It’s Not About Us – It’s All About Them
By Phil Prosser, Founder & CEO. March 2025.
In the fast-paced, high-pressure world of fashion retail, it’s easy to focus on what we need—sales targets, stock turns, loyalty sign-ups, and NPS scores. But the truth is, the brands that stand out, thrive, and grow aren’t the ones who focus on themselves.
They’re the ones who obsess over their customers.
One of our favorite phrases comes from a retail thought leader Martin Butler who titled his book “It’s Not About Us – It’s All About Them.”
It’s a simple concept with massive implications: if you put your customer at the center of everything, growth will follow. And we’ve seen this in action.
A well-known client featured in that book shared this: “The results speak for themselves; Customer compliments are up 17% and last year’s average spend increased 24%.”
This is what happens when teams stop chasing scores and start focusing on what matters to their customers.
Fashion Retail’s Most Undervalued Growth Lever: Many fashion retailers invest heavily in product, fit-outs, marketing, and even loyalty programs. But one area remains under-leveraged—and that’s the customer experience delivered by your people. Yes, product and price matter. But so does how I feel in your store. Was I welcomed? Did someone help me find what I needed? Did I trust the advice? Was the vibe relaxed, engaging, and genuinely customer-first? Because customers may forget what you said—but they’ll remember how you made them feel.
When we shift focus from chasing feedback scores to building consistently great experiences, we stop managing CX like a report and start using it to fuel loyalty, advocacy, and spending.
Internal Scores vs. External Loyalty
There’s often a disconnect between what’s measured and what matters. An NPS score or mystery shop result might show green—but are your teams actually creating memorable, share-worthy experiences? What we’ve found is this: internal metrics don’t build loyalty—customer advocacy does. And that only happens when real people deliver real service that resonates. When your teams feel empowered, when they understand the few things that truly matter to customers—and when they’re supported to deliver that consistently—that’s when experience becomes a growth engine.
Listening, Learning, and Leading From the Floor
At Feedback ASAP, we help fashion retailers listen—not just to surveys, but to the real voice of customer comments in real-time.
You can invite specific feedback asking relevant questions by outfit type and reason for that visit so it feels personalized, relevant, is NEVER boring or long-winded… Customers will tell you what happened and comments can be left how they prefer including type, voice, and even video. Real-time alerts about what happened can be triggered for managers so they can celebrate, coach, or call back. Some brands seet ‘laser alerts’ where perhaps a key step of the sales process is missed so the manager can spend more time coaching and supporting their teams. The point here is only taking BIG action will drive improvement so you must get past vanity scores and ratings and get to the key behaviors between your team members and that customer. The other point is to make things actionable you really need to know what is going on between customers and each individual team member not just some team-level result which is often too vague and broad. if the action isn’t accountable for individuals then you can’t build capability and sustained improvement. However when you do these things… here are some of the benefits:
- Grow ATV (average transaction value/basket size/customer spend)
- Give store teams insight into what local customers are saying
- Make it easy to take the right action at the right time
- Coach teams in the moment to reinforce what’s working
- Build confidence and consistency across every location
When feedback becomes part of the daily rhythm—not a quarterly report—retailers can adjust faster, deliver better, and grow smarter.
Top 3 Reasons Fashion Customers Choose (and Recommend) You: From thousands of pieces of feedback across our retail clients, the most common reasons people choose and stick with their favorite fashion brands are:
- Helpful, friendly team members who are genuinely interested in helping them look and feel good.
- Trustworthy advice—recommendations that feel personalized and honest.
- A great atmosphere that feels welcoming, relaxed, and easy to navigate.
But there’s more beneath those three drivers—especially in fashion, where the experience is intimate, emotional, and tactile.
The first and last impressions matter most: That welcome, when a customer enters, sets the tone, and the farewell when they leave is what lingers. And while they’re in the store?
Fitting rooms are a make-or-break moment: The best teams stay engaged and visible, ready to help with size swaps, style advice, or that gentle boost of confidence. Customers remember when someone went the extra mile to help them complete a look—not just sell a piece.
Never cut short the opportunity to complete the outfit: Even during peak times, taking those extra few seconds to offer complementary items isn’t just about selling more—it’s about giving customers the full experience they came for. When we rush through the sale, we shortcut the customer—and miss a golden opportunity to demonstrate care, expertise, and style leadership.
Here’s the best part: none of this requires more spending on marketing. Instead, when you turn existing feedback into an actionable improvement program it delivers:
- Growth in frontline team member confidence and capability
- Growth in return visits and average transaction value
- Growth in local advocacy and word-of-mouth referrals
The key is to make it part of your operating rhythm —fast-paced, people-driven, and ever-changing. Make it easy for managers and teams to know what’s working, where to improve, and how to deliver great experiences all day, every day.
Final Thought: It’s Never Been About You
If there’s one idea we’d love every retail leader to take into FY26, it’s this: the most successful brands build cultures that are customer-obsessed from the shopfloor up. When your team wakes up thinking about how to delight customers—not just hit targets—growth follows. Because in the end, it’s not about us. It’s all about them. If you’d like to explore how to turn everyday feedback into consistent, positive customer action—let’s talk.