Where's Your Customer?

For a long time, HMV has felt like a retailer that should have disappeared. Music and films are streamed, and Amazon can sell you almost any physical or digital media. Yet HMV is still on the high street, and it seems to be growing. So why do people still shop at HMV, and what does that tell us about a store's role in people's lives? In this episode: What the old HMV did for customers, and which of those jobs moved to supermarkets, Amazon and streaming Why my partner Matt checks Amazon first, then still buys in HMV and Fopp How physical music and film sales are moving in different directions A simple exercise for working out what customers rely on your own store for Thanks for Listening! Did anything from today's conversation resonate with you? I'd love to know which shops you still visit when you could buy everything online, and why. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/52  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 experience challenges, please share this episode with them  

A customer turns up to collect their partner's order. Someone wants to return a jumper without the receipt. Someone's phone has died, and the order number is on it. These are ordinary situations, but many retail processes are set up as if they won't happen. In this episode, I look at what happens when the journey we design meets real life, and what those moments can tell us about our customers. In this episode: Why every planned customer journey differs from what customers actually do What Booths' self-checkout decision shows about what a process asks of customers How a Timpson colleague's workaround became the fastest-growing part of the business A practical exercise to test one customer situation and find where your journey needs to change Thanks for Listening! Did anything from today's conversation resonate with you? I'd love to know which customer situations your colleagues are working around in your own business. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/51  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 experience challenges, please share this episode with them    

At 50 episodes, I went back through every script and found the same question running through almost all of them: "Okay, so how's the customer going to feel about that?" In this episode, I reflect on what making the podcast has taught me about customer experience and how I think. I explore: Why your professional voice is often in the questions you keep asking What Topps Tiles, Bury Market and my own research project at Iceland show about the gap between business decisions and customer experience How an episode about retail mistakes became a better episode once I questioned my own argument Why detailed thinking is useful when it ends in a decision, and what's coming in the next 50 episodes Thanks for Listening! Did anything from today's conversation resonate with you? I'd love to know which question you find yourself asking again and again in meetings. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/50  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 experience challenges, please share this episode with them  

When customers believe your brand promise, who in the business actually keeps it? In this episode, I explore how retail delivers a brand promise through stock, staffing, systems, and budgets, and what happens when teams change things without understanding how those changes will affect customers. Why John Lewis withdrew Never Knowingly Undersold in 2022, and what changed when it returned How a brand promise differs from a brand purpose, and what customers expect from each How Aldi's limited range supports its price promise, and why Primark is reconsidering home delivery Five practical checks to help your team deliver what customers expect, with clear responsibility for any improvements Thanks for Listening! Did anything from today's conversation resonate with you? I'd love to know which part of your operation keeps your promise, and where you see it coming under pressure. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/49  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 experience challenges, please share this episode with them  

Many of the availability and range problems customers notice in-store stem from agreements between retailers and their suppliers. These include order quantities, delivery days, range reviews, contract prices and payment terms. In this episode, I explain how those agreements affect what customers find on the shelf, and how retailers can make customer experience part of their supplier relationships. The causes of the 2023 salad shortage, including weather, energy costs and supermarket contract prices How the loss of credit insurance led to empty shelves at Wilko, and the similar pressure on Poundland How minimum order quantities, delivery schedules and range reviews affect what customers can buy Three steps for retailers: map where suppliers affect the customer journey, agree responsibilities and service standards, and include customer experience in supplier reviews Thanks for Listening! Did anything from today's conversation resonate with you? I'd love to know which of your customer processes depend on a supplier, and whether you've agreed on responsibilities for them. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/48  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 experience challenges, please share this episode with them  

How much time do you leave between hearing from customers and deciding what to do? I've kept a journal for nearly thirty years, and publishing this year's edition made me ask what it actually gives me. In this episode, I look at how we reflect in customer experience, and at where we put the things we haven't made sense of yet. Why so much of what matters in CX doesn't fit in a feedback platform, a dashboard or an action plan What writing down something you don't yet understand can give a CX professional Three research findings on how understanding builds up over time, and why reflection needs something to work with Why the things that go well deserve the same curiosity as complaints Here's where to get a copy of 2027 Reflect. Refocus. Reconnect. The journal for thoughtful customer experience leaders. Thanks for Listening! Did anything from today's conversation resonate with you? I'd love to know where you do your thinking, and where you put the customer observations you haven't made sense of yet. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/47  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  

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 work? What evidence suggested they would? And what can we learn when customers respond differently? You'll also get a simple five-question check to use before your next decision is signed off. In this episode: Why Wilko came back as a website and then reopened shops anyway What Poundland's move to group sourcing asked of customers, and what the sales figures suggest about the answer Why a marketplace label at Superdrug and a returns charge at ASOS create the same problem What Boots' own loyalty data says about reading customer behaviour A Customer Impact Check: five questions to run before a decision is signed off Thanks for Listening! Has a decision in your business ever prompted customers to respond differently from how you expected? I'd love to hear what happened. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/46  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    

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: Why research often reaches CX or marketing leaders but not other teams that could use it Why only 27% of respondents to Forrester's 2025 survey said they shared customer insight effectively and quickly How giving one person responsibility can help useful findings reach the right decision-makers How Halfords and M&S share customer information across their businesses, plus five questions to help you do the same Thanks for Listening! Did anything from today's conversation resonate with you? I'd love to know, particularly if you've found a way to share customer research with teams who weren't involved in the original project. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/45  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 experience challenges, please share this episode with them    

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 different experience because of the route I took. This week I'm looking at the seam - the point where your customer stops dealing with you and starts dealing with somebody else. A courier, an installer, a repair company, a finance provider, a marketplace seller.  In this episode: Why nearly half of people with a delivery problem then have a second problem trying to resolve it How Superdrug, The Range and B&Q have each made a different choice about marketplace returns Why World of Books can change courier without changing the customer's journey The five customer experience questions to ask any partner involved in serving your customer Thanks for Listening! Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know where the seams show up in your own customer journey and who in your business actually owns them. Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/44  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 experience challenges, please share this episode with them.    

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 earns its place. Why Sainsbury's closed 61 cafés and now has over 150 run by partners, including 50 Costa sites What Morrisons learned by taking out its meat and fish counters and then putting them back Why Gymshark gives up Regent Street floor space to free workout classes Five questions to ask about any part of your shop floor before you change it Thanks for Listening! Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know, particularly if you've been through this decision yourself. What made you keep a space, or let it go? Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at wheresyourcustomer.com/43  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