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Retail Summit Review

Reflections and Takeaways

August 16, 2010 by Mike Wittenstein — Customer Experience and Service Designer, Storyminers

On the Top Tour, it was much harder to find what was going right than what was going wrong. So many basic rules of retailing were being violated, it was easy to see how customers feel they're in a sea of sameness. Takeaway: Don't let up. Retail has a long way to go and opportunity abounds for those who can make meaningful differences in their customer experiences.

In the Vendor Showcase, I was reminded just how important signage was. Managing shoppers' attention is an essential part of the customer experience. Takeaways: "Still images for moving people. Moving images for still people." and "Catching their eyes is one thing, what you do with it is the key thing."

About the Issues from the Presentations, it's obvious that nobody can afford to sit on the social mediasidelines any longer; the longer you wait to jump in the harder it will be to catch up. The most important parts of customer experience are connecting to people (emotionally) and the details of execution. Unlike customer service, customer experience isn't something you do when things go wrong, it's what you do, on purpose, to make things go right. I never knew that the origin of the cash register could be traced to a saloon keeper who had an idea on a ship, or that a McDonald's CEO could be so funny!

For me, the highlights were numerous, but the most important reason to attend is the quality of 1:1 and small group conversations. I easily learned as much from those as I did from the presentations.