Where's Your Customer?

27| This is the AI skills gap in retail. And it's hiding in plain sight.

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 had formal AI coaching and the self-taught habits that leaves behind * The Jagged Frontier: why AI's unpredictable capability profile causes people to retreat to low-value use cases * What a well-constructed prompt actually contains, with a before-and-after from a real CX scenario * Why customer experience professionals already have the core skills to prompt well Thanks for Listening! Did anything resonate from today? I'd love to know whether the prompting reframe felt like a reset for you, and if you try the before-and-after approach with something you're working on this week. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/27 [https://wheresyourcustomer.com/27] Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wheres-your-customer/id1852866660], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5dzHDfjIvFJSnWiush9Rbr?si=ed5c6ca8e5ac4e45], or wherever you get your podcasts Found this valuable? Please leave a review, it helps other retail professionals discover these conversations and would honestly mean the world to me Connect with me – Find me on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jo-williams-ccxp/] or visit wheresyourcustomer.com [http://wheresyourcustomer.com] for more customer service insights and resources. Share this with someone who needs it – If someone in your network is wrestling with customer experience challenges, especially learning how to use AI tools, please share this episode with them.

26| The Silent Drift: How Customer Disengagement in Retail Hides in Plain Sight

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 drift is already well underway. This episode covers: * The "quiet quitting" pattern in retail and what research reveals about the gap between stated brand love and actual switching behaviour * How wallet redistribution works, and why no single retailer can see the full picture of where the spend has gone * The fundamental perception problem with most loyalty schemes and what Pets at Home's VIP Club does differently * Why NPS and transaction data are structurally unable to detect identity drift, and what the Waterstones recovery suggests about addressing the actual cause Thanks for Listening! Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know whether you're seeing signs of this kind of silent drift in your own organisation and whether the data is giving you the full picture. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/26 [https://wheresyourcustomer.com/26] Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wheres-your-customer/id1852866660], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5dzHDfjIvFJSnWiush9Rbr?si=ed5c6ca8e5ac4e45], or wherever you get your podcasts Found this valuable? Please leave a review, it helps other retail professionals discover these conversations and would honestly mean the world to me Connect with me – Find me on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jo-williams-ccxp/] or visit wheresyourcustomer.com [http://wheresyourcustomer.com] for more customer service insights and resources. Share this with someone who needs it – If someone in your network is wrestling with customer service challenges, please share this episode with them

25| The Retail Identity Signals Your Store Is Sending

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 actually saying. This episode covers: * How retail identity signals form in seconds, and the environmental psychology that explains why * What layout and lighting communicate about who a store is for, with examples from B&Q, Fenwick Newcastle, All Saints and Lush * Why the human moments (i.e. staff who see the customer) is the most powerful identity signal in physical retail * The measurable identity and pricing impact of self-checkout, and what Booths chose instead * Why crowding can signal belonging and what Primark's treasure hunt identity tells us about that * Why identity signals accumulate by default when no one in the organisation owns the question Thanks for Listening! Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know your thoughts about the effect retailers can have on customer identity. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/25 [https://wheresyourcustomer.com/25] Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wheres-your-customer/id1852866660], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5dzHDfjIvFJSnWiush9Rbr?si=ed5c6ca8e5ac4e45], or wherever you get your podcasts Found this valuable? Please leave a review, it helps other retail professionals discover these conversations and would honestly mean the world to me Connect with me – Find me on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jo-williams-ccxp/] or visit wheresyourcustomer.com [http://wheresyourcustomer.com] for more customer experience insights and resources. Share this with someone who needs it – If someone in your network works in retail and is interested in how shopping impacts your identity, please share this episode with them

24| Customer Identity In Retail. Does It Really Matter?

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 customers aren't just buying products, they're buying a version of themselves * How some retailers lend customers an identity they haven't quite grown into yet and why that's commercially significant * What life-stage drift looks like, and how it rarely shows up as a complaint * How economic pressure has created a new identity archetype and which retailers are keeping pace Thanks for Listening! Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to hear whether you're noticing the identity dimension in your own customer data or, like most of us, you're working with tools that weren't built to see it. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/24 [https://wheresyourcustomer.com/24] Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wheres-your-customer/id1852866660], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5dzHDfjIvFJSnWiush9Rbr?si=ed5c6ca8e5ac4e45], or wherever you get your podcasts Found this valuable? Please leave a review, it helps other retail professionals discover these conversations and would honestly mean the world to me Connect with me – Find me on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jo-williams-ccxp/] or visit wheresyourcustomer.com [http://wheresyourcustomer.com] for more customer service insights and resources. Share this with someone who needs it – If someone in your network is wrestling with customer service challenges, please share this episode with them

23| The Truth About Customer Perception in Retail? (And How to Influence It)

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 perception in retail doesn't always follow the experience that's been built for it. The two systems are shaped by different conditions. And most organisations are only designing one of them. What this episode covers: * The four conditions that form customer perception (expectation, contrast, sequence, and human presence) and why they sit outside most CX design briefs * Why getting it right has become the baseline, and what's actually moving satisfaction in UK retail right now * How expectation-setting before a transaction changes what customers are willing to absorb when something goes wrong * The difference between genuine perception design and using better framing to manage the optics of a poor experience Thanks for Listening! Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know your thoughts on this. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/23 [https://wheresyourcustomer.com/23] Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wheres-your-customer/id1852866660], Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5dzHDfjIvFJSnWiush9Rbr?si=ed5c6ca8e5ac4e45], or wherever you get your podcasts Found this valuable? Please leave a review or some feedback; it helps other retail professionals discover these conversations and would really mean the world to me. Connect with me – Find me on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jo-williams-ccxp/] or visit wheresyourcustomer.com [http://wheresyourcustomer.com] for more customer experience insights and resources. Share this with someone who needs it – If someone in your network is wrestling with customer experience challenges, please share this episode with them.