To paraphrase the monologue from 2023 cinematic classic Barbie: It is literally impossible to be a brand right now. You always have to be extraordinary, but somehow you’re always doing it wrong.
B2C brands’ customer experiences continue to underperform. That’s particularly true in North America, where consumer perception of CX quality is at an all-time low, according to Forrester .
And consumers will only tolerate that so much. Klaviyo’s 2026 future of consumer marketing research found that 1 in 4 consumers will stop buying from a brand after a single negative experience.
Your teams are under pressure to meet high audience expectations, while also adapting to an increasingly complex customer journey. In this new era of commerce , you need to ask yourself whether your current tech stack is the right fit.
Legacy CRMs are slow, complex, and expensive to maintain. And too often, they don’t give brands a unified view of their customers.
Overhauling enterprise systems is no small feat. But the B2C brands that win over customers for life will be those that make the switch to a retail CRM that connects all of their customer data, intelligence, marketing, and customer service activities.
How is a retail CRM different from a traditional CRM?
Sticking with a traditional CRM platform for too long blocks B2C brands from evolving at the pace today’s market requires.
Legacy CRMs act as a record for customer data, and they often require manual effort to maintain. They were built for B2B industries, where sales happen through dedicated account teams or other 1:1 relationships, not through self-service DTC channels or physical stores.
Many of the legacy CRM vendors around today have grown through acquisition, forcing marketing teams to rely on data extensions, SQL queries, and multi-system orchestration just to run basic campaigns.
By contrast, a retail CRM is designed intentionally for retail and ecommerce brands. Here’s what that means in practice:
- Instead of industry-agnostic functionality, retail CRMs take into account the omnichannel nature of B2C customer journeys.
- Retail CRMs bring customer data, marketing, and customer service activity together in one place, eliminating the need for a separate customer data platform (CDP) .
- Retail CRMs are made for marketing and customer service teams, meaning you need little to no development work to make the system usable or compatible with the rest of your tech stack.
Why traditional CRMs fail B2C brands
With already limited internal resources, you can’t afford to spend time retrofitting technology to meet basic campaign and customer support needs.
Relying on a traditional CRM forces you to eat these costs because:
- They were built for B2B sales pipelines. Most traditional CRMs are designed for long, slow sales cycles, not to keep up with millions of fast-moving consumers. B2C customer journeys play out on different channels, on different timelines, and with different brand touchpoints.
- They track accounts, not consumers. B2C brands have millions of customers, not thousands of leads. You need a system that captures rich customer profiles, including individual purchase histories, communication preferences, and product reviews.
- They don’t integrate well. Nearly 1 in 5 marketers say the biggest challenge with their marketing tech stack is either having too many tools, leading to complexity or inefficiency, or difficulty integrating tools and systems across the stack, according to Klaviyo’s 2026 B2C marketer research. Traditional CRMs often don’t integrate with the other tools B2C brands rely on (e.g., loyalty, referral, and shipping apps), or they require significant work to make them compatible.
- They can’t support B2C retention needs. More than half of B2C companies spend at least 60% of their marketing budget on retention, according to our 2026 B2C marketer research. But traditional CRMs are built for a B2B world where customer success teams are typically responsible for retention, not B2C buying journeys where customers may never interact with one of your employees.
The future of retail puts more pressure on your CRM
We’re at the beginning of a shift to AI-powered agentic commerce . Legacy platforms that have been “good enough” to date aren’t equipped to meet this moment, because they’re built on batch processing and siloed data models.
Here are a few ways the future of retail is pushing traditional CRM platforms to their limit:
- AI-powered marketing is on everyone’s radar. B2C marketers’ top tech stack priority for 2026 is to expand with new AI-powered marketing tools, according to our 2026 B2C marketer research, which also found that companies are already exploring AI for tasks including audience targeting, A/B testing and optimization, marketing operations, messaging personalization, and marketing analytics.
- AI is transforming how consumers buy. 43% of consumers have used AI when shopping for non-essential products or services in the past 6 months, according to Klaviyo’s 2026 AI Consumer Trends Report . LLMs like Perplexity are making it possible to buy directly within their chat interface through open standard protocols that brand tech stacks will need to integrate with.
- Accurate omnichannel visibility is a must-have. 82% of consumers use more than 1 channel to shop, and 86% at least occasionally start shopping on one channel and complete their purchase on another, according to our 2026 future of consumer marketing research. You need a clear view of all the channels a customer touches during their journey to make smarter decisions about where to invest going forward.
6 benefits of moving to a B2C retail CRM
Moving to a B2C retail CRM is a strategic investment in your brand’s future, and it alleviates a lot of the challenges your teams contend with today. Here’s what it offers your team:
1. Unified data without friction
Most brands’ customer experience leaves consumers wanting (a lot) more. So it makes sense that the No. 2 priority marketers have for their tech stack in 2026 is upgrading their ecommerce or customer experience infrastructure, according to our 2026 B2C marketer research.
Improving your customer experience starts with a real-time view of every action a customer takes with your brand. But Klaviyo’s 2025 State of B2C Marketing Report found that 60% of marketing teams use 6–15 tools in their tech stack. As a retail enterprise brand, that may include:
- Ecommerce store
- Brick-and-mortar stores
- Point of sale (POS) system
- Loyalty and referral programs
- Email, text messaging, and WhatsApp marketing
- Mobile app
- Social media
- Shipping, fulfillment, and post-purchase tracking tools
- Gift card management tool
- Customer service systems
Without a unified customer profile that reflects real-time data from all of those sources, you’re working with an incomplete picture of the customer experience, which can negatively impact customer satisfaction and loyalty.
But you don’t necessarily need a standalone CDP in addition to a CRM to achieve a unified profile. While legacy CRMs weren’t built on CDPs, a retail CRM with an embedded CDP connects data and events to your customer profiles instantly, without additional coding or screen switching.
2. Marketer-led activations at enterprise speed
Your marketing team can brainstorm the most creative campaigns imaginable, but those ideas go to waste if your tech stack makes launching them a weeks- or months-long process.
74% of consumers expect brands to provide more personalized experiences, according to Klaviyio’s 2025 Future of Consumer Marketing Report . When planning a product launch, for example, you probably want to send tailored messages to different customers based on data like their communication preferences and past purchases.
This level of customization could add weeks to your planning process if customer data is decentralized, and if you rely on different tools for email and text messaging. A retail CRM with built-in data and omnichannel support lets you tailor content and deliver tailored messages to every customer faster.
When pulling new data for customer segmentation took over a month and every email had to be built with HTML, personal grooming brand Dollar Shave Club knew they needed to overhaul their tech stack. They consolidated their email marketing platform, CDP, and pop-up tool into a single B2C CRM, and have since seen a 60%+ reduction in campaign set-up time .
3. Lower TCO with predictable pricing
Bloated tech stacks not only lead to fragmented data and information silos. They also end up costing you more in long-term maintenance.
Most B2C brands feel this burden. According to Klaviyo’s 2026 B2C marketer research, B2C marketers say high costs and unclear ROI are the top challenge with their marketing technology stacks today.
The right retail CRM can replace up to 5 disconnected tools, reducing your total cost of ownership (TCO) and cutting out ad-hoc custom development costs.
Helen of Troy , the parent company of household brands including OXO , Osprey , and Hydro Flask , migrated 3 brands to a B2C retail CRM in just one month. By replacing their previous email and text messaging vendor, the company saw a 40% reduction in TCO and saved hundreds of IT tickets per year.
4. AI-driven shopping support
39% of consumers have purchased a product recommended by an AI tool in the past 6 months, according to Klaviyo’s 2026 AI consumer trends research, which also found that most consumers have used AI multiple times to find the best product or deal, get product recommendations, and compare products or brands.
If your legacy CRM struggles to keep up with the speed of traditional ecommerce, it will only fall farther behind as agentic commerce becomes more mainstream.
Getting visibility into traffic coming from LLMs , or launching customer-facing AI agents to deliver personalized support on your website, shouldn’t require you to spend money on additional point solutions. Ideally, these capabilities are built into a B2C retail CRM to help your brand prepare and adjust for AI-powered shopping.
5. Omnichannel attribution that reflects real customer journeys
Budget and resource constraints are the top challenge for 63% of CMOs in 2026, according to Gartner . The only way to spend every dollar efficiently is by understanding which channels and strategies have the biggest impact on revenue.
When performance data lives across multiple disconnected systems, teams are forced to manually piece together insights, or invest in more tools just to have usable dashboards. Staying locked into legacy attribution models (or investing more to customize your models) costs you more, especially as shopping journeys shift.
A B2C retail CRM lets you evolve beyond outdated attribution models that don’t give you full visibility into customers’ true journey with your brand. In addition to supporting omnichannel, linear multi-touch attribution (which spreads credit evenly across all paid or direct touchpoints), this means giving you the freedom to customize models based on your brand’s specific needs.
6. Marketing and service on one shared customer record
The quality of your customer service is one of the top drivers of consumer brand loyalty, according to our 2026 future of consumer marketing research. And reactive customer service doesn’t cut it anymore.
Most legacy CRMs were built for sales teams, not customer service, forcing retail brands to invest in separate tools for support. Even now, only 19% of marketers say they collaborate with their customer service counterparts using shared technology and data platforms, according to our 2025 State of B2C Marketing Report.
Expanding your support model from simple order updates and returns to include proactive product recommendations and personalized reminders makes customers feel seen and supports your growth. But to provide it, you need a shared source of truth for your marketing and customer service teams.
When marketing and customer service use one platform, both teams act on the same customer data. This lets you provide personalized support based on a customer’s full history from the first interaction. And every service interaction generates more insights that marketing can use to plan future campaigns.
Plus, when both teams are truly aligned, brands are 156% more likely to exceed their marketing goals and 70% less likely to report rising customer acquisition costs with falling lifetime value, according to our 2025 State of B2C Marketing Report.
Free your team (and your CX) from legacy tech with Klaviyo
You’ve invested years of resources into your current tech stack. We understand why you might not be eager to rebuild that overnight.
But migrating your CRM is an intentional move to protect your brand and better serve your customers for years to come. And it doesn’t have to be a headache.
Klaviyo is the autonomous B2C CRM that powers more valuable customer experiences. It’s a single connected system for data, marketing, and customer service, purpose-built for retail brands that sell at scale.
With Klaviyo, you get access to:
- Klaviyo Data Platform (KDP) : a shared data foundation that gives marketing and customer service teams a real-time view of customer profiles, embedded right in your CRM (no separate SKU or sync latency to worry about)
- Klaviyo AI (K:AI) : built-in agents that use your real-time customer profile to plan and launch marketing campaigns, personalize every send, and resolve customer requests—all on one platform, with humans in the loop
- Klaviyo Marketing : the orchestration layer that automates timely customer experiences across email, text messaging, mobile push, WhatsApp, and more, delivering deeper personalization thanks to KDP
- 350+ pre-built integrations : the ecosystem that connects everything you already use, from advertising and loyalty platforms to shipping systems
CTA: Confidently upgrade your retail CRM with Klaviyo. Get a demo
FAQs about enterprise retail CRMs
What's a CRM for B2C marketing teams?
Klaviyo is the autonomous B2C CRM that powers 100,000+ retail and ecommerce brands worldwide. It unifies customer data and automates email, SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, and mobile push in the same system as customer service to drive personalized, revenue-generating customer experiences. Built as both a system of record and system of action, Klaviyo combines a customer data platform, real-time signals, and agentic AI to power automated insights and one-click activation.
Can a B2C CRM replace my CDP?
Klaviyo’s vertically integrated platform functions with an embedded CDP that unifies customer data and events in profiles instantly without the friction of moving data between separate products. Klaviyo B2C CRM processes 1.6 billion+ events daily with 99.95% uptime , giving retailers the agility and confidence to move away from standalone CDPs.
Is Klaviyo a CRM or just a marketing automation tool?
Klaviyo is much more than a marketing automation tool. Klaviyo B2C CRM eliminates data silos by bringing data, marketing, and service together in a single source of truth, with a complete set of marketing channels built into one unified platform. This means you can manage every aspect of your customer relationships in one place, reducing inefficiencies and driving growth.
What’s the TCO impact of switching to an enterprise retail CRM?
It depends, but because Klaviyo is designed for out-of-the-box use by marketers and combines several capabilities in a single platform, switching can reduce total cost of ownership. Publicly traded company Helen of Troy , for example, reported 40%+ TCO savings after switching to Klaviyo.