Over the past few weeks, we’ve been asking people to participate in our poll with one simple question: “As a retail customer, on average, how often are you acknowledged by a staff member within 60 seconds?”

We started this poll because we wanted to understand people’s perception of being acknowledged – and then compare it with data from our own mystery shopping experience across 50 retail stores.

And it gets interesting.

Our poll showed that perception is worse than reality. Or perhaps reality is worse than what we think?

66% of our poll respondents told us they’re acknowledged within 60 seconds only 40% of the time.

When we mystery shopped 50 retail stores, we found we were acknowledged within 60 seconds 64% of the time.

Two thirds of poll participants think it only happens 40% of the time – when it’s actually happening 64% of the time. That’s a massive gap.

So one of two things could be happening here. Either acknowledgement is genuinely worse than what we tested in our sample of 50 stores – or the perception of being acknowledged is so poor that retailers need to be really good at it for customers to even notice it’s happening.

Of course, both could be true at the same time.

And this rings true to me when I look closer at the data. Of our 50 mystery shops, 52% of stores acknowledged me within 30 seconds. A further 20% acknowledged me between 30 and 60 seconds. And I suspect that 20% – the stores greeting customers somewhere in that 30–60 second window — is exactly what customers aren’t noticing.

So here’s the key takeaway: if acknowledgement isn’t happening within 30 seconds, it’s less likely to happen at all. And if it does happen after 30 seconds, customers aren’t registering it.

Whatever way you look at it, the conclusion is the same. There’s a real opportunity here for any service-based business with face-to-face customer interactions.

We’ve already posted 13 free training videos you can use to train and coach your teams on acknowledging customers — tips, stories, and practical tools all focused on this one skill. Access them on our Intentional Service YouTube channel here for more formal training sessions, or share with your team anytime via our Intentional Service TikTok account here. 

Looking for ways to improve your business performance? Start with the low-hanging fruit: ensure your team is acknowledging customers within 30 seconds, with a simple warm greeting -consistently. Our data tells us that if you can deliver on that, you’ve got a genuine point of difference.