Measuring what matters
Editor’s note: Ron Welty is the CEO and founder of IntelliShop.
The holiday season has always been a high-stakes moment for brands. Operations are stretched thin, customer expectations are sky-high and a single great (or terrible) experience can shape brand perception for months.
But in 2025, the customer experience bar has never been higher or more consequential. Consumer confidence is shaky, and shoppers have never had more choices, and between online reviews, buyer's guides and social media word of mouth, more information to guide those choices. The biggest differentiator in this unique environment will be how shoppers feel when they interact with your brand. A great customer experience isn’t just nice to have anymore; it’s the determining factor between a lost sale and a loud advocate.
Experience is the new differentiator
The 2024 holiday season was a clear signal that consumer expectations have shifted. According to SurveyMonkey’s Holiday Insights & Shopping Trends Report, customer service factors were leading differentiators for customers during last year’s holiday season. Nearly 3,000 customers were polled on which area of the shopper experience they value most during the holidays. Thirty-nine percent said customer service, 26% said in-store experiences and 12% said personalized product recommendations.
While price sensitivity is alive and well, the way people feel while shopping, and how they’re treated, play an equally pivotal role in their buying decisions. The experience itself is now a core part of the product.
This aligns with what market researchers and CX professionals have long observed: When emotions and effort intersect, loyalty often closely follows. A seamless interaction, a knowledgeable associate, a thoughtful post-purchase touch; these are the differentiators that no discount can replicate.
The good news for forward-thinking brands is that differentiated experiences, from in-store service and personalization to checkout and returns, are measurable, improvable facets of a strong CX function. But, you can’t fix what you can’t see.
How to measure what matters
Traditional business intelligence is invaluable, but if it’s lacking CX data, in the form of objective analytics on the end-to-end experience with your brand, you’re flying blind relative to what customers are telling us they care about most.
Observing how employees interact with customers, how company policies translate in the field and how real-world experiences stack up against your brand’s guidelines and best practices are crucial inputs. This is where tactics like scaled voice of the customer surveys, online, phone and mystery shopping and compliance audit programs, in addition to online reputation analysis of social media sentiment and online reviews, excel. These methods uncover the “why” behind the customer experiences that lead to sentiment and behavior, surfacing nuance and trends in the moments of delight or friction customers have with your brand that dashboards don’t always capture. When combined with traditional full funnel marketing and sales metrics, CX insights give a full, layered view of the customer journey that empowers brands to drive loyalty, word of mouth and revenue by measuring what customers tell us matters to them most.
Maintaining a human intelligence edge
AI agents and chatbots are great at automating recommendations and analyzing sentiment, but they can’t replicate what happens in real-life human interactions. CX leaders understand that technology supports experience; it doesn’t replace it.
That’s why the most successful companies are integrating human observation into their CX loops this season. Mystery shoppers, brand auditors and market researchers are the eyes and ears on the ground, translating data into action and ensuring that what’s promised in a boardroom actually happens in the field.
2026: Setting the state for success
The holidays aren’t forgiving. They shine a bright light on weak spots, but also spotlight excellence in customer experience. Brands that take the time to measure what truly matters, consistency, empathy, responsiveness and actually act on that data, will come out stronger in January and carry that momentum into the new year.
Consumers remember how they were treated long after the wrapping paper is gone. This year, don’t allow a poor customer experience to affect your bottom line. Pair your data with human insight, turn observation into improvement and most importantly, make every customer interaction an experience worth talking about.