With foot traffic declining 10% in suburban centres and online retail capturing 12.7% of total sales, portfolio managers struggle to deliver the seamless customer experiences that justify the continued relevance of physical retail (Knight Frank, 2025; ABS, 2025).
The pressure intensifies as institutional investors increasingly require digital transformation roadmaps, with properties lacking experience innovation facing valuation discounts averaging 8–12% (Morgan Stanley Research, 2024).
Leading retail property groups demonstrate that focused customer experience improvements deliver measurable returns quickly. Scentre Group generated $42 million in additional revenue through enhanced digital experiences, while Charter Hall improved tenant satisfaction scores by 34% through targeted experience optimisation (Scentre Annual Report, 2024; Charter Hall Case Study, 2024).
The difference between leaders and laggards isn’t technology investment – it’s understanding how to rapidly improve customer journeys through AI-enabled design.
The hidden cost of fragmented customer experiences
Portfolio managers overseeing 15–20 properties face a structural challenge: customer journey data remains siloed across lease platforms, foot traffic counters, Wi-Fi systems, parking apps, marketing tools and customer service platforms.
The consequences extend beyond the 30–40 hours spent consolidating monthly reports:
Retailers with strong conversion rates but declining foot traffic may be misdiagnosed as “location problems”, when intelligent wayfinding or personalised promotions could solve the issue.
Parking frustration or poorly integrated mobile apps causes lost sales across multiple tenants, not just a single operator.
Modern consumers expect personalised experiences across digital and physical channels. Deloitte’s 2024 survey found that 88% of shoppers expect tailored recommendations and seamless journeys. Centres attempting to deliver this through fragmented systems face an impossible task. Generic campaigns, static directories and disconnected apps frustrate digitally savvy visitors.
Meanwhile, tenants increasingly choose locations based on landlord intelligence capabilities. With occupancy costs rising 8–15% annually, retailers now demand data-driven partnership such as benchmarking, predictive inventory insights and marketing support with measurable ROI (Property Council of Australia, 2024). Centres failing to provide these insights face 12% higher tenant churn and 25% longer vacancy periods (JLL Retail Analytics, 2024).
The AI-powered 90-day customer experience optimisation framework
Rather than pursuing lengthy digital transformations, leading centres deploy focused, AI-enabled experience improvements through a five-phase framework delivering measurable results within 90 days.
Phase 1: Experience audit and baseline (Weeks 1–2)
Map customer journeys across touchpoints using existing AI analytics on foot traffic, transactions and app engagement. Identify friction points such as confusing car park entry, slow digital directories or connectivity dead zones. Establish baseline metrics: dwell time, satisfaction scores, cross-shopping rates and digital engagement. Quick wins emerge naturally, showing immediate value.
Phase 2: Intelligence unification (Weeks 3–4)
Integrate siloed data using secure APIs and AI-powered analytics to create a single customer view. This enables:
Marketing teams to link campaigns to actual foot traffic and sales.
Operations to prioritise maintenance before it disrupts experiences.
Leasing teams to optimise tenant mix based on cross-shopping patterns.
Predictive capabilities forecast peak periods, allowing proactive staff rostering and crowd management. Maintenance interventions reduce complaints by up to 35% (CBRE Portfolio Analytics, 2024).
Phase 3: Experience enhancement deployment (Weeks 5–8)
Targeted improvements launch based on impact and effort analysis. AI personalisation engines deliver a range of enhancements including:
Tailored digital content (recommendations, exclusive offers, event suggestions).
Smart mobile app features (predictive parking, personalised store tours, real-time queue updates).
Dynamic wayfinding that adjusts to live congestion patterns.
Phase 4: Tenant experience platform (Weeks 9–10)
Empower tenants with AI-driven self-service dashboards that provide:
Real-time performance insights and category benchmarking.
Heat maps of customer flow to optimise staffing and displays.
Predictive analytics to manage inventory and minimise stockouts.
Marketing collaboration tools for coordinated, personalised campaigns.
Phase 5: Measurement and optimisation (Weeks 11–12 and ongoing)
Continuous improvement through A/B testing, AI-driven recommendation refinement and performance dashboards. Metrics from Phase 1 validate improvements in satisfaction, dwell time, cross-shopping and tenant sales, creating a compounding effect over time.
Evidence from the field: Charter Hall case study
Charter Hall Retail piloted this framework and achieved measurable impact:
60% of customer frustration was traced to parking, connectivity and store discovery issues.
Quick wins included numberplate recognition parking, enhanced Wi-Fi and interactive wayfinding.
By week 12:
Customer satisfaction +34%
Average dwell time +18 minutes
Tenant sales +8.4%
Parking simplification recovered $340,000 in annual savings
Tenant satisfaction with landlord support +45%
Implementation considerations for portfolio success
Successful experience transformation requires careful attention to privacy and change management. The November 2024 Privacy Act reforms mandate explicit consent for personalised experiences, transparent data use communication and robust security frameworks (Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, 2024). Leading centres address these requirements through privacy-by-design approaches, offering clear value exchanges for data sharing whilst maintaining anonymous options for privacy-conscious visitors.
Change management proves equally critical. Centre teams need support transitioning from operational focus to experience optimisation. Training programmes that demonstrate how enhanced customer experiences reduce complaints and simplify daily operations accelerate adoption. Celebrating quick wins maintains momentum – when the simplified parking system reduces payment queries by 60%, operations teams become transformation champions rather than resistors.
Vendor selection significantly impacts success probability. Partners must demonstrate proven Australian retail property experience, integration capabilities with existing systems and scalability across diverse portfolios. Cultural fit matters as much as technical capability – successful partnerships require collaborative approaches that transfer knowledge to internal teams whilst delivering immediate value.
The imperative for immediate action
Shopping centres delaying customer experience optimisation risk permanent competitive disadvantage. Every month of inaction means frustrated customers choosing online alternatives, tenants questioning occupancy costs and investors comparing performance against digitally enabled competitors showing superior returns.
The 90-day framework provides a proven path from current-state frustration to measurable experience improvements that satisfy customers, support tenants and deliver sustainable competitive advantage.
The evidence is clear: focused customer experience improvements deliver returns within weeks, not years. Leaders like Scentre and Charter Hall prove that intelligent experience design drives material financial impact whilst strengthening tenant relationships and customer loyalty. The framework exists, the returns are proven and the implementation timeline fits within a single quarter’s transformation budget. The only question remaining is whether portfolio managers will act on the opportunity before competitors capture the advantage.
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