In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Kristina Stidham and Melissa Campanelli discuss an article recently published by Total Retail, “What Mark Cuban’s Secret Shopper Experiment Can Teach Us About the Future of Retail.” This article was authored by Emily Lane, product evangelist at Retail Zipline, and shares findings from a study recently commissioned by Mark Cuban. Cuban enlisted a third-party team of secret shoppers to assess how well Dallas-based retailers were complying with mandatory safety protocols in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the findings of the study weren’t comforting to shoppers returning to stores.

Post-COVID-19, the majority of mandatory guidelines for opening a business are location-specific, and it can be almost impossible to track the shifting city, state and regional guidelines as retailers dip their toes into this “new normal.” The author suggests that perhaps “perceived safety” becomes another key performance indicator lever on the balance sheet. In order to pull that lever, retailers will need a way to show their teams, clearly and succinctly, what “safe” customer service looks like — and they’ll need to hold them accountable. To read the full article by Emily Lane, click here.