contact high

mornin’ merry makers 👀🧿👁👁️‍🗨️🧐,

most of us are drowning in metrics. we measure sleep, steps, macros, screen time. retailers measure sales, traffic, conversion, aov. i know all of this from firsthand experience of living too much of my waking (and sleeping) life in spreadsheets.

one of the reasons i love retail is because so many things can’t be captured in metrics. forcing so much to be both a science and an art.

compared to a website a/b test where there’s one clear winner,

store experiences live in the gray.

they’re built from subtleties that resist measurement.

this past month, while building hospitality training for a client, i kept circling back to one of those immeasurables. something i see less and less of, but that matters more and more. the thing you can’t optimize with a dashboard, but you know it when it’s there.

eye contact.

but before you go blaming the employee for not doing this, i want you to realize that the work is on us, the shoppers too. connection only happens when both people decide to look up, meet eyes, and remember we’re both humans in this exchange.

wh(e)y(e)

we live in a world where almost everything can happen without another human. tap to pay. scan your own groceries. swipe for your soulmate.

so when a moment does involve another person, it has to matter.

you’ve made it to the good part 😎