Digital commerce is no longer a retail-only conversation.

Digital commerce is no longer a retail-only conversation. Customers now judge banks, insurers, healthcare providers, travel brands, transportation operators and energy companies against the best digital experiences they have anywhere. Booking a trip, opening an account, paying a bill, changing a policy or scheduling care all feel like commerce journeys to the customer. And when those journeys are slow, confusing or incomplete, dissatisfaction rises quickly.

That cross-industry expectation shift is one of the clearest signals in today’s market. Banking and financial services now lead customer satisfaction in digital commerce, slightly ahead of retail, while travel and hospitality perform relatively well. Energy sits in the middle. Insurance and healthcare lag, and transportation falls furthest behind. The message is not that every sector should copy retail blindly. It is that every sector now competes on convenience, clarity, service resolution and relevance.

What separates leaders from laggards is not simply who has the newest technology. It is who has done the best job of removing friction from the journeys that matter most.

**Why banking leads**

Banking’s advantage comes from digital maturity in high-frequency, high-utility interactions. Customers regularly use banking apps and websites to complete concrete tasks: checking balances, moving money, opening accounts, applying for services and resolving issues. That repeated usage has forced the sector to improve around the fundamentals. Stronger interfaces, clearer task flows and better self-service have helped banking become the benchmark for many non-retail commerce experiences.

But banking’s lead should not create complacency. Even in the top-performing sector, customers still point to UX as the biggest reason for dissatisfaction. That is an important warning. Leadership today does not mean the journey is complete. It means the sector has built a stronger base of trust, utility and task completion than others.

For banking leaders, the next frontier is not generic personalization. It is smarter guidance tied to customer goals, better service continuity across channels and more individualized experiences powered by connected customer data. In other words, banking should evolve from efficient digital service to truly context-aware commerce.

**Why healthcare lags**

Healthcare has one of the largest opportunity gaps. Customers want digital healthcare journeys to do more than process payments. They want to manage appointments, access information, use self-service tools and receive experiences that reflect their needs and preferences. Yet the sector continues to struggle with fragmented journeys, weaker user experience and low adoption among some demographic groups.

This matters because healthcare transactions are rarely simple. Patients may need to search for services, book appointments, review instructions, update information, pay balances and resolve follow-up questions. If those steps are disconnected, digital becomes a burden instead of an enabler.

The priority in healthcare should be end-to-end service design. Better interfaces matter, but they are not enough on their own. Organizations need to connect search, scheduling, payments, support and follow-up into one coherent experience. Clearer content should also be a priority, especially for older users who tend to value clarity and accessibility over novelty. And because many patients still do not fully embrace digital healthcare tools, usability and trust are inseparable.

**Why transportation falls furthest behind**

Transportation’s low satisfaction and low adoption suggest a deeper challenge: many digital journeys in this sector still fail at the basics. When customers use transportation platforms, they often need fast answers under time pressure. They want to compare options, understand timing, resolve disruptions and complete transactions without friction. If search is weak, support is hard to reach or service recovery is disconnected, dissatisfaction compounds quickly.

Transportation leaders should focus less on flashy features and more on operationally grounded experience improvements. Real-time accuracy, intuitive mobile flows, proactive notifications and fast issue resolution are likely to create more value than surface-level personalization. In this sector, reliability is the experience.

**Travel’s mixed picture: relatively strong, but under pressure**

Travel and hospitality perform better than many non-retail sectors, but they face a tougher loyalty equation. Discovery is complex, disruption is common and acquisition costs are rising. Customers want more personalized recommendations and easier search, but they also remember service failures vividly.

That creates a two-part mandate. First, improve discovery. Generative AI-enabled search is a strong example of useful innovation when it helps travelers describe what they want in natural language and find relevant options faster. Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy shows how AI can reduce effort in a high-consideration journey by helping travelers match preferences to properties more intuitively.

Second, improve recovery. Travel brands that respond quickly, empathetically and contextually when plans go wrong have an opportunity to protect loyalty instead of eroding it. In travel, service recovery is not separate from commerce. It is part of commerce.

Carnival offers another important lesson for the sector. By creating a shared platform across multiple brands, it improved direct booking experiences, reduced booking costs and increased bookings on brand websites. That points to a broader truth for travel brands: platform unification and shared data can improve both experience consistency and economics.

**Energy’s middle-ground opportunity**

Energy and utilities are not usually seen as digital commerce innovators, but that is changing. Customers increasingly expect to manage bills, usage, tariffs, appointments and services digitally with the same ease they get elsewhere. This is a sector where practical self-service can create immediate value.

British Gas is a strong example. By simplifying service booking, payments and account management through mobile, it made digital interactions easier for customers while also reducing call volume and increasing digital engagement. That is what good non-retail commerce transformation looks like: lower effort for customers and lower cost to serve for the business.

For energy companies, the priority is straightforward. Build mobile-first, utility-rich experiences that help customers complete common tasks quickly. Make billing and service transparent. Give customers better visibility into usage and options. And use digital to reduce dependency on assisted channels without making support feel harder to reach.

**Insurance: the case for control and clarity**

Insurance sits below the leaders because too many journeys still feel opaque, static or incomplete. Customers want more control over their coverage and easier ways to adjust policies digitally. They also want clearer information and stronger service continuity when questions or claims arise.

Insurance should treat digital commerce as more than quote-and-bind. The stronger opportunity is lifecycle engagement: policy changes, coverage exploration, payment management, service requests and claims-related support. In practical terms, insurers should prioritize self-service configurability, plain-language content and issue resolution that does not force customers to start over every time they switch channels.

**What every non-retail sector can learn from the others**

The best cross-industry lesson is that digital commerce leaders win on fundamentals before they win on sophistication.

Banking shows the value of intuitive task completion.
Healthcare shows the cost of fragmented end-to-end journeys.
Transportation shows how quickly trust erodes when real-time reliability and service recovery break down.
Travel shows that better search and better disruption management both matter.
Energy shows how mobile self-service can simplify high-frequency customer needs.
Insurance shows the importance of customer control and transparency.

Across sectors, the same five priorities keep surfacing:
The broader business lesson is simple. Customers no longer separate commerce from service, content, support or trust. They experience one connected journey. Non-retail organizations that still treat these as separate domains will continue to lag. Those that unify them will be better positioned to improve satisfaction, reduce cost to serve and build stronger direct relationships over time.

Digital commerce may have started as a retail story. It is now a customer expectation story across every sector.