Where's Your Customer?

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...

There's a consistent two-point gap in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index between how customers in the North of England and Scotland rate their retail experiences and how customers in London rate theirs. It appears every year. In this episode, I look at what's actually driving that regional customer experience gap and why the usual explanation (regional warmth, a friendlier culture up North) is inc...

UK retailers are asking for feedback more than ever. Response rates are falling. And only around 30% of businesses act on what they collect. In episode 20, I'm looking at what's going on inside most voice-of-the-customer programmes right now and whether the tools we're using match what we say we want to understand. This episode covers the capture rate problem (Forrester puts it at 2–7%), why what...

You've been in that meeting, where you've walked in with a clear customer problem, done the work, and watched the questions come back about cost, ROI, and timeline. Nothing about the experience at all. In this episode, I'm thinking about the gap between how CX teams talk about customer problems and how leadership evaluates investment. It's not a belief gap. It's a translation problem. And in 2026,...

What if the service level your customers expect has very little to do with what they're spending? In this episode, I'm joined by Dan Cuomo, a leader who's led marketing and operations across Wickes, Bath Store, Signet, and now Wheels Up (private aviation). That's a career that spans the full length of what luxury retail customer experience can mean, from a £20 transaction to a £20,000 one. What Da...

When customers describe a good retail experience, the language is rarely spectacular. Instead, they say 'it was easy'. 'Quick'. 'I got what I came for'. 'I'd go back'. That's the language of something working consistently and seamlessly in the background.  So in this episode, I've been thinking about what's underneath those experiences. Not what great retail customer experience looks like on the s...

In 2016, I was studying for my customer experience professional qualification and filling a little red book with notes. Six core competencies. Frameworks. Models. The language of CX. I loved every bit of it. Ten years on, I still use those foundations. But the list of what a CX leader needs to understand has grown considerably, and I keep wondering whether what we're describing is still one role,...

When Retail Teams Play, Experiences Come Alive There's something you notice in retail environments that work. The experience feels alive. Responsive. Like the people behind it had permission to actually think. In this episode, I've been sitting with a question about what separates those experiences from the ones that feel flat - ok, but mechanical. And I think it might be whether teams have been a...

When did sitting in your car too exhausted to go inside become normal? If you've ever finished a full day and realised you spent it responding to everything whilst thinking about nothing, you're not alone. Retail manager burnout has reached crisis levels, with happiness across UK retail falling to 58% in 2025. In this episode, I explore: Where your time actually disappears to (spoiler: it's not wh...

I was reading an interview with B&Q's retail director about their showroom upgrades. Beautiful bathroom and kitchen displays, scent diffusers, and aspirational spaces designed to lift the customer experience. But what caught my attention was their two-entrance strategy, appealing to customers who were NOT interested in the showroom spaces.  On the surface, it's practical. But I think it reveals so...

Bury Market generated £1.1 million in annual surplus by staying traditional while others added wine bars and craft beer. Now they're building a £33 million Flexi Hall. What happens when you finally follow the playbook everyone else is using? While Crewe, Altrincham and several other town markets have transformed into food halls, Bury Market has remained the same. 150,000 weekly visitors. 70% of cu...

Are smaller retailers winning the AI race? While 99% of large UK retailers have AI expertise in-house, 31% of small retailers are already using AI daily. The competitive advantage isn't about resources, it's about friction, proximity, and speed of testing. I've been learning about AI at quite a pace recently, and it made me wonder: if individuals can move this quickly, what does that mean for smal...

UK retail customer service hit a 14-year low in 2024. But is the problem really about better recovery, or is it about prevention? In this episode, I share a personal story about three trips to fix a basic mistake, then examine the £7.3 billion monthly cost of preventable service failures across UK retail. We look at why UK employees spend 20% of their time fixing problems that shouldn't have happe...

Customers don't search the way they used to. They start on TikTok, or Instagram, ask ChatGPT for recommendations, or head straight to Amazon without even thinking about your website.   In this episode, I talk with Paul Culshaw, a strategist with over 25 years in SEO who's worked with major UK retailers, including Littlewoods and N Brown. Paul reveals why retail SEO strategy isn't really about sear...

Something shifts when you step back from work, doesn't it? Last summer, I had my first child, and whilst I knew maternity leave would be transformative personally, I didn't expect it to reshape the customer experience lessons I'd carry forward in my career. Between feeds and nappies, I found pockets of time to read nine customer experience books. What struck me wasn't just the individual insights,...

I don't know about you, but I've always got a job list on top of my day job list. Little things like booking eye tests, picking up paint samples, or nipping to the supermarket because you've run out of Calpol. I love it when I'm on a mission in a shop and everything just works. But then there's the flip side, when you can't find what you want, there's no one around to help, or worse, you finally d...

What Department Stores Teach Us About Customer Experience Last week I found myself in Darlington with time to spare, wandering into a House of Fraser that felt tired and unloved. Sitting in their quiet cafe, mostly surrounded by pensioners, I couldn't stop thinking about how different these places used to feel when I'd visit them with my nan. Department stores used to feel magical. Someone had cur...

The most customer-focused retail leaders aren't waiting for formal AI training. They're building their own AI literacy to serve customers better, and you can too. If you've been seeing posts about AI transforming retail, hearing colleagues mention ChatGPT, or watching competitors get smarter with AI, you're not alone. Spending on AI technologies in retail is projected to reach $85 billion by 2032,...

Walking into leadership meetings with glowing NPS scores only to face questions about declining repeat purchases? Most retail teams measure customer experience as if it were still 2015, celebrating snapshots whilst missing the complex omnichannel reality customers actually live in. In this episode, Jo shares four business-critical CX metrics that connect directly to revenue and give you predictive...

The customer loyalty strategy landscape is experiencing a seismic shift. The loyalty market is projected to reach £4 billion by 2029, but brand loyalty is eroding. In this episode, Jo explores why 45% of customers are abandoning beloved brands for cheaper alternatives and what industry leaders like Boots, ASDA, and McDonald's are doing to build connections instead of just collecting points. Perfec...