Épisodes

  • 5| Boost your AI skills - AI Literacy for Retail Professionals

    5| Boost your AI skills - AI Literacy for Retail Professionals
    Dec 14 2025

    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, with 78% of organisations globally now using AI in some form.

    Right now, individual professionals are learning faster than their companies are rolling out formal training programs. When your company does start deploying AI more broadly (and they will), you want to be the person who can guide those decisions thoughtfully.

    What We Cover in This Episode
    • What AI literacy really means for customer-focused retail leaders (it's not about becoming a tech expert)
    • A practical 4-week learning roadmap you can start today
    • How to experiment with AI tools safely whilst respecting company guidelines
    • Why AI literacy makes you a better customer-focused leader
    • Real examples of how retail professionals are using AI to serve customers better
    Your 4-Week AI Learning Roadmap Phase 1: Understanding AI Fundamentals (Week 1)

    Download ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and spend 15 minutes daily having general conversations. Get comfortable with how these tools think and respond. Learn basic vocabulary like prompts, hallucinations, and context.

    Phase 2: Work-Adjacent Experiments (Week 2)

    Create hypothetical customer scenarios and test AI responses. Practice with public information only. Try different types of requests to build intuition about what these tools excel at.

    Phase 3: Real Work Challenges (Week 3)

    Pick one recurring challenge; analysing feedback, meeting prep, or drafting communications for example. Use AI as a thinking partner whilst maintaining human judgment and decision-making.

    Phase 4: Building Team Awareness (Ongoing)

    Start conversations with your team about AI experiments. Share learnings in team meetings. Model responsible experimentation for others to follow.

    Key Takeaways
    • AI literacy for retail professionals means understanding what these tools can and can't do, not becoming a tech expert
    • You can build AI skills responsibly without formal training or breaking company rules
    • The goal is to become a bridge between technology possibilities and customer needs
    • Leaders with AI literacy can spot opportunities, ask better questions, and guide change thoughtfully
    • Professional AI tools (£20/month) are worth the investment for serious skill-building
    Resources Mentioned
    • ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini AI tools
    • ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, and Gemini Advanced (paid versions)
    • Stanford AI Index Report on global AI adoption rates
    • Forbes' research on generative AI workplace usage
    What's Next?

    Start with one small experiment this week. Download an AI tool on your phone and spend 10-15 minutes daily getting familiar with it. Don't overthink it, just start building familiarity whilst keeping customers at the centre of everything you learn.

    Found this useful?

    Don't let these insights get buried in your busy week. Subscribe now and get each new episode delivered straight to your podcast app. If today's episode sparked an idea or solved a problem you've been working on, a quick review would mean the world and help fellow retail professionals find customer-focused ideas, too.

    Tired of staring at customer data that tells you nothing useful?

    I've created "10 AI Shortcuts for Understanding Your Customers" specifically for retail professionals who know their data holds answers but don't have time to become data scientists.

    Download your free guide at wheresyourcustomer.com/ai-shortcuts and start making sense of your customer insights today.

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    18 min
  • 4| The CX Metrics That Turn Customer Experience Into Competitive Advantage

    4| The CX Metrics That Turn Customer Experience Into Competitive Advantage
    Dec 7 2025
    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 power. Perfect for retail professionals, CX managers, and marketers who need to prove ROI to skeptical leadership teams. What You'll Learn: • Why Customer Effort Score predicts churn better than NPS • How First Contact Resolution drives both trust and efficiency • Why Customer Lifetime Value transforms CX from cost centre to profit driver • How to build predictive dashboards that spot problems before they hit your bottom line Key Takeaways ✓ Customer Effort Score (CES) - Your friction detection system that predicts churn more accurately than traditional metrics ✓ First Contact Resolution (FCR) - Target 85%+ to build trust whilst reducing operational costs by up to 16% ✓ Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) - Show leadership how CX improvements increase CLV by 15% to transform budget conversations ✓ Customer Loyalty Index - Measure what customers actually do with their wallets, not just what they say ✓ Leading indicators matter - Watch channel switching patterns and employee sentiment to predict problems before they affect your bottom line Episode Highlights [02:00] Why traditional CX metrics fail in omnichannel retail [04:15] The four metrics that predict business success [08:36] Real story: Why dealer relationships mattered more than CSAT at Jacuzzi [11:15] Tesco case study: Using weather data to predict behaviour (40% sales increase) [13:45] The hidden metric: How employee experience predicts customer satisfaction Resources Mentioned
    • Gartner research: CX drives 66% of customer loyalty
    • Forrester findings on customer experience ROI
    • McKinsey data on retention vs acquisition costs
    • Retail X research on customer switching behaviour
    Your Weekly Challenge Pick one metric from today's episode that you're not currently tracking. Set up basic measurement (even if it's manual) and start building your early warning system. Consider tracking customer effort scores for your checkout process or monitoring channel switching patterns. Start small, but start now. In six months, you'll either have predictive insights or you'll be dealing with problems after they've already hurt your customers. Connect & Subscribe Full show notes:wheresyourcustomer.com/4 Subscribe: Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and wherever you listen to podcasts Review: If you found value in today's episode, please leave a review. It really helps Jo reach other retail professionals like you, so they can discover these strategies too.

    Behind every metric is a person trying to be understood. Go find them.
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    20 min
  • 3| Why your customer loyalty strategy might be failing (and what's working in retail now)

    3| Why your customer loyalty strategy might be failing (and what's working in retail now)
    Nov 30 2025
    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. Perfect for retail marketers, operations managers, and CX professionals who suspect their loyalty programme optimisation is stuck in 2015. What You'll Learn • Why traditional loyalty programmes are failing - Discover the uncomfortable truth about discount habits vs. genuine loyalty • How AI is transforming customer retention - Learn from Boots' life-stage personalisation that increases engagement by 40% • The omnichannel trust factor - Why 76.6% of customers switch brands after just one poor delivery experience • Gamification that works - ASDA's mission-based approach and McDonald's enduring Monopoly success • Building trust through data transparency - How brands earn permission to personalise experiences Key Takeaways The Loyalty Paradox: Growing market (£2.56B to £4B by 2029) but declining brand loyalty Personalisation that matters: Boots uses life-stage data to serve relevant content and products, not just discounts Gamification evolution: ASDA's missions turn shopping into achievements; McDonald's Monopoly celebrates customer choice Trust through transparency: Explaining data use in human language generates higher opt-in rates The real shift: From keeping customers to becoming the kind of brand customers want to keep Featured Brands & Examples • Boots - Life-stage personalisation and data transparency • ASDA - Mission-based rewards programme innovation • McDonald's - Monopoly campaign mastery • Nectar - Customer education and security awareness • H&M - Aspirational loyalty with status and community Key Statistics • 81% of customers worried about finances (McKinsey) • 45% switching to own-label alternatives • AI-driven personalisation increases engagement 40% (Eagle Eye/Retail X) • 76.6% switch brands after one poor delivery experience • £19 million built up in ASDA cash pots since launch Questions for Reflection
    1. Are you building relationships or just managing transactions?
    2. Are communications based on what matters to customers now or what they bought last week?
    3. Is every touchpoint designed to build trust or just complete transactions?
    4. Are you creating spaces for customers to connect with your brand's values?
    Next Steps Pick one small experiment for next week:
    • Personalise email subject lines based on purchase patterns
    • Follow up after delivery to ensure satisfaction
    • Create a simple challenge that makes regular visits more rewarding
    Resources 🎧 Shownotes: wheresyourcustomer.com/3
    About the Host Jo Williams is a certified CX strategist with over 20 years in retail and trade marketing. Her mission is to help retail professionals create experiences that make customers feel valued. Subscribe & Review If this episode gave you a fresh perspective on building customer connections, please leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Your review helps reach other retail professionals who want to discover practical strategies that work.
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    23 min
  • 000: Where's Your Customer in All This?

    000: Where's Your Customer in All This?
    Oct 27 2025
    Have you ever sat in a meeting, staring at spreadsheets full of customer data, and realised nobody's actually asking about the customers themselves? Not where they are in your sales funnel, but who they actually are as people?

    I'm Jo, and I've been there more times than I'd like to admit. Years of helping retail teams create better customer experiences taught me something crucial: it's frighteningly easy to lose sight of the humans you're working for when you're buried in KPIs and operational firefighting.

    This teaser introduces Where's Your Customer? - a podcast for retail professionals who know customer experience matters but aren't quite sure how to improve it with the time, budget, and resources they have.

    The full podcast launches in a few weeks. We'll explore practical customer journey mapping, aligning teams, proving value to leadership, and turning insights into action. But underneath it all, we'll keep coming back to the people at the centre of everything you do.

    If you're ready to stop losing your customers in the noise of daily operations and start seeing them clearly again, hit follow now.

    Thanks for Listening! Get ready for the full launch and visit at www.wheresyourcustomer.com Subscribe now so you don't miss the first full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
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    3 min