Straight to CX Prison. Humii’s Mareile Osthus on the Mistakes Costing Retailers Customers | #681

Went live with @Mareile Osthus this morning. She's the founder of Humii, which sends real mystery shoppers through online stores, from search all the way to the refund. They run 500 to 700 shops a week, and Mareile still does two or three herself. Before Humii she was a buyer at Hugo Boss and Zalando, then chief category management officer at THE ICONIC.

Chatbots got a fair bit of airtime. Last year Humii found 3% of people who left a site did it because a chatbot got in the way. It's now 7%. Mostly it's bots that won't hand you to a human. One told her it sold horse food, then admitted it didn't when she asked to see some. Her advice before Black Friday is pretty simple. Click your bloody links. The policies, the FAQs, the live chat. The ones nobody on your team ever clicks.

Key moments

01:13 Why mystery shopping sees more
10:14 How Humii measures end-to-end CX
13:13 The three factors of great CX
18:46 Functionality and familiar UX patterns
26:20 Returns policies and customer service gaps
33:51 AI chatbots that trap customers
37:31 Checkout clarity, shipping and payments
42:22 AI search, personalisation and agentic CX
46:36 Black Friday CX checklist
50:05 Humii roadmap plus final takeaways

What was your biggest takeaway from this episode?