season. By sourcing brand specialists, streamlining training, and improving business processes, we cut ramp time by 66% and delivered across-the-board customer service gains.
Remember these stats from Deloitte? During the 2024 holidays, 75% of consumers planned to shop during at least one promotional event.
A Deloitte study found that customers who belonged to a retail brand’s loyalty program reported an average of 61% higher trust in that brand than non-loyalty program members. Another case study said increasing trust with existing loyalty program members could boost annual spending by 30%. The primary cause? Personalized experiences at scale.
– and the holidays are the perfect time to enroll new customers who will stick with your brand long term.
But loyalty programs often become too complex for customers, or companies don’t track the correct data to make the program valuable. The key to a loyalty program that drives results is in-depth data, streamlined customer experience, and personalized customer support.
We implemented a loyalty treatment to an interactive voice response software with one of our retail partners. When the system recognizes customers as loyalty members, they automatically skip the IVR menu and become a priority in the queue.
With simple strategies to recognize and serve loyal customers, we helped our partner lower attrition rates across the board in just one quarter.
In the words of Jeff Bezos,
Personalization is applying data to each touchpoint of your customer’s journey to feel they have a relationship with your brand. You can personalize everything from email headings to cross-selling recommendations to Instagram ads.
The holiday shopping season is critical to collect rich data on your new and returning customers. Use that data to inform your strategy and boost performance. You can then use those insights to make every customer touchpoint feel unique to each customer.
Speaking of data, the information you collect during the holiday season should drive your strategy for the new year. You can use the information on what customers bought, who they are, and more to continue to build momentum when the holiday rush is over.
One of the best ways to leverage this data is through a personalized, data-driven post-holiday email campaign. Email has a median ROI of 122% and an average $36 return for every $1 spent, which is significantly higher than other marketing channels. If you’ve tracked customer behavior, you can tailor the email campaign and other communications to their interests, needs, and habits.
Translating that personalized data into your 2026 marketing strategy can ensure that you keep the new customers you got during the holidays.
According to Sanat Rao,
the Chief Business Officer and Global Head of Finacle:
That reality is here, and the customer experience will drive results for your brand through the holidays and beyond. While customer shopping trends may change, brands focused on the customer will always be one step ahead of their competition. To learn more about the leading CX solutions for retail and eCommerce, subscribe to our blog or contact us today.
Global Response drives brand loyalty and business success through outsourced customer experience management. For nearly five decades, Global Response has innovated the best in customer experience solutions and brand engagement across nearly every industry. We leverage leading CX technology and highly trained brand representatives to deliver what your customers want when they want it – to drive business results.
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Social platforms & e-commerce will drive shopping…
Use our extensive data analytics and cross-selling tools to increase your average order value and boost sales across your entire product inventory. Great customer service translates to higher conversions and retention.
According to Deloitte's 2024 holiday retail survey,