#17: one week to Black Friday - how should we prepare?

Happy Friday! We're bringing you our roundup of industry news summarised in an exclusive LinkedIn newsletter. For more detail on any news featured here, check out 'This week in CX' on the?Customer Experience Magazine (CXM)?website .

This week, we're looking at the retail reports ahead of the shopping season and which fashion retailers provide the best CX. Zoom have also launched their first UK Contact Centre, and Reputation have investigated hospitality reviews.

What's new in retail? Well, we're a week away from Black Friday - so as you might expect, retail companies across the board are setting out their plans left, right and centre.

?? Avalara and Censuswide surveyed 1,000 UK and US retail leaders and 2,026 consumers ahead of a busy holiday shopping season.?Among many findings, here are a few of them:

• 45% of US shoppers and 58% of UK shoppers plan to spend less this year than last.
• ?Less than 13% of UK shoppers surveyed plan to use BNPL (as opposed to the 73% of UK shoppers who plan to use credit and debit cards). 17% of US consumers surveyed are planning on using BNPL.
• Nearly half of US and UK shoppers surveyed also plan to buy from marketplaces like eBay , Etsy , and 亚马逊 .
• For more insights from the survey, check out the full news post on our site today.

??40% of surveyed marketing professionals agree that Black Friday will be “even more vital” due to the possibility of an economic recession.?50% of those surveyed are actually increasing their Black Friday marketing budgets in response to the economic downturn.?

?? Chattermill have investigated which popular fashion brands have the best CX; using publicly available Trustpilot reviews registered from 1 January 2021 to 4 September 2022. ASOS.com has received consistently high scores over the past 12 months, while New Look is on an upward climb after a relatively low period.? ZARA SA is the retailer with the lowest rating given by customers. Order accuracy, no delivery, refunds, and quality of the product are the top themes mentioned most negatively across fashion retail online reviews.

Zoom have announced its omnichannel contact centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) in UK&I. Businesses are enabled to deliver prompt, accurate and personalised responses to their customers over a variety of channels, including voice, chat, SMS, and video.?

Reputation have?analysed thousands of online hospitality reviews. Positive and negative review sentiment is up, but neutral reviews are down. Digital transformation is also continuing with the pub and restaurant business. Hospitality consumers are still willing to splash out on dining and drinking experiences.

• Optimizely ?announced its content management, commerce, and personalisation solutions are now available on the 微软 Azure Marketplace. Optimizely customers can now take advantage of the productive and trusted Azure Power cloud platform, with streamlined deployment and management.?
• Cryptocurrency exchange?FTX?filed for?Chapter 11 bankruptcy?protection. The company’s valuation plunged from?$32 billion to bankruptcy?in a matter of days, dragging down founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s $16 billion net worth to near-zero.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP), a type of AI used in customer experience (AI for CX), is invested in by 75% of European organisations.?Most European business executives say NLP requires time to prove it works.?

The latest cost-of-living crisis impacts on businesses and CX

• 74% of CMOs have already – or expect to – face cuts to marketing budget or team due to recession. When asked which areas would be most impacted if budgets are cut in 2023, 68% of marketers say advertising/campaigns will be most impacted. This was followed by customer engagement (30%) and headcount (26%).?
• Go Inspire Group - A Xerox Company has found over a third of senior marketers are already noticing a drop-off in brand loyalty as consumers shop around for deals to combat the cost-of-living crisis. A further 47% believe the changing behaviour of customers switching to rival items is price driven.?

The CXM articles of the week

Are you caught up on the top articles we published this week? Give them a read if not!

Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. To find out the new coverages in full and more, remember to?check?this week's post . Check back next Friday for the latest updates of the week!