Where's Your Customer?

What Are We Expecting Customers to Do? Every retail decision asks customers to do something differently. Shop somewhere else. Choose a different product. Understand a new process. Accept one kind of value in place of another. In this episode, I unpack six real UK retail decisions to reveal the customer ask hidden inside each one. What did customers need to do differently for the decision to change...

Years ago, I worked on a food research project that delivered exactly what it was meant to. It shaped a campaign, informed decisions, and changed customer perceptions. But it never really reached beyond the marketing and strategy teams. This episode explores what happens to customer research after the original project ends, and how to share useful findings with others. What this episode covers: Wh...

I got a chip in my windscreen. It's a leased car, so I went to the lease company's website, found a phone number (no booking link), and spent nearly fifteen minutes on the phone while someone walked me through a form, question by question. Afterwards I looked at the normal Autoglass journey. I got through almost the whole thing online in about ninety seconds. The service worked, but I got a very d...

We went to M&S at the weekend for a brew before the shopping, and the café had gone! The assistant told us it wasn't coming back, and that cafés in a lot of the smaller stores were closing. I assumed it was about money. When I looked into it, it turned out that's only half the story. This week I look at what UK retailers are actually doing with shop floor space, and how you work out whether it ear...

Stakeholder engagement in retail projects is difficult, and it's usually the part of the work with the least planning. Milestones and deliverables go on the project plan. But keeping people up to date as the work develops usually doesn't. So the project keeps moving, and everyone else's understanding of it doesn't. The gap widens the longer the project runs, and it only becomes visible when you ne...

Currys is often described as one of the UK retailers leading on AI and retail technology. But a more useful story is the technology working behind the scenes: helping store managers act on data, giving repair engineers better information, and supporting colleagues in removing friction from the customer journey. In this episode, I look at Currys as a retail technology case study and ask a more prac...

Most retail and contact centre employees can tell when a customer needs more time, more patience or a different response. The more common problem is that they don't have the authority, time, or emotional capacity to act on it. This episode looks at what empowering frontline teams actually requires, and why average handling time, rigid scripts and centralised decision-making often work against the...

In this episode, I'm joined by Jacob Hinson , founder of eLocker, to explore why click and collect is still one of the most overlooked moments in the retail customer journey. eLocker  provides smart locker technology for retail click and collect, returns, warehouses and workplace environments. Its technology is designed to make collections faster, clearer and easier to manage, helping retailers re...

Most of the complexity in retail today ends up as work for the customer. It could be another app to download, another password to remember, another near-identical product to choose between. This episode is about reducing customer effort in retail; how the complexity builds up, why removing it rarely occurs to anyone, and what it takes to make buying feel simple again. What this episode covers: Why...

Most store performance reviews start and end with sales and costs. But a store's value goes well beyond that. From the online orders it fulfils to the supplier relationships it nurtures. In this episode, I look at everything else a store actually does that never gets counted, and what changes when you start looking at it. In this one: Why store reviews default to sales, and what a 2019 accounting...

Staying customer-focused in retail over months and years is harder than it sounds. Priorities shift, budgets reset, and a piece of work everyone agreed mattered can suddenly fall off the priority list. Persistence is the skill that keeps customer focus alive through all of that, but should it be? This episode covers: How most customer experience projects lose attention gradually  What the research...

How much of your working week is spent telling other people what customers said, rather than actually talking to one? When you open your laptop on a completely ordinary Monday, you have four customer-related things open: a customer dashboard, a survey tool, a customer proposition deck you need to finish, and an email about a complaint.  Not one of those four things is an actual conversation with a...

Most retail organisations run a Voice of the Customer (VOC) programme, which involves collecting customer feedback through surveys, reviews, complaints, or interviews. Many also track operational and process data. Things like delivery times, stock availability, returns, and customer service performance. Some also listen to staff through employee feedback, such as what frontline colleagues see and...

Most CX professionals know exactly what the customer would think about a decision being made in a planning meeting. Fewer say it out loud. Representing the customer in retail (not just collecting insights about them) but actively bringing their perspective into the room takes something that most CX role descriptions don't mention. This episode explores where that something actually comes from. Thi...

Most retail organisations have customer profiles. Many of those profiles were built a few years ago. They're approved, filed, and used ever since. Meanwhile, the customer has moved on. Hybrid working, for example, has changed shopping routines. The cost-of-living shift has changed how spending feels, not just what people can afford. And the research behind describing who the customer is today isn'...

Most of the conversation about AI in retail is happening between retailers. What customers are actually saying when they hit an automated channel that can't resolve their problem, or notice that a recommendation feels less like service and more like surveillance, is quite different. This episode looks at the specific line UK customers are drawing around AI and customer experience in retail, why th...

Your customers are still visiting. Still swiping the loyalty card. Still appearing as retained in your data. But retail customer spending habits have changed and the spend that matters most is redistributing to competitors without you noticing. This episode explores why standard retention data creates a specific kind of false confidence, and what the fragmentation pattern actually looks like in pr...

Most retail teams have more information than they know what to do with. The problem isn't the data; it's that data alone rarely shifts what happens in meetings or conversations with stakeholders. Customer storytelling in retail is the skill that closes that gap. Learn how to turn insight into something a room full of operational, commercial and digital priorities can actually act on. This episode...

The moment an AI output stops being "something the tool suggested" and becomes your professional recommendation is easy to miss. This episode looks at that handover, when nobody double-checks, when a 'plausible' statistic almost ends up in a deck, and what it actually takes to know which outputs are reliable (rather than just hoping they are). What this episode covers: Automation bias and why the...

Most retail teams are using AI, but most are getting a fraction of what the tools can actually do. The AI skills gap in retail isn't about access. It's about clear and consistent AI coaching. Without it, practitioners bring their own habits and ways of working to these tools. But those habits will underdeliver. A different approach is needed. This episode covers: Why 89% of retail staff have never...

Most retailers know when a customer complains. The harder question is what happens when they don't. Customer disengagement in retail typically shows up not as a walkout but as a slow redistribution. Visits become less frequent, the basket shifts toward functional purchases, and the higher-value choices the customer used to make start appearing elsewhere. By the time the data flags anything, the dr...

Every retail environment constantly produces identity signals through elements such as layout, lighting, staffing, technology, and pricing. Long before a customer looks at a product, they've already answered the question: is this place for me? This episode explores what produces that verdict and how most retail organisations have no one specifically responsible for asking what their store is actua...

There's a question every customer answers within seconds of walking through a retailer's door; is this place for me? Most of the time they're not consciously aware they're answering it. But it shapes whether they stay, browse, buy, and come back. This episode explores the relationship between customer identity in retail and what actually drives loyalty over time.  What this episode covers: Why cus...

You spend time and effort improving a significant operational improvement programme. Queue times come down. Stock availability is consistent. Click-and-collect errors have more than halved. Every metric is moving in the right direction. But then the quarterly customer comments come back — almost identical to the previous quarter. Have customers not even noticed your improvements? Customer percepti...

Most customer experience programmes begin with a clear vision of what the customer should experience. What they rarely account for is everything that happens between that moment of design clarity and the shop floor on an ordinary Tuesday. Budget conversations trim the vision. Handoffs dilute the intent. Attrition carries seasoned voices out of the door. The experience customers encounter is freque...