How Clientelling Technology is Transforming the In-Store Experience for Customers and Retailers

A shopper can leave a store without buying and still return online to complete the purchase. In this 2023 Retail Refined conversation, Melissa Gonzalez and Mercaux co-founder and CEO Olga Kotsur explore what retailers miss when they measure those interactions separately.

Kotsur’s definition of clienteling connects store visits, product interest and associate conversations with the customer’s next interaction online. The discussion moves from that definition to associate credit, composable store technology and the choice between self-service and assisted selling. Her central argument is that the store’s contribution extends beyond the transaction at its own checkout.

From associate tool to end-to-end store platform

Kotsur explains that Mercaux’s early focus was giving sales associates fast access to product inventory and customer information, with the aim of improving service while saving time at the point of interaction. In her telling, the “associate tool” model was a starting point—useful, but not sufficient once retailers began facing new operational demands and customer expectations across channels.

She describes a turning point as retailers confronted challenges like COVID-era shifts and the growing expectation of omnichannel fulfillment. In response, Kotsur argues the store cannot run on disconnected point solutions—where POS, assisted selling, clienteling, and kiosks operate separately—because the customer journey cuts across all of them. Her conclusion: retailers increasingly need a platform that digitizes the store journey end-to-end.

Kotsur positions Mercaux’s move into POS as a strategic response to that demand. She says retailers are becoming ready to deploy cloud and API-based POS systems, but they do not want a one-for-one replacement of legacy checkout alone. Instead, they want the rest of the store experience—selling tools, customer context, and workflows—to connect to the transaction layer so store execution matches the new role of the store.

What “clienteling” means when it’s more than purchase history

When Gonzalez asks where clienteling sits on the spectrum—from simply recognizing a repeat customer to understanding preferences and context—Kotsur answers by challenging how vague the term can be. She contrasts basic implementations (associates viewing limited customer info and past purchases) with a broader definition centered on truly personalized in-store experiences that remain connected to online activity.

In Kotsur’s definition, a store visit creates information beyond a receipt. She emphasizes capturing signals such as which products a customer considered, what they liked, and even that they chose not to buy. She presents this “non-purchase” data as valuable because it can feed later online personalization and engagement, rather than letting the in-store journey disappear once the shopper leaves.

She further describes clienteling as making customer data actionable for associates while also routing store-captured insights into downstream systems—such as marketing automation—so a retailer can treat an “abandoned store basket” more like an abandoned online cart. The mechanism she outlines is a unified view: sales interactions, customer preferences, and channel behavior all informing what message or offer appears next.

Attribution, incentives, and the reality of cross-channel selling

A key moment in the episode comes when Gonzalez recounts an in-store interaction where an associate asked her to purchase in the store so the store could receive credit. She interprets that as a sign of misaligned incentives: the shopper experience should stay consistent across channels, while the retailer’s internal crediting should not push customers into inconvenient behavior just to satisfy reporting structures.

Kotsur agrees and extends the point: if an associate creates interest and the customer buys online later, she believes that associate should still be rewarded. She frames this as recognizing that store teams contribute beyond same-day, in-store conversion—touching longer-term customer value. In her view, clienteling and omnichannel converge precisely at this attribution problem.

Composability and choice: why modular store tech shapes the experience

Gonzalez points to Mercaux’s Pulse of Retail 2023 report and asks why “composability” is becoming a shared aspiration among surveyed retailers. Kotsur explains it with a simple analogy: technology should behave like building blocks that can be configured and extended without forcing massive upgrades. She also describes the architectural idea of separating layers (such as back-end and front-end) so systems can be reused across channels.

The discussion then turns to self-service. Kotsur says some retailers invest in self-checkout partly to manage labor costs, but she emphasizes another driver: giving customers freedom to choose how they want to interact—through an associate, their own phone, or a device. She frames self-checkout as only one step, with self-discovery (checking stock, prices, and promotions independently) also playing a major role.

Kotsur and Gonzalez both stress that there is no single recipe across retail contexts. Kotsur ties this back to modularity: because retailers face different pressures (including inflation and labor shortages), they need the ability to start with self-service or assisted selling, then change direction as they learn. Composability, in her framing, is what makes that experimentation feasible without rebuilding everything each time.

The episode’s forward look: one device, blurred channels, and less waste

Asked in the 2023 interview to look three to five years ahead, Kotsur predicts simpler tools for associates: one device supporting inventory checks, customer profiles, remote selling and checkout, ideally through one app. She frames that as a way to make retail work easier. It is the episode’s forward-looking vision, rather than a report that every retailer has reached that point.

She also predicts the line between online and offline will keep fading from the customer’s perspective, with engagement measured across the journey rather than by channel. In her view, this convergence supports more relevant recommendations and offers, while also keeping associates connected to customers after they leave the store through conversational and remote selling approaches, including messaging-based outreach she referenced earlier.

Finally, Kotsur adds a less-discussed implication: better in-store technology can support sustainability goals by helping retailers move stock more quickly, transfer inventory between stores, and time discounting so products are not wasted. She links that to agility—knowing what to do with inventory before it becomes landfill—arguing that operational execution is part of improving retail experience, not separate from it.