To keep up with consumers’ rising expectations, today’s retailers strive to provide a connected experience across an expanding number of digital and physical channels.

However, most retailers’ current approaches to customer experience (CX) initiatives focus on solving specific problems on single channels in a reactive mode, not improving the overall connected performance for their customers. Even as customer-facing tactics in marketing become more cross-channel and personalized, CX often lags behind modern customer expectations.

Today’s CX professionals commonly track metrics that show, for example, whether purchase systems are running, whether wait time in the call center is under 90 seconds, or whether the website is “four-nines” available.

An old-fashioned CX mindset centered around point metrics can lull retailers into a false sense of security. As long as everything is working, there’s nothing for retailers to worry about as far as the customer experience goes, and they can focus their efforts on increasing sales via marketing.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Capgemini found 75 percent of organizations believe they are effectively customer-centric. The problem? Capgemini’ s research also showed only 30 percent of consumers agree. And according to Forrester Research’s CX Index, less than 1 percent of brands are regarded as delivering excellent customer experience.

For retailers to become part of that top-performing 1 percent, they must rethink CX and shift from a reactive approach to a proactive model that focuses on the success of cross-channel customer journeys. In other words, rather than reacting to and solving point-in-time or channel-specific problems, retailers should adopt a proactive mindset that considers all channels and the customer journey through time on a cadence defined by the customer — and delivers a connected and personalized experience to the customer.