Retail Technology
Did you know that every REI has a survey marker out front? I am in Virginia for my daughter’s soccer tournament & today I stopped by the Bailey’s Crossroads store to say hello & gather some feedback from the amazing team there. It’s the 3rd oldest location on the east coast!
I’m lucky to work on a product team that builds solutions in close partnership with our users. David Allison (engineering lead on our team) describes our process on the REI Engineering blog. This approach creates such a high signal to noise ratio, and it shows in the work we are able to deliver.
Modern Retail blaming the Starbucks mobile app strategy for the increasingly poor, mosh pit-like customer order pickup experience:
Orders are coming in quickly, but there aren’t enough baristas behind the counter to prepare drinks. Wait times are climbing…about 8% of Starbucks customers waited between 15 and 30 minutes for a drink in the second quarter…and, Starbucks now has more than 170,000 possible drink combinations, making everything more complicated.
This doesn’t sound like an app problem, but rather an operational one. Technology & ops processes must work together in service of the customer experience.
As other retailers divest from curbside order fulfillment, Target continues to go all-in by deepening its ties into mobile ecosystems like Apple CarPlay:
Once connected to CarPlay, the Target app will automatically display the Target store where the purchase was made on the car display. Then, shoppers can view order details, get directions to the store via Apple Maps, and notify the store once they have arrived in their Drive Up parking space.
Target is the only place I do drive-up orders anymore, due in large part to how easy their retail technology makes the experience. Kudos.
If You Love It, Set It Free
It’s release day for my team at REI. We’ve been working tirelessly for the past few months to build a tool that makes pricing product in our stores easier and less painful for employees. Our goal is to replace an archaic, manual & paper-based workflow with a modern, scalable, digitally-supported tool and standard operating process (SOP) that streamlines sales floor operations across the Co-op.
This morning, we deployed the tool to our first group of pilot stores. Exciting! As a data-driven product manager, these days are like Christmas morning. It’s like I woke up to some new datasets under the tree and I can’t wait to unwrap them to see what insights might be inside.
Every now and then I catch myself lamenting that I don’t work on products with millions of users or billions in revenue. But then I catch myself on days like this when I can see the thing we’ve built in the hands of REI’s amazing employees. I can see them using it and the positive impact it makes in their daily lives. I can hear the pain points surfaced in our feedback channels rapidly fade off into the distance. I can watch the thing we’ve built make our stores a better place to work for more than 10,000 people who wear the REI green vest with pride.
I think that kind of direct, measurable impact is something special.
The next few weeks will likely be hectic as the team analyzes and responds to usage data, fields feedback from employees, and optimizes for rollout to all 190 locations. When we get to that point, I’ll circle back with some insights.
I’ve been in retail technology for a long time, and this is the first time I’ve heard the term Summerween:
For many retailers, the weeks between July 4 and Labor Day have customarily been all about stocking up on lunch boxes, crayons and notebooks for back-to-school shopping. Now, store shelves are just as likely to be filled with cauldrons, candy corn and pumpkins.