In luxury fashion, expectations are uncompromising. Burberry’s clients expect exceptional products and deeply personalised service, where every interaction (whether an event invitation, a birthday message, or a private appointment) reflects an understanding of their tastes and priorities.
Yet scaling such bespoke experiences across a global client base is complex. Traditional rule-based CRM systems lacked the flexibility to anticipate individual intent or to unify data across regions and channels. Burberry needed a modern, AI-powered framework that could preserve the intimacy of one-to-one clientelling while delivering efficiency and consistency at scale.
“Impactful and a clear example of how AI has transformed a retailer and driven measurable benefits.” – Judges’ comments
Building Capabilities for Success
Burberry’s Data Science team built an end-to-end Customer Science capability, underpinned by a single customer view and a composable Customer Decisioning Platform. This modern architecture unifies data from every channel into real-time profiles, providing a shared foundation for client engagement across the business.
On top of this, Burberry has deployed a suite of six AI models tailored to different stages of the customer journey. These include bespoke intent models that identify which clients are most likely to engage, and advanced recommendation engines that generate personalised product suggestions. The latest addition leverages LLMs to predict product affinities based on sequential behaviour, outperforming traditional methods twofold across retrieval metrics.
For Client Advisors, this translates into actionable, context-rich insights. They can select clients with precision, adapt campaigns to local markets, and walk into every interaction prepared with relevant, personalised suggestions. Store-led campaigns are orchestrated with AI support, ensuring outreach is timely and tailored rather than generic.
Tangible Outcomes
The results speak for themselves:
- Commercial Impact: Store-led campaigns powered by AI have doubled conversion rates, tripled engagement, and generated £7 million in incremental revenue in 2024, an 11% uplift year-on-year, despite a slowdown across the wider luxury sector.
- Customer Engagement: In-store appointment bookings have tripled, with clients responding more positively to personalised outreach.
- Operational Efficiency: Automated workflows have reduced manual effort fivefold, freeing Client Advisors to focus on relationship-building rather than administration.
- Cultural Adoption: More than 90% of store-led campaigns now use the AI-driven framework, with global stakeholders shifting from heuristics to data-led decision-making.
A Cultural and Strategic Shift
Judges recognised that Burberry’s achievement goes beyond technology. The initiative represents a fundamental cultural change, with data and AI now informing the majority of client interactions worldwide. By investing in a unified customer view and composable infrastructure, Burberry has built a foundation for continuous experimentation, agile adaptation, and measurable business impact.
In an industry where exclusivity and personal touch define success, Burberry has shown that AI and data can amplify the human art of clientelling. The award for Transformation with Data (Global) acknowledges commercial gains but also Burberry’s ability to fuse tradition with technology, setting a benchmark for the future of luxury retail.
