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 Dan's noticed across it all is that price is a surprisingly unreliable guide to what's actually at stake for the customer. Emotional investment is the better measure and that doesn't always follow the invoice value.

We talk about the invisible voices customers carry into their purchasing decisions (the partners, the friends, the Instagram saves). We get into what happens to service design when operations stop being the delivery side of things and become the experience itself. And Dan is honest about what transfers across all those sectors, and what really doesn't.

There's also a very honest account of what service recovery looks like at three in the morning when a private flight hits a problem, and why the customers who forgive those moments are the ones who felt you were already talking to them before they had to call you.

If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. What's one insight you're planning to put into practice, or one thing you're taking away from the conversation with Dan?

Let's connect: find me on LinkedIn

Connect with Dan Cuomo on LinkedIn

Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/18

Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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.

Share this with someone who needs it – If someone in your network could benefit from today's conversation, please pass it on.

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 surface, but the conditions that make it possible and what happens when those conditions start to degrade under cost and complexity pressure.

I've pulled out 5 conditions: Orientation, Clarity, Momentum, Trust, and Continuity.

Orientation covers what happens in the very first moments of any retail encounter, and how the decompression zone affects dwell time and initial capture.

Clarity looks at decision confidence and the counterintuitive research showing that reducing choices can actually increase satisfaction and spend.

Momentum covers the friction that kills transactions, including the £38 billion lost by UK retailers to basket abandonment in 2024, alongside Barclays Partner Finance's research on 'positive friction' that builds confidence rather than eroding it.

Trust examines the link between frontline conditions and customer loyalty and why you can't communicate your way into credibility.

Continuity addresses what happens after the purchase, including ParcelLab's finding that 80% of UK retailers stop communicating with customers once a parcel is dispatched.

What connects all five is a measurement question. Most retail organisations have metrics for what's visible. Far fewer have a reliable way to notice when a condition is degrading before the numbers start to move.

Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know, particularly where you're seeing these conditions showing up in your own organisation.

Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/17

Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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 or visit wheresyourcustomer.com for more customer service insights and resources.

Share this with someone who needs it – If someone in your network works in retail customer experience, please share this episode with them

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, or whether it's become several.

In this episode, I look at what's changed around customer experience leadership: the economic pressure, the rise of AI as infrastructure rather than experiment, and the way experience decisions are increasingly being made in technology programmes and commercial planning, often before the CX function is even in the room.

I look at what's happening in UK retail specifically, examples from John Lewis, M&S, Tesco, Next, Boots, Currys, and Sainsbury's, and what the pattern across all of them suggests about where CX capability is actually being built right now.

And I sit with the tension at the heart of all of this: whether the expanding brief is a sign that the role is under strain, or a sign that it's finally being taken seriously. Both readings are probably true somewhere.

This isn't an episode with conclusions. It's one worth thinking through.

If this episode resonates with you, I'd love to connect and hear your thoughts about how Customer Experience leadership is changing.

Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/16

Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts

Found this valuable? Please leave me 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 or visit 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

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 allowed to play.

Not play in a frivolous sense. Play in the sense of having room to experiment, to try things that might not work, to respond to what's actually in front of them rather than following the script.

I look at what's happening at Lego, Hamleys, and Selfridges (retailers who've made experience design part of their operating model) and explore Greg McKeown's argument that play isn't a cultural nice-to-have but a genuine strategic advantage. I also sit with the harder question: whether retail's relentless focus on optimisation is gradually removing the very conditions that produce experiences customers actually remember. And I try to be honest about the counterargument too, because this isn't straightforward.

I don't have a tidy answer. But I think it's worth paying attention to.

Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know, particularly where you're seeing preventable service failures in your own organisation.

Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/15

Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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 or visit 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

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 where you think)
• Why retail managers lose 5-8 hours per week just documenting work instead of doing it
• The structural shift that's dropped manager happiness 11% in three months (below their teams for the first time ever)
• How retail crime is adding invisible weight to every decision you make

Four things steadier retail managers do differently:

• Stop carrying decisions that aren't theirs
• Have someone outside their organisation who genuinely understands
• Protect their mental bandwidth (using "not yet" instead of "no")
• Stop performing certainty when they're still working things out

Where technology can actually help: voice transcription, automated reporting, AI-flagged patterns, not to do more, but to create thinking space.

One practical step: Track just one day this week (a 'normal' workday). Not to judge yourself, but to see where your time goes. Then ask: if I could give one hour back to myself, where would I want it to go?

Because retail manager burnout isn't something you solve with a podcast episode. But you might notice one pattern. One place where your attention is going that it doesn't need to. And that might be enough to shift something.

Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know, particularly where you're losing or reworking thinking time in your calendar.

Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/14

Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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 or visit 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

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 something deeper: customers change as they move through their projects. Someone covered in door dust, midway through a DIY job, needs something different from someone in the dreaming stage, browsing inspiration.

The separate entrance acknowledges this. Same retailer, same goal, but different intelligence for different moments.

That's what this episode explores. How two different channels (physical stores and online shopping) have developed their own ways of reading customers, and how most of the time, these two sides don't know what the other one sees.

Nudges vs Feeling: Online uses behavioural economics to guide decisions. Scarcity messages, social proof, AI recommendations. But in physical stores, the intelligence is different. It's whether someone covered in plaster dust feels like they belong.

Pattern vs Presence: John Lewis generates 100 million outfit combinations per night through AI. Lush gives staff freedom to hand over a product if someone's having a bad day. Both are personalisation, one at scale, one in a single moment.

Intent vs Hesitation: 75% of UK shoppers say sizing feels inconsistent online, so they order multiple sizes. That hesitation costs UK retailers £34.4 billion per year in basket abandonment. Currys addressed this with Shop Live, connecting online shoppers with store experts via video chat.

Friction as Failure vs Care: Online shoppers abandon a site if checkout takes more than 3 seconds. But in physical stores, we'll queue for nearly 6 minutes. IKEA's self-assembly isn't efficient, but that effort is what makes you value the furniture.

Path vs Memory: We remember the peak and the end of an experience, not the average. IKEA's ice cream stand at the exit rewrites the whole trip. Digital retail usually ends with an order confirmation page.

Ignite vs Validate: TikTok Shop became the UK's 4th-largest beauty retailer in 2024. Trends ignite online, but physical stores are where the spark gets tested.

Two kinds of intelligence working in the same organisation.

What if you got curious about what the other channel already knows?

Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation?

Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/13

Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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 or visit wheresyourcustomer.com for more customer service insights and resources.

Share this with someone who needs it – If someone in your network works in Customer Experience or Retail, and you think these insights would help them, please share this episode.

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 customers have been coming for over a decade. No Instagram moments. Just a traditional market.

But demographic reality has caught up. Their core customer base is ageing, and in autumn 2026 their new Flexi Hall will open to younger crowds.

In this episode, I explore what Bury Market protected while everyone else transformed, the 10-minute queue that built customer loyalty nobody else valued, and the uncomfortable question facing every retail professional: when following the obvious route means losing what made you valuable in the first place.

Key Topics:
- Why Bury Market stayed traditional while competitors modernized
- The friction that creates customer loyalty vs. the friction that kills it
- Coach tourism strategy nobody else wanted
- Demographic reality no amount of loyalty can solve
- What "retailtainment while retaining independent spirit" means

Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know. Do you love a market too?

Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/12

Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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 or visit 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

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 smaller retailers?

Having AI expertise isn't the same as using AI day to day. One group has resources and roadmaps. The other has the freedom to test on Tuesday and see results by Wednesday.

Virgin Wines removes wine selection uncertainty by matching sensory attributes to individual preferences.

Abelini, an independent Hatton Garden jeweller, uses AR/AI so customers can see how rings look on their own hands.

ListAid helps charity shop volunteers price donations accurately in under a minute.

Finney's in Aberdeen makes three generations of jewellery expertise accessible through digital tools.

Happy and Glorious in Canterbury uses AI for admin tasks, freeing time for customer work.

The pattern? AI sits right next to decisions - customer decisions and colleague decisions. That proximity matters because when AI is close to the decision, outcomes change quickly.

In larger organisations, AI often lives deeper in infrastructure - optimising systems, forecasting demand. That work matters, but it's further from the moments where customers hesitate or teams feel unsure.

Smaller retailers have fewer layers between problem and solution. They notice issues sooner, test faster, keep what works, drop what doesn't. That ability to connect problem, experiment, and outcome is where the advantage lies.

When you look closely at your customer journey (into the detail of what actually happens) friction points stand out. Those are moments where people hesitate, teams second-guess, or customers disappear. Once you see those moments clearly, AI use cases become obvious.

Your AI plan doesn't need to run the whole business. It needs to support decisions causing friction for customers and colleagues. Tackle things moment by moment - that's your roadmap.

The competitive advantage isn't about AI. It's about noticing where customers hesitate, where staff feel anxious, where you're losing time. It's having the freedom to do something about it quickly.

The difference shows up when technology supports real decisions. When it helps someone choose with confidence. When it removes guesswork from pressured moments. When it gives people time to focus on what matters.

That's when AI has impact. That's when it gives you a competitive advantage.

Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/11

Need help with customer journey mapping? Let's chat.

Never miss an episode – Subscribe to Where's Your Customer? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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 or visit wheresyourcustomer.com for more customer service insights and resources.

Share this with someone who needs it – Please help share this podcast with other retail professionals who might find it useful.