The 30-second shopper: How retailers can win in the era of instant decisions

Fall retail season is in full force - in case you haven’t already noticed everything is infused with pumpkin spice these days. Fall is one of the busiest times for brands with back-to-school, Halloween, and early holiday shopping colliding into a retail pressure cooker - one of the year’s biggest demand surges.

Fierce market volatility, rising costs, and global competitors mean retailers need to pivot, with price continuing to lessen as the only differentiator. What should be clear to retailers in 2025 is how customer experience (CX) is the most valuable “currency” in today’s market, and they need to be even more on their service game this year.

But how can retailers break through? Prices fluctuate and promotions abound, making consumers increasingly desensitized to seasonal marketing discounts. Digital ad spending is projected to reach $870.85 billion globally by 2027, but the average conversion rate across 18 major online retail verticals is just 1.85%.

With perceived product commoditization spreading more into every corner of retail, consumers continue to vote on the one metric that consistently matters most: Experience. CX is increasingly becoming the primary differentiator for many retail brands with inadequate customer service costing $3.7 trillion in annual sales globally due to bad customer experiences.

Enter AI - not just a back-office efficiency driver, but a frontline force reshaping how brands engage, delight, and retain their customers. According to McKinsey, more than 40% of organizations already credit AI with helping them stand out in their markets.

So how - and why - is AI becoming the engine of customer experience innovation? Let’s unpack the dynamics at play.

The rise of the 30-second shopper

The 30-second shopper is fast becoming a new norm. A busy working parent juggling shopping lists. A professional looking for a wardrobe edit. In just seconds, they can discover a brand via a Google or generative AI search or social media, do their comparisons, and buy.

ChatGPT is increasingly a prime referral to retailers’ websites, giving companies like Walmart, Target, Etsy and eBay access to more online shoppers. ModernRetail reports data from Similarweb, a web traffic analytics company, found one in five of Walmart’s referral clicks in August came from ChatGPT - up 15% from July.

What are the gotchas of the 30-second shopper? Feeling overwhelmed, fear of making the wrong choice, and frustration with bad service.

In 2025, attention is the new currency. You want your brand to rise to the top of the noise. You have 30 seconds to win it - or lose it. Fail to meet the expectations of the 30-second shopper, and your competitors will - because AI-powered CX will soon define who makes the short list.

To succeed, offering the right experiences that are intuitive and responsive can make all the difference to help shoppers make purchase decisions in seconds.

For today’s shoppers, attention isn’t just scarce - it’s fleeting. Bombarded with options and short on patience, they aren’t looking for more choice; they want to be confident they’re making the smart choice. The brands that remove confusion and deliver clarity will earn trust - and the sale.

AI is giving forward-thinking retailers more new ways to anticipate trends, personalize campaigns, and capture more seasonal revenue. After all, the real differentiator is experience, building trust, loyalty, and driving repeat purchases.

Consumers are willing to be served with AI, if you can get it right

Shoppers are decisive and impatient, so you need to make sure their service journey is just as decisive. Not to mention speedy.

They’re also more savvy when it comes to understanding how technology can make their retail experience better. Today’s consumer starts with natural language prompts and AI-powered discovery, going beyond keywords.

Capgemini research reveals that 71% of consumers want generative AI integrated into their shopping experiences.

By linking with a unified AI platform, you can see your brand climb to the top of Internet and generative AI searches, transform service into effortless experiences, and create AI agents built for CX that grow from your data and insights.

That’s what smart, fast, and intuitive service looks like.

Why it matters:

• Visibility: Out of sight, out of mind. Brands missing out on shaping how generative search engines summarize and surface results, miss out on potential consumers.
• Opportunity: Influence the way AI interprets and presents your brand by optimizing prompts, claim clarity, and brand narrative. Optimizing for AI requires moving from keyword optimization toward solution-oriented product descriptions and rich, contextual data that AI systems can understand and recommend.
• Behavioral: Debt-conscious shoppers weigh needs over wants, and rely more on search for discovery. An estimated 39% of consumers, including over half of Gen Z, are already using AI for product discovery, Salesforce found.

Human experience in a generative AI world

Being discovered by shoppers is just step one. The real test: making more than a first impression and building loyalty.

Shoppers may give you their attention once, but keeping it requires consistency, clarity, and care. Every interaction after that first impression either strengthens or weakens the relationship. If your business delivers seamless experiences, transparent communication, and dependable service, trust grows - and with trust comes loyalty.

But only if you can capture trust. Afterall, trust can erode quickly over:

• Long hold times
• Confusing and shifting pricing
• Conflicting answers from support teams

All this can create a perfect storm of friction that signals unreliability. These sow doubt and break the shopper’s trust. The real challenge isn’t standing out - it’s removing every obstacle that makes customers question whether staying with you is worth it.

But how can you do that effortlessly? A single AI-powered platform takes out the friction for your shoppers when they need it most.

Why human-like AI is the missing piece in superior retail CX

For decades, retail automation has meant scripted workflows and rigid customer interactions - fast but impersonal, efficient yet cold. Traditional systems execute commands. They don’t adapt. They don’t act in a human way. That’s a gap customers feel.

Agentic AI changes the equation - it interprets, flexes, and engages with human-like intuition. Unlike conventional automation, agentic systems act autonomously while staying attuned to the nuances of human behavior. This makes the experience feel less transactional and more relational, which is precisely what today’s customers crave.

The research backs it up:

• 64% of customers say having people involved and/or available within AI processes would improve their customer experience. (MIT in partnership with NiCE)
• 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for superior customer experiences (Keevee).
• 16% price premium is achievable for brands that consistently get CX right (PwC).

In retail’s next chapter, it’s about more than speed or efficiency. It’s about embedding human connection into the very fabric of technology. Agentic AI handles the speed and scale so your employees can focus on other consumers who need more nuanced assistance.

AI doesn’t replace the human touch - it makes it scalable so your brand can help even more consumers.

Are you ready to:

• Close the gap between shopper expectations and corporate priorities
• Join brands like Sony Electronics - which automated 40% of inquiries and delivered record-high customer satisfaction
• Build consumer trust through consistent, time-saving experiences
• Elevate customer service from a cost center to a competitive differentiator

Fall into one platform to scale all your CX needs

When people, systems, and workflows come together seamlessly, service works better at full capacity.

That’s the critical denominator. In a season when demand surges can feel like a retail pressure cooker, that kind of orchestration ensures brands aren’t just keeping pace - they’re delivering the kind of experiences that win loyalty.

It’s the dynamic experience consumers have come to expect, so why make it more difficult for them to find that CX sweet spot? Not to mention wait longer. That just won’t work for the 30-second shopper.

NiCE makes it possible, empowering teams across the globe to work smarter, scale with confidence, and deliver outcomes that truly move the needle.

• Purpose-built AI for CX: Automatically deliver spot-on, conversational interactions from intent all the way to fulfillment, driven by thousands of domain-specific CX AI models and generative AI
• Cloud architecture: Optimize and scale your operations with 40+ apps built on a secure and reliable cloud
• Integrations: Integrate every technology you use with hundreds of prebuilt integrations, your pick of partners, and no-code/low-code development to make the platform your own
• AI-enhanced voice: Eliminate language barriers for conversations that flow with the power of AI
• Dashboards & reporting: Make faster decisions based on real-time and historical data by seeing all your AI-driven CX insights in one place
• Trust & compliance: Build customer trust and stay secure and compliant with around-the-clock monitoring and encryption, plus an SLA guarantee

The 30-second shopper won’t wait. Let NiCE help you turn seconds into loyalty