Retail CX in 2026: Aligning Measurement with Customer Reality

Medallia recently released its 2026 State of Customer Experience Report, showing a clear disconnect between how brands measure experiences and how customers evaluate them.

Our takeaway is that, once again, retail is at an inflection point. While some CX scorecard metrics are stable, customer expectations are not. As costs rise and their budgets tighten, consumers — who are managing more competing demands on their time, attention and financial resources — are less willing to tolerate friction in retail experiences.

There’s an opportunity here for brands to reevaluate what metrics matter most in CX optimization and how to meet their customers’ evolving needs. Retail organizations that get this right will be positioned to boost retention and drive long-term growth.

Why Now?

Retail tends to move in cycles of acceleration, where new or compounding forces compress years of change into much shorter periods. We’re in one of those cycles now, triggered by rising customer expectations, economic uncertainty, increased price sensitivity and rapid advances in technology. Medallia’s report offers a view into how this acceleration is affecting customer experiences and exposing gaps between how organizations measure performance and how customers perceive it.

What Customers Expect in 2026

Retail is one of the few industries that everyone experiences regularly. We all shop, often moving across stores, apps, deliveries, returns and service interactions within a single journey. This makes breakdowns and shifts in expectations more visible, and it’s hurting loyalty and increasing brand switching.

Against that backdrop, Medallia’s research points to a clear disconnect: While 66% of CX practitioners believe experiences are improving, only 17% of consumers agree. This disconnect reflects a change in how customers evaluate their experiences.

At Material, we’re seeing consistent changes in how customers define good experiences across a wide range of retailers and categories. Expectations have not fundamentally changed, but the way customers respond when those expectations are not met has.

Customers expect pricing and promotions to be clear and applied correctly. They expect experiences to be consistent across channels. They expect service issues to be resolved without repetition or delay, and they expect their time and effort to be respected throughout every interaction.

Customers are less willing to overlook breakdowns, particularly as they spend more time evaluating where and how to buy. Moments that might once have been dismissed now shape future decisions.

Stable Metrics Do Not Reflect Experience

Traditional CX metrics don’t reflect this change in customer tolerance. Measures like Satisfaction and Net Promoter Score have remained largely stable. But, at the same time, nearly 30% of customers report issues in their most recent interactions, and these unresolved issues increase the likelihood that they’ll choose a different retailer for their next purchase.

These are issues we’re all familiar with: Orders arrive later than expected. Promotions aren’t correctly applied. Returns take multiple steps. Associates lack the information to make in-the-moment fixes. Taken together, they shape how customers decide where to shop next.

Going Beyond Survey-Based Insights

Survey results have always been reflective of only a small portion of any given customer base. Survey fatigue is making this worse; customers are becoming more selective about when and where they provide feedback.

Surveys also only capture what customers choose to report after transactions, not how they navigate purchase decisions in the moment, especially when weighing price, promotions, availability and convenience across retailers.

This creates a blind spot — but behavioral signals can provide important missing context.

Search activity, product comparisons, cart abandonment, store switching and return patterns can reveal where friction is influencing decisions in real time. These signals show when customers hesitate, substitute or exit — often without leaving explicit feedback.

When integrated into operational data and direct feedback, these kinds of behavioral signals offer a more complete view of the retail experience across digital and physical channels. This broader perspective enables retailers to identify where:

• Conversions break down,

• Promotions aren’t landing,

• Inventory or fulfillment issues are driving substitutions, and

• Effort is pushing customers to competitors.

These insights allow retailers to intervene earlier in the journey, and with more precision.

The Execution Gap

Medallia’s report also points to a consistent gap between insights and execution. Put simply, many organizations aren’t consistently acting on their CX findings.

This execution gap is most visible at the retail frontline. Store associates, service agents, and fulfillment teams are responsible for delivering experiences across a wide range of scenarios. But their ability to respond depends on access to information, clear priorities and sufficient capacity.

When teams lack the tools or clarity to act, inconsistencies in customer experience are inevitable. Empowering employees is essential to improving outcomes where they’re most visible to customers.

Value is Part of the Experience

All of this reveals a shift in how customers assess value. They’re evaluating more than convenience or service quality. They are assessing whether an interaction is worth the time, effort and cost involved.

At Material, we see this consistently across categories. Customers are more deliberate, more willing to search for alternatives and more likely to switch when expectations are not met. Value includes pricing, product quality, service and ease — and inconsistencies in any of these areas are more noticeable and impactful in the current environment.

Implications for Retail Organizations

Medallia’s 2026 State of Customer Experience Report also outlines where CX programs need to evolve.

Retail organizations must prioritize the translation of these findings into day-to-day execution. They can accomplish this by:

• Looking beyond survey data,

• Including behavioral and operational signals,

• Turning insights into frontline action,

• Connecting employee experience to customer outcomes, and

• Improving consistency across channels.

Retail organizations are already heavily invested in customer experience. Brand success will be determined by how consistently their investments are reflected in everyday interactions and how quickly organizations respond to changing customer behavior.

Material can help with this. We enable brands to integrate behavioral science into every customer touchpoint and bring their data and systems together to make insights actionable and valuable. From product and customer journey design to personalized content, offers and pricing, we can reinvent your retail experiences to increase engagement, drive loyalty and deliver long-term growth. Reach out today to start the conversation.