Bring back Customer Experience to shopping and you will bring back shoppers!

If I believed in luck I would say I have been a pretty lucky guy....but since I think luck is nothing more then probability made personal I will go on record and say that I have had some great opportunities present themselves because of this blog.

One such opportunity came a few months back based on a post I made about department stores and how to make them fun again.. Someone at a super fancy retailer read my ideas and invited me to come in and pitch some fun ideas to them.

All my ideas revolved around creating a "destination" by adding super customer experience.

My ideas were not well received since they lived outside of the comfort zone of these guys and would require a leap of faith and at the end of the pitch the execs asked me if there was anything I like about department stores and I unleashed on a friendly rant about how I love department stores and as a kid thought Macy's in NYC was as close to heaven on earth but nowadays the large store experience is bland and customer service is nothing more then a memory.

The reason I am talking about this now is because I got an email from the exec today asking me to suggest stores that "get" customer experience since they want to learn from it.

The store I told them to study was GoodFoot. I know I slurp shoe companies a lot on this blog and I know this post lacks the punch it could have if I had pictures to accompany it but as someone who loves to shop and pays attention to what people do with their marketing I think GoodFoot is the best there is at Customer Experience.

Walking into the store is a new experience every time because they change the look of the place monthly....and by change the look I am not talking about just the window dressing but they change the place inside and out (including the wallpaper) on a monthly basis.....and by wallpaper I am talking about fully custom graphic walls that are closer to a "wrapped" car then a store wall.

This is a store that knows the product is top notch but it there is a bunch of competition so instead of competing on price and product they are setting themselves apart by creating a destination store that people will come to check out and talk about even if they are not shopping......just like I am now.

-saul