Walking the floor at NRF 2025 last month, it was clear that “customer experience” was the unifying theme across retailers, logistics providers, and technology leaders. The conversation wasn’t just about making shipping more seamless—it was about how every touchpoint in the supply chain shapes brand loyalty and customer retention.

This year’s NRF saw over 40-thousand attendees from more than 6000 brands, and each of them was seeing how the market is no longer treating logistics, or logistic tools, as lone islands. Instead, the way forward for customer experience is to make each blip along the way—supply chain management, WMS, shipping, risk mitigation and management, last-mile, and post-purchase—a connected archipelago of tools that each work together to both inform the business and provide transparent value to the customer.

We also discovered brands are investing more in logistics solutions that make fulfillment faster and smarter, but that race isn’t only about speed. Now, to unify customer experience with eCommerce strategy, retailers are also factoring in precision, reliability, and data accuracy in their decision-making.

Naturally, AI-driven tools were a significant part of the conversation around logistics software. We’ve seen a trend ourselves in the market that logistics itself is something more and more brands are looking to unify and support with SaaS. The days of reacting to individual disruptions are over. Now, market leaders and their teams are using predictive models to anticipate and mitigate issues before they happen. That’s something we’re seeing firsthand at InsureShield and Delivery Solutions, with a growing interest in products like DeliveryDefense™ Address Confidence.

Social shopping has played a significant role in brand loyalty, and retailers are adapting their strategies accordingly. The broader focus on customer experience means merchants are taking a more complex look at how different generations are shifting in behavior. At this year’s NRF, the gap between Gen Z and Millennial consumers are how retailers can serve each audience uniquely from a strategic perspective was a hot topic—one we were able to bring some recent survey data to, and how brands can effectively meet market needs with their logistics strategy.