An exceptional customer journey extends far beyond the initial point of sale. And nowhere is this truer than for subscription-based businesses, whose continued success is based on delivering consistently seamless, high-quality experiences throughout each customer's time as a subscriber - from the initial sign-up through to the point where they decide to terminate their subscription for whatever reason.
Indeed, these new models have transformed the way many businesses interact with their customers, applying lessons learned from established subscription-based services, such as gyms and streaming services. From both traditional retailers and ecommerce specialists offering scheduled deliveries of household essentials, groceries, and entertainment products, to the now-ubiquitous software-as-a-service model and premium subscriber options on popular social media platforms, there are numerous channels for forward-thinking businesses to establish 'sticky' streams of income, with more still to reveal themselves.
However, the rules around offering and managing subscriptions and memberships of any sort are about to change, particularly with regards to cancellations…
Throughout 2026, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)'s regulations around buyer protection and autorenewals are going to evolve, as part of the existing Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act), in order to help consumers avoid getting trapped in unwanted subscriptions. Organisations found to be in violation of these new regulations can expect to face fines of as much as 10% of their annual revenue.
As a result, any retailer that offers subscriptions or memberships of any kind must be aware of how these changes will impact them in the months ahead and, adapt their systems and processes to ensure they remain fully compliant with all applicable regulations, and - most importantly - ensure that they are still able to offer a world-class experience for their subscribers.
So, what's about to change and how can we best prepare?
- Specific pre-contract information must be provided. The DMCC Act distinguishes between key pre-contract information and full pre-contract information. Both must be provided in full at the initiation of the contract, or the customer will not be bound by the stated terms. Compulsory elements include:
- Full details of payments, include frequency and amounts.
- Minimum total liability.
- Schedule of reminder notices.
- Full cancellation rights.
- Reminder notices will be compulsory. It is no longer enough to assume a customer will automatically want to renew their subscription. Reminder notices must be sent in advance of the renewal date.
- Cooling-off periods will also be compulsory. This applies to both new subscriptions and renewals. Customers must have 14-day window to cancel their subscriptions without penalty.
- Cancellations must be as simple as possible. Cancellation instructions must be provided, and the process must not include any unnecessary steps. This also applies to online subscriptions. Confirmation must be provided within 24 hours.
There's certainly a lot to consider here, but rather than treating these changes as onerous compliance obligations, why don't we treat them as an opportunity to reconsider the overall subscriber journey, and look for new opportunities to enhance it?
Traditionally, when a customer wishes to cancel a subscription or membership, they've done so by speaking to an agent, who will then have the opportunity to discuss their reasons for cancelling and potentially offer some perks to change their mind. In light of the changes mandated by the new DMCC, this is unlikely to be practical in the majority of cases, when customers are able to unsubscribe with a single click. This has the potential to create a serious loss leader for subscription-based businesses whose customer engagement strategy is based on an initial discount or free gift (e.g. the first month's delivery is free, after which the subscriber pays the usual rate), as there is nothing to stop customers hitting 'unsubscribe' right before their first payment is due.
However, with agentic AI and intelligent automation currently transforming both the contact centre environment and the wider customer journey, numerous opportunities have presented themselves to ensure full compliance can seamlessly co-exist with personalised experiences that maximise long-term retention and build brand loyalty.
For example, if someone is looking to cancel via a page on your website and you have already implemented a chatbot function that they use to request a cancellation, the bot can automatically engage a real customer service agent, who can discuss the reasons for their cancellation, provide any hands-on support they need, and (ideally!) offer any perks or resolutions that will entice them to stay.
If your contact centre environment and chatbot functions have been intelligently integrated (as they should be!), these interactions can then be utilised to drive further optimisations, such as ensuring cancellation requests are routed to agents who have the best records of retaining customers, or ensuring agents don't invest their time and effort on accounts that have no realistic chance to renewing their subscriptions. For example, AI-based analytics can identify trends in customer data, such as individual addresses that have signed up for multiple trials but never made a purchase, which will allow agents to focus their attention where it will prove most effective.
And of course, the best approach to minimising cancellations is ensuring customers never want to cancel to begin with! All the data gather through customer interactions - whether it's with an agent or chatbot - can help build up more accurate, comprehensive customer personas that support highly personalised offers, helping to maximise the number of subscription renewals.
Above all, while regulations evolve and customer expectations naturally shift, the value of a personalised experience, delivered by an attentive, knowledgeable professional is a constant for the Retail sector. If we keep this in mind while making full use of the possibilities AI-powered automation offers us, the opportunities will be tremendous.
If you'd like to take a deep dive into your own customer journey and identify where the intelligent application of new technologies could make that all-important difference, just get in touch.
Exponential-e & Retail
Our Retail brochure offers a comprehensive overview of how we draw on a deep understanding of the sector's singular challenges, an evolving technology ecosystem, and a highly consultative approach to offer bespoke solutions that help staff deliver their best for every customer - both online and in person.
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Retailers - be they small local shops, online sellers, or top global brands - generate, transfer, and store more data than ever before, ranging from customer data (both online and in-store, as we have considered in previous articles), to supply chain and asset tracking data. Whether it's shopping online or utilising in-store apps to access the latest savings and special offers, the way customers shop has fundamentally changed forever, with the data they generate online and in person allowing retailers to build up unique personas that drive truly bespoke experiences.
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Like many fixtures of our lives, Britain's pubs were heavily impacted by COVID-19, with their familiar patrons unable to come in for a post-work drink, or meet with friends at the weekend. But while it was undoubtedly a difficult period for the industry as a whole, this great British institution did as it has always done, and adapted to suit its patrons' evolving requirements.
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Like many longstanding institutions, Britain's world-renowned pubs are undergoing their own digital transformation journey, utilising leading-edge technologies to offer truly personalised experiences to patrons of all ages and backgrounds - from longstanding regulars visiting for their usual pint, to families looking for a meal, and young professionals working on the go. It's an exciting time for the sector as a whole, but at the same time, the drive for modernisation must not come at the expense of patrons' safety and enjoyment.
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With fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour, changing economic conditions, and a rapidly evolving regulatory environment, it's a challenging but exciting time for the UK's retail sector, and technology has a key role to play. In particular, advances in IT and networking solutions are empowering retailers to enhance their operational efficiency, improve the customer experience, and retain their competitive edge in an increasingly online and interconnected world.
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The retail landscape has fundamentally changed in recent years, partly driven by the necessities of COVID lockdowns, and partly by ongoing shifts in customer preferences and behaviour. As we have previously explored on this blog, the familiar high street shopping experience is increasingly converging with online and click-and-collect shopping, offering a new breed of data-driven shopping experience.
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"When it comes to digital transformation, the personal touch is often what takes projects from 'good' to 'exceptional'. Plenty of companies can deliver technology, but it's the relationships that really drive innovation in long term."
Philip Button, Regional Business Manager – Enterprise
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We've been hearing about the impending demise of the high street for years now, ever since online shopping and click-and-collect established themselves as part of our day-to-day lives. And yet, while brick-and-mortar retail has certainly been through a great many challenges and upheavals, it doesn't show any sign of going away quite yet. Rather than simply expecting customers to be content with previous generations' shopping experiences, the sector has demonstrated considerable ingenuity by taking full advantage of emerging technologies to deliver the kind of personalisation that would previously have been the sole preserve of online platforms.
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The retail playbook has been fundamentally rewritten. Customer journeys are omnichannel by default, IoT sensors are now omnipresent in both warehouses and shop floors, and AI is moving from pilot to P&L at an unprecedented pace. And the results are already proving transformative:
- Time-to-open: New stores and pop-ups are networked, secured, and POS-ready in days, not weeks.
- CX becomes predictive: Personalised offers and staffing respond to real-time signals, not yesterday's batch.
- Shrink is minimised: Vision-based loss prevention, plus better on-shelf availability.
- Cost-to-serve falls: Energy, logistics, and labour are optimised by rich streams of real-time date.
- Audits are boring (in a good way!): PCI and security postures are continuously and consistently maintained across estates and partners.
But in the race to access all these potential benefits, the winners aren't the ones with the flashiest demos – they're the ones with a rock-solid digital foundation that lets AI and IoT platforms scale safely, securely, and intelligently, store by store.
So, from Exponential-e's vantage point across cloud, connectivity, cyber, and communications, and our ongoing conversations with top retailers across the UK, here's what "AI/IoT-ready" actually means for the sector, and how we can begin laying those all-important foundations…
A network built for real-time, store-level intelligence
IoT and AI thrive on low latency and high availability, particularly when Point of Sale (PoS), inventory, and computer-vision workloads are increasingly interconnected. That means the underling WAN stops being a cost line and becomes a growth platform. Frictionless shopping experiences, incorporating queue-free checkout, real-time offers, and dynamic pricing, depend on fast, reliable data flows at the edge.
Software-defined networking, built on a private VPLS core, makes this practical at scale, offering centralised control, application-aware routing, seamless use of diverse access (i.e. ethernet, 4G/5G), and integrated security. Beyond the immediate operational advantages of avoiding hairpinning over the public internet and low, predictable latency, such networks offer the scalability and agility needed for pop-ups, seasonal peaks, and new store openings, where day-one uptime and policy consistency are required.
This should be complemented with enterprise IoT/M2M SIMs that deliver multi-carrier access and centralised control for store sensors, handhelds, lockers, smart signage, and similar devices.
Cloud and edge compute as a single, unified platform
AI-assisted retail is a hybrid sport: heavy training and data engineering in the Cloud, instant inference and control at the edge. To this end, retailers pursuing "always-on", augmented stores are converging 5G, IoT, and AI with edge compute to deliver truly personalised experiences in the moment, not hours later. This next-gen local processing, with edge computing implemented in every store, delivers a seamless PoS for customers, while simultaneously optimising staff's efficiency and reducing backhaul costs.
In the longer term, centralised data platforms and AI services can crunch multi-store telemetry for demand forecasting, replenishment, and customer analytics, offering a rich stream of actionable insights that enable reduced energy usage, automated restocking tasks, and smoother labour scheduling - immediate, powerful operational wins.
These capabilities can be developed into a standardised model and then be deployed, managed, and scaled consistently across new sites as retailers expand their operations. It's no surprise that multiple European retailers are already doing exactly this to not only protect their immediate margin and availability, but also accelerate their future growth plans.
Embracing the 'secure by design' model
Retail IT estates increasingly span POS, e-commerce, click-and-collect, and IoT devices. However, more devices and more data mean an increased attack surface, particularly when it comes to customers' payment data. As a result, robust security must be embedded in the design of all systems, platform, and processes, not bolted on later. Forward-thinking retailers are already rolling out this 'secure by design' approach, building customer trust through multi-layered, PCI-DSS-ready security ecosystems that allow for continuous monitoring and intelligently automated policy enforcement.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) has a key role to play here, converging network and security in the Cloud and offering numerous pathways to establishing identity-centric access, micro-segmentation of IoT devices, and uniform policies across stores and partners. Even with thousands of distributed end points, all this can be accessed through a single pane of glass - a "single source of truth" for all networks, devices, and workloads.
Taking the next step of your AI/IoT journey
AI and IoT in retail aren't separate projects; they must be treated as fundamental parts of a single, software-defined platform that reaches every shelf, sensor, and checkout. Build the network and edge right, wrap it with zero-trust security, and connect it to a governed data and AI backbone, then scale and optimise what works.
If you'd like this distilled into a tailored blueprint for your own estate (i.e. current stores, formats, and use-case priorities), we can map the stack, identify quick wins, and sequence the roadmap to outcomes, with everything overlaid by a single SLA, as a fully integrated service. Get in touch to discuss your own AI and IoT goals and let's make sure you're building on the right digital foundation!
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Traditionally, retailers' biggest security concern has been theft, and so CCTV systems evolved to ensure shoplifters could be identified as quickly as possible and stock shrinkage minimised, forming a foundational element of on-site infrastructure. However, as retailers expanded their operations and looked to achieve seamless communication and interoperability between sites and warehouses, the security concern grew to include data theft, and so secure, resilient connectivity became a key priority.
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Whether it's in person or online, the way we shop has changed forever. Seamless flows of customer data are powering truly personalised, interconnected shopping experiences, with retailers willing to embrace the change positioning themselves ahead of the competition and developing world-class, instantly recognisable brands.
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