A customer experience analyst and a psychology enthusiast

Alexis Low Yi Hwa


<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="australia-s-mega-retailer-revamps-as-a-cx-centric-organisation"><a href="#australias-mega-retailer-revamps-as-a-cx-centric-organisation" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="australias-mega-retailer-revamps-as-a-cx-centric-organisation"></a>Australia&#8217;s mega-retailer revamps as a CX-centric organisation</h3>


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<p>In the recent twimbit Open House, I talked about the steps that Woolworths (Woolies) is taking to transform into a CX-first organisation. In the era of customer experience (CX), competitive advantage lies in crafting seamless customer journeys. According to Forbes<sup>1</sup>, companies focused on improving CX see an 80% increase in revenue compared to companies that are not. </p>



<p>The takeaway from Woolies is to consider creating cross-functional teams. These teams should focus on building connected customer experiences while measuring CX successes vigorously. The following is an edited version of my presentation.</p>



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<p>Hi, everyone, thank you for having me. I just want to say, the previous few presentations were amazing. We&#8217;re talking about BNPL, insurance, NFTS, betting on David&#8217;s. There were very huge subjects, definitely very business-focused. But I kind of want to bring it back to the ground, make it a little bit more human for my presentation. And today, my presentation is all about humans, connections, it&#8217;s about you as a customer.</p>



<p>So first of all, I&#8217;m sure we all have encountered problems before when we purchase something, or when we want to perform a service. We have tried to search for a method on how to solve it, but we can&#8217;t. So we call the customer service hotline. And when we do, we hear &#8220;Hello, please press one if you want this, please press two, please press three…&#8221; And I&#8217;m sure some of you all, like me, have experienced this when you went through all the menus with the different buttons and the different numbers, and you realize that none of that is what you need. All you want to do is just talk to a human being who understands your problem and solve it for you immediately, it&#8217;s really frustrating.</p>



<p>But now imagine this scenario: Okay, It&#8217;s the pandemic, we&#8217;re in a lockdown. It&#8217;s really sad. So we buy our groceries online. And when our groceries are delivered to us, we realise something, oh, no, my milk spoilt. You don&#8217;t know how to kickstart the refund process and you want a refund. Now you find a customer hotline, you call the service and instead, this is what you hear, &#8220;Hello, how can I help you today?&#8221; and you said, &#8220;I would like a refund.&#8221; And this voice said, &#8220;Sure! Let me kick start the refund process for you.&#8221; Wow, there is no waiting, there is no bouncing around different numbers, bouncing around different humans if you are so lucky to have found a human. You have saved so much time. And as a cherry on top, your money is immediately processed to be refunded right after your call. Isn&#8217;t that so amazing?</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25214339/CX-Image-1.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25214339/CX-Image-1-1024x576.jpg" alt="CX
" class="wp-image-42010" srcset="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25214339/CX-Image-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25214339/CX-Image-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25214339/CX-Image-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25214339/CX-Image-1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25214339/CX-Image-1-20x11.jpg 20w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25214339/CX-Image-1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption>Conventional customer support vs. Woolworths&#8217; CX-centric customer support</figcaption></figure>



<p>This is a real story, a story of Woolworths, also known as Woolies, Australia&#8217;s leading supermarket with a market share of 37.4% and 67 billion Australian dollars in sales at the end of the financial year 2021. But it wasn&#8217;t always so rosy for Woolies. And today I&#8217;m going to tell you a story of how a CEO of a traditional FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) company achieved such amazing success, all because it put you, me, the customer first. So we at twimbit, we decided to study Woolies precisely because they are a traditional company. While traditional companies know the importance of customer experience, they&#8217;re often lost on organisational strategies and structures needed to truly be customer-centric. And besides, we all know this, change is tough. Woolies, on the other hand, is successfully building a customer-centric environment. And I&#8217;d like to share some steps that they&#8217;re taking to get here. Hopefully, that could inspire you too.</p>



<p>In 2015, Woolies was not doing amazing. The company&#8217;s market cap was only 21.85 billion instead of today&#8217;s 34.87 billion. Another way of saying they were not getting a lot of customers and Brad Banducci, Woolies current CEO, understands the importance of making customers feel heard, feel understood, something Woolies did not do so well in the previous years. So how exactly did he put customers first and create that kind of refund experience that I just shared with you all?</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25210449/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-5-scaled.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25210449/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-5-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-42007" srcset="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25210449/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-5-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25210449/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-5-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25210449/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-5-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25210449/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-5-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25210449/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-5-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25210449/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-5-1980x1114.jpg 1980w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25210449/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-5-20x11.jpg 20w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption>Woolies&#8217; 2015 market capitalisation vs. 2021 market capitalisation</figcaption></figure>



<p>One, he makes customer satisfaction metrics a company priority. So to judge if such a huge company is doing good or not, they need to first see how satisfied you are as a customer. This score is so integral that Brad and his team look at it every single morning. How many business owners out there, how many CEOs you know, take customer happiness so seriously? Not many. But let me tell you, Brad is one of them. And not just that, Brad also centres all important conversations within the company to be about the customers.</p>



<p>How exactly is he maintaining customer satisfaction scores, you may ask? This is what he did, he told all his managers to spend less time in the head office, but more time walking the floors of the supermarket. You know when we do business we often forget what it&#8217;s like to be on the receiving end, meaning what it&#8217;s like to be customers. But once we do that, that&#8217;s dangerous. That means we might lose sight of why we do this, and that is to add value to our customers&#8217; lives. So yes, Brad asked his team to walk the stores so they know exactly how customers are feeling, seeing, interacting with the space. And managers can have firsthand experience if the supermarket is really making customers lives better not.</p>



<p>Third, Brad set up a cross-functional team dedicated to customer experience known as Woolies X. I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re with me when I say that this is a time when online experiences are more important than ever. We are browsing, ordering, making lists online. But at the same time, we are also slowly starting to re-enter and spend more time in shops. So, Woolies X is a team that focuses on how to bridge experiences between online and offline. This team is a space for deep thinking in this fast-moving consumer goods industry. So instead of just reacting to what customers want, which is a norm in most industries, they are proactively coming out and testing strategies that make CX better here.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213107/image-2-scaled.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213107/image-2-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-42008" srcset="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213107/image-2-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213107/image-2-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213107/image-2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213107/image-2-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213107/image-2-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213107/image-2-1980x1114.jpg 1980w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213107/image-2-20x11.jpg 20w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption>Actions by Woolworths to improve customer experience</figcaption></figure>



<p>From these three actions, they&#8217;ve come up with some actions that truly make customers feel valued. Apart from their no-fuss refund service, they&#8217;ve also created locker services, which I like to call essentially huge robotic fridge storing and dispensing groceries. It&#8217;s the pandemic, we&#8217;re all trying to social distance, I understand, but we still need our everyday necessities. Don&#8217;t worry, Woolies got you. Now you as a customer can order groceries using the Woolies app, select a pickup time, get a special code for grocery pickup. All you have to do is drive up to Woolies, park outside, next to their huge robot fridges, punch in that code, have your groceries dispensed to you fresh, pick it up, go home. It&#8217;s seamless and fast, but more importantly, it&#8217;s safe.</p>



<p>Another initiative, and also my favourite, is that they&#8217;re reinventing the indoor grocery shopping experience. You know, you walk into a supermarket, you take your things and go. But in Woolies now, you also get recipes, nutritional serving tips next to certain ingredients giving you ideas on how to eat better, live better. The bread that you buy, the meat that you buy, who handles them? Have you ever wondered? Woolies put up posters of their head baker, butcher, other key members of staff, so we as customers get to know the important people who handle our food. They also list out where the ingredients are sourced. Who are the farmers? Which farm is it from? Really showing that farm to table concept. And just like that, such a normal, even clinical supermarket experience just became warmer, more connected and dare I say, more human. You bet, people are going to go back to that Woolies time and time again.</p>



<p>You know, Brad&#8217;s laser focus on CX has earned the Woolies group a net promoter score of 57%. This is amazing, as most supermarkets&#8217; net promoter scores are in the negatives. And just to recap, they also have a market share of 37.4% and a market capitalization of 34.8 billion.</p>



<p>So, takeaways from one business to another, what can we learn from our good guy, Brad? One, create connected experiences. Understand that just selling a great cost-saving product or service is no longer enough. It may work 10 years ago, but not now. It&#8217;s all about creating connected experiences, showing that you care. Know that your customers are like you, like all of us humans. We longed to feel safe, valued and connected. And this is exactly what Brad provided. He created a safe space with the pickup lockers. He made shopping in a supermarket feel very connected by putting up very important information about our food.</p>



<p>Two, measure CX every day. You know, we all know the importance of tracking CX scores. But are we tracking them in a way that makes sense? Tracking it enough and taking it seriously? That&#8217;s a whole other question. So Brad spends every morning looking at CX scores, he challenges his team to understand what is affecting it, how to make it better. And this is where the third point comes in. And in my opinion, also one of the most important.</p>



<p>To make those scores better, he&#8217;s setting up a cross-functional team dedicated to CX. CX, it&#8217;s a practice, you can&#8217;t do it alone. You got to know, you can&#8217;t just name someone in the company the head of CX and that person can just solve all problems. No, you need to understand CX is more than just looking at customer satisfaction at certain points, like the checkout or customer service. It needs to be viewed holistically. That means you need to consider the whole journey; from the moment your customers enter your website to the moment they walk out of your physical store. And, to create that seamless journey, you need to first create an operating model that is dedicated to understanding how customers interact with you and then you know how to make that better.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213224/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-17-scaled.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213224/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-17-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-42009" srcset="https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213224/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-17-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213224/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-17-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213224/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-17-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213224/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-17-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213224/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-17-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213224/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-17-1980x1114.jpg 1980w, https://cdn.twimbit.com/uploads/2022/01/25213224/p1fq8jjs7g1sig1gsp1pag110epv34-17-20x11.jpg 20w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption>3 takeaways from Woolworths to create a customer-centric environment</figcaption></figure>



<p>Hopefully, when we apply all these three steps, we can get our refunds immediately without needing to hear endless, endless elevator music. Thank you. To learn <a href="https://content.twimbit.com/insights/in-store-practices-transforming-cx/" data-type="post" data-id="41009">how to improve your in-store retail experiences</a>, check out our report. If you want to gain more insights, feel free to contact me. Thank you, everyone.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="endnote"><a href="#endnote" aria-hidden="true" class="aal_anchor" id="endnote"></a>Endnote</h3>



<p id="end-note"><sup>1 </sup>Morgan, B. (2019, September 24). 50 stats that prove the value of customer experience. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2019/09/24/50-stats-that-prove-the-value-of-customer-experience/?sh=325811e04ef2 </p>


Australia's mega-retailer revamps as a CX-centric organisation In the recent twimbit Open House, I talked about the steps that Woolworths (Woolies) is taking to transform into a CX-first organisation. In...