Retail technology is often talked about as if customers experience the technology itself.

They usually do not.

Customers experience whether the product is available. Whether the colleague can answer the question. Whether the engineer turns up with the right information. Whether the contact centre knows what happened yesterday. Whether the business makes them repeat themselves.

That is why Currys makes such a useful retail technology case study.

Because many of the examples around Currys point to something more practical.

Technology becomes useful when it helps colleagues remove friction from the customer journey.

That is a much more interesting test than asking whether a retailer is “using AI”.

The better question is:

What customer or colleague problem is the technology actually trying to reduce?

The Commercial Backdrop Matters, But It Is Not the Whole Story

Currys’ full-year results for 2025/26 give the wider context.

Adjusted profit before tax rose 18% year on year. Customer satisfaction, measured by NPS, rose to 56 in the UK and Ireland and 65 in the Nordics. Colleague engagement reached 84, which Currys describes as placing it in the top 10% of employers globally. Services (including repairs, credit and iD Mobile contracts) now account for 30% of UK and Ireland revenue.

Those numbers are impressive, but they do not prove that recent AI or technology projects caused the improvement. Currys has been building its services business, credit offer, repair capability and iD Mobile proposition over a much longer period.

What the results do show, however, is the kind of business Currys has become.

It is not simply selling products from shelves. It is selling advice, support, services, repairs, finance and confidence. In that kind of retail model, the experience depends heavily on what colleagues know, what information they can access, and how easily different parts of the business join up.

That is where the technology question becomes more useful.

Not “which tools does Currys use?”

But “what activity is Currys trying to make easier?”

Turning Store Data Into Something Managers Can Actually Use

One of the clearest examples is Currys’ work with Quorso.

Quorso is not a customer-facing tool. Customers do not walk into a store and experience Quorso. They experience the decisions store teams make because of it.

The tool pulls together data such as sales, footfall, promotions and customer satisfaction, then turns that information into a short list of weekly actions for store managers. According to Currys and Quorso, the time managers spent working through separate reports fell from around six hours a week to under one.

In January 2026, the partnership won Best Retailer/Technology Supplier Relationship of the Year at the RTIH AI in Retail Awards.

Again, the figures come from Currys and Quorso, so they should be treated as supplier-reported rather than independent proof. But the principle is still useful.

Retail managers are not short of data.

They are often short of usable attention.

Giving a store manager another dashboard does not automatically improve the customer experience. It may simply add another place to look. The practical value comes when information is translated into a decision the manager can act on during a busy trading week.

That is the customer experience point.

Better data is only useful if it changes what happens on the shop floor.

The Display Gap Example Is More Interesting Than It First Looks

The most practical example, for me, is not the most futuristic one.

It is the display gap work.

Research commissioned by Currys with Basis interviewed customers as they left stores. That matters because it captured actual behaviour, not just what customers said they might do.

The research found that 16% of customers who came into store intending to buy a specific product left without buying anything. Follow-up interviews uncovered a simple but costly mismatch.

Customers saw an empty display space and assumed the product was out of stock. Colleagues assumed that if customers needed help, they would ask.

That is such a familiar retail problem.

Neither side was being unreasonable. Customers were making a quick judgement based on what they could see. Colleagues were making a reasonable assumption based on how help normally works in store. But between those two assumptions, the sale was lost.

Currys did not respond with a new customer app or a flashy in-store screen. Store colleagues began scanning display gaps using the tablets they already carried, so missing stock could be flagged and replenished before customers made the wrong assumption. Display gaps reportedly fell from 10% to under 3%.

This is the part many retail technology conversations miss.

The customer did not need a more advanced digital experience. The colleague needed a faster way to see and fix a basic operational problem.

That is what makes the example useful. It starts with customer behaviour, traces it back to the operational activity, then gives colleagues a practical way to intervene.

That order is important.

Start with the customer friction. Find the operational cause. Support the colleague task. Then measure whether the original problem improved.

It sounds obvious, but a lot of technology investment works the other way round.

The tool is bought first. Then the use case is retrofitted afterwards.

Good Service Often Depends on What Happens Before the Customer Interaction

Currys’ repair examples point to the same idea.

Through its partnership with Vyntelligence, customers booking a repair can record a short video of the fault before their appointment. The system reads details such as the serial number and prepares a summary for the engineer in advance.

The aim is to improve diagnosis, increase first-time fix rates and reduce wasted callouts.

That matters because a repair visit does not begin when the engineer arrives at the door. It begins with the information the customer gives, the way that information is captured, and whether the engineer has enough context to make the visit worthwhile.

This is where customer experience can become very practical.

A customer does not care whether the business used AI to interpret a video. They care whether the engineer arrives prepared. They care whether the right part is available. They care whether they have to book another appointment.

Currys’ ShopLive and RepairLive services make a related point. They connect customers with Currys colleagues by video for buying advice or repair support. The technology is customer-facing, but the value still depends on human expertise.

That distinction is important.

Video does not replace the colleague. It puts the colleague’s knowledge in front of the customer at the moment they need it.

For categories like electricals, that can be particularly valuable. Customers may need help comparing products, checking compatibility, understanding installation, or deciding whether a repair is worth pursuing.

The technology is useful because it gives the expertise a better route to the customer.

Joining Up Channels Is Not the Same as Adding More Channels

A more recent example is Currys’ customer service platform work.

In August 2026, Currys and Concentrix moved its main customer service channels — voice, email and social — onto NiCE CXone, a single customer engagement platform.

This is the kind of thing that can sound very internal.

“Unified engagement platform” is not a phrase customers would use. But the problem it is trying to solve is one customers know very well.

They email. Then they call. Then they follow up on social. Each time, they may have to explain the same issue again.

That repetition is one of the most frustrating parts of modern customer service. It makes the customer feel as if the organisation has no memory.

The aim of CXone is to bring more of that history together so interactions across purchases, deliveries, installations and repairs can be captured, analysed and made easier for colleagues to understand.

Currys reported that first contact resolution reached close to 80%, contacts per sales order fell to 0.18, and NPS improved by six points during the migration. In one part of the business, complaints reportedly fell by around half over 18 months, while NPS rose by more than 20 points.

Those figures are again supplier-linked, so they should be read as indicators rather than independent proof.

But the customer experience principle is sound.

More channels do not automatically create better service.

If the channels are disconnected, they can create more work for everyone. Customers repeat themselves. Colleagues search across systems. The same issue gets picked up in fragments.

The useful test is not whether a business offers every channel.

It is whether the colleague can see enough of the customer’s story to respond properly.

The Unglamorous Foundation: Data That Colleagues Can Trust

None of these examples works without reliable information underneath.

A colleague cannot give good stock advice from poor stock data. A repair engineer cannot prepare properly if the fault information is incomplete. A store manager cannot act quickly if the data sits in too many disconnected places.

That is why Currys’ partnership with Microsoft and Accenture is worth including, even though it is less visible to customers.

The programme involved moving nine data centres, more than 2,000 servers and around 200 applications into the cloud. The stated purpose was to give 25,000 colleagues access to accurate stock, delivery and product data in real time.

Customers do not see a cloud migration. They do not care how many servers moved.

But they do notice whether the answer they get is accurate.

They notice whether stock information is reliable. They notice whether delivery information matches what actually happens. They notice whether the colleague sounds confident or has to apologise because the system says something different.

This is where “back-end” technology becomes customer experience work.

The customer may never see the system. But they feel the quality of the information it gives to the people serving them.

What Other Retailers Can Learn From Currys

The useful lesson from this retail technology case study is not that every retailer needs the same set of tools.

A supermarket, fashion retailer, DIY chain or convenience store will have different moments of friction. The colleague tasks will be different. The customer expectations will be different. The commercial model will be different.

The transferable lesson is the sequence.

Start with a real customer problem.

Then ask which colleague task affects that problem.

Then ask what information is missing, hard to access, or difficult to act on.

Only then ask whether technology can make the work easier, faster or more accurate.

That is a very different starting point from asking, “How should we use AI?”

It leads to better questions:

• Where are customers making assumptions because the experience is unclear?
• Where are colleagues spending time interpreting data instead of acting on it?
• Where does the customer have to repeat information the business should already know?
• Where does poor information create avoidable failure demand?
• Where could better preparation prevent a second contact, a wasted visit, or a lost sale?

These are not glamorous questions.

But they add the most value.

For any retail technology investment, the practical test should be simple:

Can you trace it back to a specific moment of customer effort or colleague friction?

If not, pause before calling it a customer experience improvement.

Key Takeaways

• The most useful retail technology is often the technology customers never directly see.
• Start with customer behaviour and friction before choosing the tool.
• Look for the colleague task behind the customer problem.
• Treat supplier-reported results as useful indicators, not settled proof.
• Fix the information foundation before expecting AI or automation to improve the experience.
• Measure the technology against the original customer or operational problem, not against a generic adoption metric.

Resources Mentioned

• Currys full-year results 2025/26
• Currys and Quorso partnership
• RTIH AI in Retail Awards 2026
• Research Live / Basis: changing expectations in the Currys store experience
• Currys and Vyntelligence repair video technology
• Currys RepairLive
• Currys, Concentrix and NiCE CXone customer engagement platform
• Currys, Microsoft and Accenture cloud / generative AI partnership

Related Episodes

• Episode 31 — The Truth About AI and Customer Experience in Retail — explores AI and CX from the customer-trust side, a useful companion to this deployment-side case study.
• Episode 27 — You’ve Downloaded the App. Now What? — on why AI tool access does not guarantee AI proficiency, relevant to how Currys equips colleagues to use its own tools.

---

If this episode resonated with you, I would love to hear what it brought up.

What is one customer or colleague problem in your own organisation that technology could make easier — if you started with the friction rather than the tool?

Let’s connect — You can find me on LinkedIn.

Never miss an episode — Subscribe to Where’s Your Customer? wherever you get your podcasts for weekly customer experience insight.

Found this valuable? Please leave a review. It helps other retail professionals discover the podcast, and it means a lot.

Share the knowledge — If someone in your network is thinking about retail technology, customer experience or colleague enablement, please share this episode with them.