Humility > Hierarchy

I recently mystery shopped a well-known luxury brand wearing drugstore flip-flops.

They treated me like I didn’t belong.

And wow did I feel it. If you have ever been profiled on how you look, you know what I mean.

What they didn’t know:

➤ I was on assignment.

➤ I was testing their acumen as part of an Experience Audit.

➤ Their CEO had hired me to evaluate their brand’s service standards.

Their team failed the test not because they were rude.

But because they were selective with their care.

This happens all the time, not just in luxury. People make judgements on who “belongs” and they assign a type of service to that profile.

Here’s the truth most brands still struggle to face:

Luxury is not a visual cue. You don’t deliver service based on spend, status cues, or a specific profile.

Exceptional service is a full-time behavioral commitment.

Great companies treat every customer like they already belong - flip-flops or not.

The real failure wasn’t just poor service. It was the quiet, reflexive micro-judgment that happens far too often in luxury settings - the subtle filtering of who gets welcomed and who gets written off.

These aren’t just customer service missteps; they’re moments where a brand’s values become visible. Unfortunately, this behavior is still incredibly common in luxury today and, what is worse, very few brands believe that their teams do it. It is the rare CEO that wants to put the consistency of executing brand values to a blind, random field test.

The most sophisticated brands serve with humility, not hierarchy.