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