How do you provide great customer (non digital) experience?

By creating a great employee experience of course.  

Your employees are the first line of offense.  

So when a customer walks into a store, or calls into your call center.  Your processes and technology must make it easy for the employee to take care of the customer.  

But by improving your employees’ experience, you will end up improving your customers experience.  

To help us dig deeper into how you can improve customer experience via employee experiences, I interviewed Cory Gundberg.  

Cory has been improving employee experiences at Walmart and Optum for the last 10 years.  He has led and been part of teams that have improved the experience for over 1M employees and countless customers.

Cory Gundberg is the Chief Operating Officer for Optum Financial.  Where he is responsible for driving operational excellence and improving both the employee and consumer experiences.  Prior to that, he was the Chief Digital Officer at OptumRx, SVP at Walmart, and consultant with Accenture.  

Throughout his career, Cory has been laser focused on improving employee experiences so that they can deliver superior consumer experiences.  

What follows below is a lightly edited version of our interview.

Cory welcome to the interview.  We have a lot to talk about so I can’t wait to get started.  

If it is ok with you, let’s start with Walmart.  That is where you first put into place this idea of improving employee experience to deliver superior customer experience.  Isn’t that right?

Cory Gundberg:  Mustafa thank you for having me.  

And you are absolutely right.  Walmart is where it all started with me.  It was about 2014 when Walmart was going through a physical digital transformation.  I had just taken over the role of leading technology delivery for Walmart U.S..

As part of the transformation, the thing we focused on was to make sure that when a consumer came to the store, they could find the products that they were looking for.  And for that we largely relied on our employees – to not just help the consumer locate the item but also make sure the product is on the shelf for the consumer to buy. 

Walmart, like any other retailer, wants to ensure the customers find every item they want to purchase.

Makes sense.  Nothing is worse when you have a product, the consumer wants it, and you still can’t sell it.  I am curious, the loss of revenue for a missed sale is hard to quantify.  Were you able to quantify or measure it?

CG:  Yes, a customer not being able to find an item is extremely irritating for the customer and retailer.  A retailer is disappointing a customer and missing sales when they can’t get the product on the shelf.  

As for the metric, we used something called on shelf customer availability.  Walmart U.S. actually partnered with a team from ASDA in the UK on this measure.  At ASDA Mark Ibbotson and team had developed some fantastic analysis where they compared a cohort of retail stores, and based on purchase patterns, came up with an availability metric that would measure on shelf customer availability and calculate the potential loss in sales.  

The analysis was quite impressive.  In 2015, Mark took over leading the Walmart U.S. central operations team responsible for delivering improvements to the employees, stores and customers.  I had the pleasure of working with Mark’s team on multiple initiatives.

That is great.  It’s almost like a service level metric that you use in technology that is now applied to product availability.  So what did you end up doing next?

CG:  Well before we came up on a solution that worked.  We tried a whole lot of different things.

If I remember correctly, the first thing we tried was to just give the store employees a report.  Like a top 10 report of items to investigate based on the on shelf customer availability measure.  But that did not really work.  The uptick was quite slow.

Next the team built an individual app, called OSCA.  The OSCA app gave associates item level data on where the store had potential on shelf customer availability issues.  The problem with an individual app was that a department manager had to access multiple apps to do their job.  At the same time much of the department manager’s job was done on the old handheld “green screens”.

Sounds like a perfect product story.  You experimented with a few things, turned out it did not work, and so kept pivoting.  

CG:  Exactly.  We eventually realized that if this is going to work we will need to integrate our on shelf availability into the process and technology the associates use to do their job.  Mark and his team reimagined the process of how inventory and merchandise flows from the back room to the store floor, and how inventory is put away in the back room so associates can find the items.

Excellent, you were now looking at the whole problem.  So how did you go about fixing the problem?

CG:  Yes.

So the first thing we did, like I said before, was to reimagine the workflow of how products moved throughout the store.  

Second, we supported all of this by data.  We used all this rich data to really guide the associate, to where they need to go to solve the biggest problem in the store.  And it was not just that, we had to be right 90% of the time.  Otherwise, the employees would start to lose faith in the new application and process.  

Third, to build the application, Raul Jalali, created a bit of a skunkworks team.  The initial application was just a bunch of initial views for the employees and associates.  But over time, as we learnt more, we got more regimented, better analytics and the analytics drove the workflow.

Fourth, we wanted to make it very easy for the associates to use this new technology.  They could just scan a shelf and know what needs to be done.  No more eye balling or looking at long reports.  The team integrated the analytics, process and technology into how the associates work everyday to stock the shelves for the customer.  

All that, just so that we would not disappoint customers and lose sales just because we didn’t have the product on the shelf, but it is somewhere in the store.

Amazing…sounds like a lot of work.  But also, I am sure, it delivered a great impact.  Were you able to quantify it?

CG:  Yes…definitely.

Stores that were using our new process delivered higher revenue than the same stores in the cohort.  They were indexing much higher.  Mark’s team first proved this out in a pilot and then eventually rolled it out to other stores.

In fact, to the best of my knowledge, some of that technology is still being used to make sure shelves are stocked, and customers can find the products they want.  

That is a great story.  Thank you for sharing.  If it is ok with you, let’s move on to Optum.  You had great success at Walmart and then you moved to Optum.  In some respect, to try to do the same – deliver customer experience by improving employee experience.  But the pharmacy business is quite different then retail, yes?

CG:  Yes, very different.  But also similar.  Both organizations are very large, have lots of complexity, big scale etc.

Yup, that makes sense.  So what did you end up creating at Optum?

CG:  Well with Optum, the focus was also on improving customer experience.  But instead of doing it via store associates.  Here the challenge was to do so through self service and the customer service call center.  Customer service agents are the front line employees, so to speak.    

One of the biggest problems our customers had with the home delivery pharmacy business was that they did not have visibility to when the prescription would arrive.  

And that was really annoying for our customers.

So we created a “pizza tracker” for prescription delivery that customers could access on-line or sign up for email / text alerts.  And if we needed more information from consumers we created self service options so the consumer could provide us the necessary information.

Agreed.  I can personally vouch for that.  We have been there and at times it can be a nightmare.  Not with Optum, but with other mail pharmacies.  

CG:  I feel your pain. (smiling)

Now in our last conversation, you had mentioned that you have a specific set of filters you use to find out which problems to solve.  Can you please elaborate.  

CG:  Yes of course. 

At Optum, we did some of the same things that we did at Walmart.  We first looked at the entire consumer experience and employee workflow. We took a longitudinal view from the customer’s perspective. 

Then we went hunting for problems.  Specifically, problems that would provide the fastest path to value in one of four ways. 

• Improve the consumer experience as measured through NPS
• Improve the employee experience often as measured through employee experience survey
• Drive top line growth in the business and / or
• Improve productivity which often leads to cost reduction

Ideally, the best problems are the ones that drive value in all four ways and we can measurably improve in weeks. 

That is a great framework.  It is similar to the frameworks we have used in the past to decide what / what not to build.  I am curious, what did you end up building that met the above criteria?

CG:  Quite a few things.

We first delivered the “pizza tracker” for prescriptions.

We also focused on the common reason why consumers call us and figured out how to proactively fix those problems ahead of time.  Like incomplete information on the prescription, new insurance, new address etc.  To help ensure we had all the information we needed we leveraged analytics to ensure we had all the information we needed to fulfill the prescription at the time the customer places an order.  

I mean, other companies do this all the time.  If your credit card is about to expire they ask you to update it.  We did the same with prescription data.  

We also tried to avoid calls altogether.  For example, a lot of calls were coming in for refills.  We improved the auto refill program so that customers had a “subscription” like experience for maintenance medications.  The medications they need arrive every 90 days when they need them.  That is great for customers, our NPS score, our backend workflow, and ultimately our business objectives.

Cory, what I love about your story is that there is this persistent theme that ties it all together.  This idea that if you do right by your employees, give them the right tools and support, improve their experience, then ultimately you end up helping the end consumer.  Is that right?

CG:  Exactly.  

The theme in every role that I’ve been a part of from Walmart to Optum and if I even think back to my days at Accenture, is – How do you make it really easy for the employee to take care of that consumer? 

Because whether it’s a retail store, or a call center, or a back office operation, or a distribution center.  Oftentimes there’s an employee that needs to do something to take care of that consumer’s need.  

And as leaders we need to make it easy for that employee to be able to fulfill their customers’ needs. 

Could not agree with you more.  Too often, in product we get bogged down in features or technology.  But never really ask the fundamental question, what customer problem we are trying to solve.  Or what need we are trying to fulfill.  I see so many organizations get that wrong.

CG:  Agreed.  It’s not easy but it is one of the most important questions.  

So Cory, let’s step back for a minute.  If someone wanted to follow your shoes.  Say an executive in retail or even healthcare for that matter.  How would they go about trying to improve their customer’s experience through their employees’ experience?  

What is the one thing you would suggest they do?  

CG:  For me the most important thing is listening directly to the people closest to the consumer.

For example, Here is what I do.  

Every time I start a new roll.  Like the one I just started in January.  I ground myself in the business by understanding the experience of our employees who are serving our customers.  I do what I call side by sides.  Where I try to do their job.  

If it is at a store, I go tour the store and do the job of the employees with the employees.  I try to find out what the potential challenges are.  Where is it really difficult?  I did the same when I came over to Optum.  I spent time with the employees at the call center – listening to customer calls and talking with the employees about the challenges they have serving the customer.  

In fact, in my new role.  I have probably done ~75 side by sides in the last 6 months.  Just to understand the life of our employees and the challenges our customers have.

Almost like a day in the life of an associate, store manager, call center reps.  Awesome.  How else do you listen to your employees?  

CG:  Side by sides are great.  

But we also do listening sessions.  We bring employees from all levels.  So I’ll bring in call center associates. I’ll bring in back office associates, their supervisors, and their managers.   

And have a conversation with all them. Ask them what’s working? What’s not? If you could change one thing, what would that be? 

It’s almost like the GE model.  Where you had these workshops were employees would tell their supervisors what needs to be fixed.  

CG:  Yes.  But I have to add one more thing.

Listening is great, but what happens after that is even more important.  

Coming out of these side by side or listening sessions, we then create a list of everything we have heard.  Here’s all the problems and the ones we are going after.  

But we don’t stop there.  We report back to those team members.  So that they know we are listening.  That we heard them, and that we are taking action.  This becomes our foundation for change.   

This is great.  I really like your philosophy.  Because I think all too often executives don’t take the time to listen to their front line employees or if they do they dont follow up.  And so they end up doing things that make sense at corporate and not out in the field.  

CG:  Yes.  This was something that was drilled down to us when Greg Foran joined the US business at Walmart.  

He asked every store manager to send him an email about their problems, opportunities or ideas.  I think he probably got over 7,000 emails.  But credit to him.  He read all of them, replied to everyone, and then used that as the basis for his change agenda.

Amazing.  Cory, there is still so much to talk about but we are running out of time.  If you are up for it, I would love to have you come back, share with us your story, achievements, and challenges in your new role.  Plus it will give us a chance to dig into some of the other topics.  It has been a pleasure having you.  

CG:  Yes, I have my work cut out for me in my new role.  But I plan to have fun with it.  

Anyway, I enjoyed the interview as well.  I am surprised how quickly the time passed.  And yes I would love to come back.  Thanks for having me.