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The stores below started from different places: personal notebooks, business cards, weekly reports, even another CRM. The owners, managers, and associates quoted here run or work at real retailers, and everything in quotation marks comes from their published Clientbook customer stories. We kept their words as published, fixing only obvious typos, so you can judge the move to digital clienteling from the people who made it. These stories were published a few years ago, so titles below are as they were at the time.
Where These Stores Started
Each starting point broke in a predictable spot.
Personal booklets. At Five Star Jewelers in Miami, corporate training manager Jacqueline Diaz said, "Sales associates just had individual booklets with all of their customers in there." The weak spot was dates: "With the booklets, it was really hard for sales associates to remember when their clients' birthdays and anniversaries are..."
Business cards and hope. At Wilson Diamonds in Provo, the story says associates captured only about 2 to 5 percent of customers' contact information on a first visit, often writing details on a business card and hoping the client would find their way back.
Weekly and monthly reports. Jessica Sagartz, then a sales associate at Clarkson Jewelers in St. Louis, said of their follow-up reports: "Sometimes they got done, sometimes they didn't. Because of this, clients tended to slip through our fingers, and when it came time for them to have a jewelry need, we weren't the first people they thought of."
Everyone with their own method. Tony Goodman, owner of Goodman & Sons in Hampton, Virginia, said each salesperson had their own way of contacting customers and setting reminders, and "they were not visible to others." For a commissioned team, that also meant no transparent record when credit was disputed.
Another CRM. Sarah Robey, owner of Colonial Jewelers in Frederick, Maryland, was already on a different CRM and was "having trouble using it from a management standpoint."
The First Change: Capture and Recall
The earliest wins in these stories are about getting information in and pulling it back out at the right moment.
Wilson Diamonds is the clearest capture example. At the time of their story, the team was capturing 90 percent of potential clients' phone numbers on the first visit and immediately sending a text, usually with professional images of the pieces the client looked at. Vice president Jeff Corrigan described why it stuck: "With Clientbook, getting the customer information we want is so easy because it feels like a natural step to providing good customer service." The story reports a 98 percent read rate and over 71 percent response rate on messages sent through that first-visit process.
At Five Star, recall was the win. Diaz said that "now, they have automated reminders, which is fantastic in a sales position. It's at their fingertips." If that is your gap, our birthday and anniversary clienteling workflow walks through the timing.
Robey's version is about speed: "Clientbook is so easy to use to enter and also to retrieve information about our clients quickly and easily."
Follow-Up That Actually Happens
Once the information is in one place, these stores describe follow-up moving from a weekly chore to something associates do between guests.
Sagartz at Clarkson: "Our communication has improved DRASTICALLY. Our clients respond very well to our text and email follow ups and we have already seen a huge change in sales based on follow up." She also named the kinds of messages that created new sales, such as "sending a spouse an item that interested the other partner, inviting clients in for a complimentary jewelry cleaning, or just thanking them for their visit."
Goodman pointed to a team benefit that scattered personal methods never offered: "Sales associates can review contacts between another sales person and the customer, which helps serve the customer when the primary sales person is out of the store when a customer returns."
Diaz described the pace: "In just a minute they can send information out to a client right to their phones." She also credited the Smart Assistant (now AI Insights): "I love that it monitors clients' purchasing history and tells us when they're likely to come in again. Because there's no way a sales associate would know that on their own."
Visibility for Owners and Managers
Owners and managers both pointed to visibility, and for Robey it was a deciding factor: "The management portal on Clientbook was especially appealing to me as a store owner."
Robey at Colonial: as an owner, she said it is "really helpful to easily check in to see where sales associates are in the sales process with specific customers..."
Diaz at Five Star: "We can see who our top performers are, why some have lower performance, and easily compare and track performance."
Diaz again, on ownership of clients: "An unassigned customer is a lost opportunity. With Clientbook you can assign customers to a sales associate so they'll continually have someone they're working with."
Adorn, a clothing boutique in Portland, Oregon, is the adoption example. Before Clientbook, Adorn had tried to get associates to build personal relationships, but without a simple process and a way for management to hold the team accountable, they were not getting much traction. The story reports that Adorn increased sales 13 percent in its first week after rolling out Clientbook, and that 54 percent of associates were clienteling every working day and 86 percent at least twice a week. The owner at the time called it "the best investment I have ever made in my business!"
Results in Their Own Words
Goodman framed it around closing rate: "Our data has shown an uptick in closing sales with the proper and timely follow up to questions asked by our customers." On payback, he said "a year's worth of Clientbook cost was covered within the first month of being on board."
Three weeks in, Diaz said, "we've already earned more sales because our sales associates are more prepared and more knowledgeable."
Sagartz summed up the Clarkson experience: "If you want to improve client communication, this tool is vital. It's made a drastic change for us."
These are individual store results from their published stories; your results will depend on your traffic, team, and follow-up habits.
Gaps the Stories Name
The same stories are candid about limits. Goodman's wish list included "integration with Point of Sale Systems to limit data redundancies." Clientbook now syncs with The Edge, Shopify, Lightspeed, and many other POS systems, so purchase history fills in without retyping. Robey's wish list included a client opportunity module, which was in the works at the time and has since shipped as Sales Opportunities. Adorn's story frames its earlier problem as a missing process and no way to hold the team accountable, which is the gap the tool filled. For the management side of that, see our guide on getting your sales team to do more proactive outreach.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is digital clienteling worth it for an independent jewelry store?
The stores quoted here are family-owned independents, from a single downtown store (Colonial Jewelers) and a two-location jeweler (Goodman & Sons) to an eight-store family group (Five Star). What they describe depends less on size than on whether follow-up was happening consistently before. For a side by side of the two approaches, see digital clienteling vs. manual clienteling.
Will associates actually use it?
Adorn is the clearest data point: its story reports 54 percent of associates clienteling every working day and 86 percent at least twice a week. Robey described it as an "easy to use way to keep on top of their follow-up," and Goodman said the excitement of the sales team was one of the reasons the store moved forward.
What happens to the client information in our old books?
Purchase history and contact records come over from your POS. Notes that only exist on paper, like sizes, wishlist pieces, and family dates, are added by associates as they work their books, usually starting with upcoming birthdays and anniversaries. Five Star's training manager said birthdays and anniversaries were hard to track in booklets.
Where can I read the full customer stories?
All six are on the Clientbook customer stories page, including Five Star Jewelers, Goodman & Sons, Wilson Diamonds, Clarkson Jewelers, Colonial Jewelers, and Adorn.
See It With Your Own Client Data
The fastest way to know whether the move fits your store is to look at your own client data in a digital client book. Book a demo at clientbook.com/demo and ask to see how your POS history and your associates' notes would come together on one profile. For the wider software picture, our guide to jewelry store clienteling software in 2026 compares the options.
