The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Senior Vice President (SVP) Yael Cosset joined ShopTalk 2023, convening in Las Vegas this week for a discussion on how tech deployments improve the customer and associate experience at Kroger.
“Investment in data and innovation during the last two decades – focusing on the customer experience – created immense value, saving customers $1.4 billion just last year,” said Cosset. “Kroger pioneered the personalization approach because we wanted to understand how customers engaged with our offers to make them better and more relevant. Our best-in-class data science program creates personalized experiences that provide important savings on the very specific items we know our customers love. The ability to personalize every single aspect of the customer experience is critical to Kroger’s commitment to a zero-compromise, seamless experience. Customers can shop the way they want—in store, through pickup or delivery, when they want it—in 30 minutes, two hours or tomorrow, without compromising on the quality, freshness or value they appreciate from Kroger.”
Cosset explained how the grocer is using learnings from this approach to improve the associate experience, making their jobs easier, more intuitive and efficient, and ultimately increasing their impact on the customer experience and overall job satisfaction. Kroger digitized associate processes, comparable to the models built to personalize the customer experience, greatly improving onboarding, training and the prioritization of daily activities.
“Data and personalization make associates’ lives better. We are using technology to provide comprehensive training, simplify tasks and give our associates the support they need to do their jobs well. In turn, this enables associates to understand their roles better and achieve faster career growth. These improvements also provide more time to do what they do best—interact with and get to know customers, which truly takes the concept of personalization to the next level.”
Cosset also shared how the pandemic impacted the grocer’s e-commerce customer and associate experience, with growth acceleration forcing the reinvention of processes and technology capabilities to scale. This push led to rapid innovation around both the customer and associate capabilities, from a 50% decrease in customer wait time and 30% order pick time improvement to completely eliminating the use of paper in e-commerce store operations, removing more than 25,000 miles worth of paper per year.
“Efficiencies are vital to create continued growth and achieve scale, and we need technology and data at the service of our associates to create an awesome customer experience,” Cosset said.
Asked what new technologies he found most exciting, the CIO revealed he is excited to continue to bring data science to the entire Kroger organization, with associate engagement driving innovation to create better customer and associate experiences.
