The Wall Street Journal has a piece this morning about Walmart CIO Karenann Terrell, who has as her core responsibility leading the retailer's Walmart Technology group.
The story notes that "Wal-Mart gets more than half its U.S. revenue from food and groceries, an area that has been slow to shift online. But with overall sales weak - a revenue drop in fiscal 2016 and a lowered forecast for the current year - Wal-Mart plans to restore growth in part by reinventing its online grocery business, allowing customers to place orders online and pick them up in stores."
As Walmart scales up its click-and collect business to the majority of its stores, Terrell says that "the expectations for the customer are different than for somebody parking their car and walking in and browsing. Making the online-to-store experience easy and seamless when they come to the store, sign in through the kiosk and pick up is critical."
But, she adds, "We’ve observed that online customers have a very, very high level of satisfaction - above 90% - while for those shopping in the store, it isn’t nearly at that high level. We wanted to dig underneath and find out why. The convenience of online ordering, coupled with the special treatment online customers get when they come in person to pick up their orders, leads to a more satisfying experience."
The story notes that "Wal-Mart gets more than half its U.S. revenue from food and groceries, an area that has been slow to shift online. But with overall sales weak - a revenue drop in fiscal 2016 and a lowered forecast for the current year - Wal-Mart plans to restore growth in part by reinventing its online grocery business, allowing customers to place orders online and pick them up in stores."
As Walmart scales up its click-and collect business to the majority of its stores, Terrell says that "the expectations for the customer are different than for somebody parking their car and walking in and browsing. Making the online-to-store experience easy and seamless when they come to the store, sign in through the kiosk and pick up is critical."
But, she adds, "We’ve observed that online customers have a very, very high level of satisfaction - above 90% - while for those shopping in the store, it isn’t nearly at that high level. We wanted to dig underneath and find out why. The convenience of online ordering, coupled with the special treatment online customers get when they come in person to pick up their orders, leads to a more satisfying experience."
- KC's View:
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I think it is very interesting that Walmart finds that its online shoppers tend to have a better customer experience than the people who actually go into its stores. That would be alarming to me, if I were working at the still largely store-driven Walmart.
