In partnership with
mornin' merrymakers 🤖📞😤🙋
i’m convinced that the fastest way to lose a customer in the age of ai is to take away their ability to talk to a real person when they need one most.
ai bots continue to take over customer service on the phones & online. when they work, they're seamless & genuinely impressive. but when they don't work & you can't escape the loop, it's one of the most maddening experiences.
nearly half of consumers feel less valued when they must interact with a brand’s ai.
these frustrated customers don't disappear. they come into stores looking for help. your floor team is now fielding the problems no chatbot could solve, which makes your most tenured, most trusted people your most valuable customer service asset right now.
losing them costs way more than most operators realize.
in today’s letter, you'll learn:
→ what high % of consumers still prefer humans when they shop
→ the $150,000 math most operators have never run
→ 3 things to do this week before you lose another good one
→ stor(i)es: muniverse + ai-run store + aldi + b&n + popmart
how we trap ai & ai traps us
brands are racing to automate. the pressure is real, the tools are getting cheaper, & every brand loves bragging to the press about their ai strategy. this makes sense because ai is making everything easier.
at the same time, this is highlighting all that ai cannot do.
"you can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world. but it takes people to make the dream a reality."
too many brands are incorrectly adding ai where consumers want humans. according to a fascinating study by kinsta in 2025:
93% of consumers still prefer a human when they shop.
89% think companies should always offer the option to speak with a human.
81% believe ai is used primarily to save money, not improve service.
50% would cancel a service over ai-driven customer service.
i'm not here to say ai is bad because it isn't. but most brands are chasing the wrong projects. the high-stakes, high-visibility builds. the rfid / al / ml / [insert slang here] personalization engine. the six-figure, high stakes platform integration that needs 18 months & a dedicated team.
meanwhile, nobody is fixing the things that frustrate store teams every single shift.
things like the six steps it takes to process a refund. the schedule that takes your opening manager 90 minutes to rebuild every sunday night. the new hire who spends their first week following someone around because there's no onboarding system for getting them up to speed fast.
these unsexy problems are expensive ones.
& they're driving the best team members out the door.
the real competitive advantage will never be your tech stack. it's the people who already know your customers, know your product, & know how your store actually runs.
ai can't replace that, despite what the headlines tell you.
so if you're not actively working to keep the people you've already trained, you're continuously spending money to replace knowledge you already paid to build.
now time to look at this math.
what turnover actually costs you
before we get into the specifics of your business, let's benchmark a few metrics.
60% is the average annual turnover rate for retail employees, per the U.S. bureau of labor statistics. for a brand with 50 store associates, that's 30 people walking out the door every year. for part-time labor it's almost double, closer to 100%.
$2,000–$10,000 is what it costs to replace a single retail associate, depending on role & training complexity, per McKinsey's state of fashion 2025 report. the midpoint for a floor associate lands around $5K.
continuing the example, if you have 30 team members & $5K average replacement cost, that's $150,000 out the door annually. this is ofc can’t quantify everything else too like the lost productivity, the drop in customer service drops, and the institutional knowledge that walks out with every exit.
you’re losing more than you think.
what to do this week
if you want to stay on top of this, you must build systems to support you, specifically:
set up turnover tracking by location & by role. if you're not tracking this already, start now. build a simple log (spreadsheet or in your HRIS) that captures start date, end date, role, location, & reason for leaving. the insight you're after is which locations have the highest turnover, & which roles churn fastest. you can't fix what you can't see & right now most operators are flying blind on this.
calculate your estimated replacement cost. estimate how much money you pay your new hire & trainers as well as any other onboarding-specific costs. if you don't have a clean number for cost per exit, use $5K as a starting point. include this in your turnover tracking too to remind yourself of how expensive this is.
implement an effective exit survey. most exit surveys are too long, too generic, or filed & forgotten. what you need is a short, specific survey. 5 questions max, given within 48 hours of an associate giving notice, while the honest answer is still fresh. the data you build over time is the clearest signal you'll ever get on why people leave & what you can actually fix. some turnover is good if an employee isn't performing, but you must track this to monitor this!
i debated building out a turnover tracking & exit survey template for this issue, but first wanted to see who is interested? if you want this, please reply to this email & i’ll build ya something special 🤓
i’ve decided monthly is too long to wait to share these updates, so this will be a new section going forward:
municipal gym, mark wahlberg's “muniverse” of stores, cafes, & gyms is opening 30k sq ft space this summer near vegas.
the bay area’s first ai-run retail store opened in cow hollow. the agent hired 2 employees & decided to sell board games.
aldi is opening 180 new stores this year across 31 states.
barnes & noble opened 65 stores last year and plans to do the same this year.
pop mart landing in 21 simon mall properties in 2026.
p.s. viktor is a prime example of tool that will immensely help your store teams 👇
The ops hire that onboards in 30 seconds.
Viktor is an AI coworker that lives in Slack, right where your team already works.
Message Viktor like a teammate: "pull last quarter's revenue by channel," or "build a dashboard for our board meeting."
Viktor connects to your tools, does the work, and delivers the actual report, spreadsheet, or dashboard. Not a summary. The real thing.
There’s no new software to adopt and no one to train.
Most teams start with one task. Within a week, Viktor is handling half of their ops.
p.p.s. playing with a new format today. lmk what ya think!