Blog
Walmart’s new strategy isn’t really new but it's banking on super powers
Every retailer is focused on improving the customer experience. Even the world’s biggest retailer — Walmart — is embarking on a huge journey and banking on its associates to carry the ball across the goal line.
June 15, 2015 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
Every retailer is focused on improving the customer experience. Even the world’s biggest retailer — Walmart — is embarking on a huge journey and is banking on its associates to win the battle.
If you read the Fortune take on CEO and President Doug McMillon’s strategy you’ll get the "colorful" (as we would say in journo speak) nugget of his speech to about 15,000 employees and investors during the annual shareholders meeting earlier this month.
In the Fortune report, the focus was on how McMillon believes the employee ranks can eradicate Walmart’s biggest business obstacle: bureaucracy and can do so if they click their heels three times and go forward in battle much like the good guys in "Star Wars" and the war on the galactic empire. Even those of us who aren’t "Star Wars" fanatics or experts pretty much know the gist of the film series, especially those who were pre-teens when the first movie debuted in 1977. Yes, the film franchise is 38 years old and going strong as there are "Star Wars" flicks debuting this year and next (four between now and 2019).
But I digress. I’m guessing Fortune focused on that bit of inspirational speech nugget given the irony of the biggest retailer wanting to present itself not as the tremendous galactic empire to be beaten but as the underdog in the huge battle to decimate bureaucracy and mediocrity.
The goal is to be faster, more in tune with customers, provide a simpler, seamless retail experience and tap associate and management insight to make that happen.
McMillon’s speech, which actually went into more depth and far beyond than the "Star Wars’" analogy, as a company announcement relates, is actually more serious than how the Fortune description. Walmart’s top chief is launching a new, but not actually "new," or innovative strategy: one customer at a time.
He then calls associates the "super heroes," who have super powers and those powers will bring about the needed change, which McMillon and the company’s board, shareholders, investors and yes, employees all will benefit from: more sales.
The associate "super powers," says McMillon are passion, "our commitment to our customers, our caring for one another. Really, our superpowers are those that help us make someone’s day better; their life better.”
That, in my opinion, are the same super powers every retailer has within its strategic arsenal, whether they’ve got two employees manning a store or millions around the globe.
It’s not new to say it’s time to focus on the customer, that it’s time to streamline and go faster while not spending much, if anything, to move faster. It is kind of new to hear Walmart talking in such speak as there may be the assumption it had mastered all this already given its size and scope and reach.
What it proves, once again, is retail business growth and stability and innovation doesn’t always have to be tied to something brand new. It is and always will be tied to enhancing the retail customer experience, and doing that, as McMillon says, one customer at a time.
About Judy Mottl
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from Retail Customer Experience.
