Dive Brief:
- Best Buy expects improvements to its online and in-store experiences to help the company build relationships with customers ahead of the holiday season, executives said on a Q3 2025 earnings call last week.
- The retailer is adding an AI-powered discovery tool to its app called the Best Buy Gift Finder, according to CEO Corie Barry. The feature is designed to suggest gifting options that customers may not have thought of or known the retailer carries.
- Best Buy has been working to improve its digital customer service as well. The retailer began rolling out an AI-powered virtual assistant across its IVR system to answer questions without making customers wait for an agent, according to Barry.
Dive Insight:
Customer experience is essential to Best Buy’s long-term survival, according to Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail. Best Buy’s product assortment is readily available through e-commerce competitors, but CX can help the brand differentiate itself.
Tools like Best Buy Gift Finder will be modestly helpful for the retailer, but they are “the icing on the cake,” according to Saunders. Foundational elements like product availability and customer service remain vital.
Best Buy’s efforts to elevate its CX across all its channels is improving relationship NPS, according to Barry.
“We have initiatives targeting customer experiences across our digital and store channels,” Barry said. “We are encouraged by the continued material year-over-year improvement in our relationship NPS, which tracks consumers' likelihood to recommend Best Buy.”
The retailer is investing in associate training, as well as in-store and online experiences, which paid off in the computing and tablets categories, according to Barry. These categories posted 5.2% same-store sales growth in Q3 2025 compared to Q3 2024, while same-store sales for the business as a whole dropped 2.9% during the same period.
Investments in digital experiences paid off as well. The Best Buy app was refreshed with features including improved personalization, a digital wallet and faster loading times, which has led to higher customer ratings and active user growth, according to Barry.
The company’s in-home delivery and installation tracking service, which lets customers see a live ETA of their order’s progress, has been a success, according to Barry. More than 3 in 5 customers are engaging with the tracking feature, and it received five-star ratings from more than 9 in 10 survey respondents.
Best Buy also completed a store refresh that includes creating more experiential spaces, according to Barry.
