Creating a CX-first strategy: The transformation of Woolies

Summary

Delivering a seamless customer journey has become the defining competitive advantage in retail, with research showing companies that prioritise customer experience significantly outperform those that don't on revenue growth. For traditional, decades-old organisations, understanding the importance of customer experience and knowing how to restructure around it are two very different challenges — and few companies illustrate that gap, and how to close it, as clearly as one of Australia's largest supermarket groups.

One of Australia's largest fast-moving consumer goods retailers rebuilt itself into a customer-experience-centric organisation under a CEO determined to make customer satisfaction a daily leadership priority, a transformation presented at a twimbit Open House event. Specific organisational changes come into focus — from leadership spending more time directly observing the shopping floor, to the creation of a dedicated cross-functional team focused solely on bridging online and offline experience.

Concrete initiatives illustrate how these structural changes translated into tangible customer-facing improvements, spanning contactless pickup solutions, transparency around food sourcing, and a dramatically simplified customer service and refund process. Three transferable lessons apply to any traditional organisation seeking to become genuinely customer-centric: building connected experiences, measuring customer experience rigorously and continuously, and establishing a cross-functional team dedicated to owning the outcome.

What does it actually take for a traditional retailer to rebuild itself around the customer, rather than around the product?