All of the best customer experiences I’ve had recently involve product I wanted to buy, an easy-enough way to purchase it, and pricing I could justify. But the differentiator was the people behind it all.

To recap, trends hit:

• Instagrammable

• New CPG sales channel

• Small format

• Self-checkout

• Shift in ad dollars from digital to stores

And those missed:

• Experience

• Service

• Product education

• Brand immersion

• The “chat” in chat commerce

If you’ve followed Ron Johnson from Target to Apple to in-and-out of JC Penney, you know his latest effort is as Founder/CEO of Enjoy. All in all, I see Enjoy-type service being a competitive advantage for brands that use it. It’s hard to beat this level of - free - personal service that came at 1 PM on a Sunday following my order at 11 PM Saturday night.

With links to inspiration and #GoodNewsRetail I like.

Looking at stores I’ve visited recently (here and here) and what’s next on my list (future visits coming via Instagram Stories) and paying close attention to my daily inclinations, I have two main thoughts.

Personally and professionally, I love stores. But in the past three days alone, I've observed too many of them failing on the basics.

Customers may or may not realize that when they're shopping online with multi-brand retailers, some of the product doesn't touch the retailer's hands and instead is sent directly from brand to end-user. This has benefits for all parties, as well as customer experience implications.

I've been out and about in New York over the past three days and, without intentionally embarking on a channel checking tour, I've found myself making a lot of mental notes about the experiences I've had.

For an increasing number of purchases, consumers don’t need to enter a physical retail store. It's why foot traffic is down: When consumers know they want to buy something, they often can do it online. 

Consumers need reasons to enter stores even when they don't intend to buy. Here's what I've seen drawing traffic recently and keeping visitors inside.

Late last year, Adidas opened a new "brand store" on 5th Ave. and 46th St. in NY. While I kept my eyes open for the technology I know is there, it didn't jump out at me (which isn't a bad thing). But five other aspects of the experience did.

Most of the recaps of Retail’s BIG Show, hosted by the National Retail Federation last week, have been focused on technology. But what stood out to me more than always-new technology was a collection of statements from the show about the people who work in retail and the investments the industry makes in them, largely in the name of customer experience.

When I’m in a store and I don’t have good cell service, I’m always surprised by how often I find the retailer doesn’t have public Wi-Fi. The reason I’m surprised is there are so many good reasons for stores to offer customers free Wi-Fi.

Amidst a world of digital snippets and statistical click bait, ELLE Magazine printed a well-researched longread on retail trends an sentiment in its January 2017 issue. I read it with interest because it's a fresh source talking to a different reader than the mainstream business publications. I wanted to know which themes they're seeing -- and reinforcing.

Personal shoppers, whether they’re entirely human or a human/algorithm combination, typically have a major advantage over a salesperson or a web site welcoming an unknown visitor: Time to plan... But my recent shopping experiences with a number of online and offline services have fallen far short of that expectation.

The store experience in Soho definitely lived up to expectations. And it’s definitely an experience more so than a store... The space is beautiful and not only brings the brand to life in a compelling way, but adds more dimension to the brand than could ever be conveyed by a web site or by the speakers themselves.

I read about Hamlet a couple of months ago. Having procrastinated on a ceiling light search because I had a specific aesthetic in mind yet technical limitations to conquer, I decided the time was ripe to try my "personal home stylist, from the comfort of my phone". I'm so glad I did.

Hamlet has a conveniently low barrier for consumer entry because it's just a number to text -- not an app, not even Facebook Messenger.

We’ve heard the doom-and-gloom about U.S. department stores. Yet, the retail community warmly received recent news of Anthropologie & Co., which is basically a department store. Why the optimism? Let’s take a step back and consider what made department stores appealing in the first place.