Revealed: The top retailers for CX as voted for by UK shoppers

Amazon, M&S and John Lewis are consumers’ top three retail CX stars according to a new survey published in How They’ll Spend It 2024. 

Retail Week asked 1,000 UK consumers, unprompted, on October 23, 2023, to name the retailer – online, store-based or omnichannel – that they feel offers the best shopping experience.  

Amazon, perhaps unsurprisingly, came out top with nominations from 8.4% of consumers, way ahead of the rest of the top five, but the remaining top nominations were an interesting mix: 

1. Amazon 
2. Marks & Spencer 
3. John Lewis 
4. Asos 
5. eBay 

In the same survey of 1,000 UK consumers in 2022, the top five retailers named for best shopping experiences were Amazon, Tesco, Asda, Aldi and Sainsbury’s – fewer grocers reign supreme this year. 

So, what makes these retailers stand out for great CX? Beyond Amazon – the strategy of which has been already documented many times by Retail Week – the report takes a deep dive into the strategies of the other four retailers, profiling how they are investing to get closer to consumers and future plans for this year. 

Below, we have extracted two of the profiles.

Marks & Spencer

• Group sales growth of 10% to £6.16bn for the half to end-September 23 
• Profit before tax and adjusting items up 75% to £360.2m 
• 1,064 UK stores 
• Active app users increased 7% to 4.9 million from January to September 2023 
• Customers say: “Very quick to shop with… good online experience” 

An astute combination of technological investment, brand partnerships and structural innovation has reinstated Marks & Spencer as one of the UK’s most beloved brands. Under its transformative ‘reshaping for growth’ strategy, the retailer has put its digital-led customer experience in the spotlight and is forecast to overtake John Lewis in Retail Week’s ranking of the UK’s biggest retailers by 2026. 

Marks & Spencer is hyper-aware of consumer demand for a seamless omnichannel experience and heavy personalisation. Innovations smoothing the path to purchase include its AI-powered Style Finder visual search feature, launched in 2019, which allows customers to upload a photo of an outfit to find related products available at M&S. Its Scan & Shop feature, meanwhile, means users can cut the queues by scanning grocery items with their phones as they shop and pay via the app. Marks & Spencer also makes wins with its low-cost, rapid click-and-collect service. 

The M&S mobile app has increasingly become a focal point as the brand realised its potential to act as an uber-personalised digital shopfront. It is targeting 10 million app customers – up from approximately 3.9 million as of October 2022 – over the next few years. The retailer is also aiming to be “more relevant, more often” through its prolific partnerships with third-party brands such as Nobody’s Child, Sweaty Betty, and Adidas. Most recently, it added lingerie retailer Pour Moi in October. These partnerships plug gaps where M&S lacks dominance. 

Marks and Spencer has also ploughed investment into its distribution centres over the past few years. Online availability now exceeds store availability, and the retailer is keen to drive around 40% of clothing and home sales online over the next year or so. 

Meanwhile, the brand’s Chester-based customer contact centre now deals with five million queries per year via live chat, email, social media, phone, and post, while its CX platform streamlines the capture of customer feedback and analysis, leading to more customer-driven strategic decisions. 

And customers are sitting up and taking notice. Group revenue rose 9.6% to £11.93bn in FY2022 and consumers in the report survey describe the high street mainstay as “easy” and “very quick” to shop with, highlighting “good experiences” online. 

eBay

• Revenue increased 5% to $2.5bn (£2bn) for the quarter to end-September 2023 
• Gross profit grew from $1.73bn (£1.39bn) to $1.79bn (£1.44bn) 
• 50% of sales come from the US and 50% from international, including the UK 
• 132 million active buyers worldwide (September 2023) 
• Customers say: “Very convenient… best range and lowest price” 

“Relevant, persistent and personalised experiences for consumers” is the goal at eBay, as the once-sprawling marketplace moves away from its previous acquisitional strategy and focuses on digital development. 

eBay has constructed its highly personalised, relevant, and inspiring path to purchase using AI and structured data. In recent years, it has trained a laser-sharp focus on two areas: enhancing the mobile experience and improving search results. 

The marketplace aims to encourage social media-style ‘snacking’ behaviour among customers, incentivising them to return several times a day across various channels through frequently updated, highly personalised offers. AI-powered visual search technology allows customers to find related items based on product images, while the ‘interests’ feature sends out personalised product recommendations. 

And it is paying off. In the report survey, one consumer says they find the marketplace “very convenient” while another says it has the “best range and lowest price.” Another consumer cites its free delivery and order tracking as the reason they shop with eBay. 

Customer service and trust are major pain points for online marketplaces. eBay addresses these through customer support via Facebook and X, as well as its call centre and resolution centre, where buyers and sellers can communicate directly should an issue arise. 

With convenience often the deciding factor for online shoppers, eBay has ploughed resource into developing fulfilment services. Sellers and buyers can drop off and pick up items from Argos and Sainsbury’s, while its global shipping programme supports UK and US sellers with international logistics. 

As consumer appetite for pre-loved items snowballs due to cost and environmental concerns, eBay has been tapping into this market. In December 2022, it partnered with clothing resale specialist ACS in a bid to tackle barriers to purchasing second-hand goods such as cleanliness, authenticity, and condition. Its latest green innovation was the Circular Change Council, launched in October 2023, designed to tackle furniture waste.