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Improving Customer Service for

Walmart Corporation

Prepared for

Walmart Corporation

Prepared By

Jeffrey Bonanno

February 28, 2012

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Table of Contents

PAGE

Title Page.........................................................................................................................................1

Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................2

Executive Summary......................................................................................................................3-4

Introduction......................................................................................................................................5

The Opportunity...........................................................................................................................6-7

Current Situation..................................................................................................................6

Key Success Factors............................................................................................................6

Analysis of Alternatives.......................................................................................................7

Strategic Options..................................................................................................................7

Benefits and Risks of Improving Walmart Customer Service.........................................................8

Benefits of Improving Customer Service............................................................................8

Risks of Improving Customer Service.................................................................................8

Final Recommendations...................................................................................................................9

Power Point Slide Link..................................................................................................................10

References......................................................................................................................................11

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Executive Summary

Walmart is one the biggest retail store in the country and mas many customers that come in and out of the store for many reasons. Customer service is the most important factor for a retail store because there are a lot of certain aspects that are linked to it. This summary will briefly go over Improvement and opportunities that exist for this retail organization. There are also many benefits and risks involved with improving customer service. Change is always on the radar for Walmart and thinking of alternatives are always on the horizon. Process improvement requires critical thinking, this is something that corporate needs to discuss in order to take Walmart onto the next level beyond the competition.

Walmart Improvement and Opportunity ideas

How to improve Walmart customer service can be a difficult task in itself. Some of the first thoughts that might come to your mind might be to add more associates and registers. This is probably one of the most important things besides making sure the shelves are stocked. The more associates you have the more customer service you can provide. This is something that is lacking in the organization right now. Their main focus is having the least amount of associates while being able to maintain the same scores and percentages as having more associates. This is something that I believe is heading in the wrong direction for the company in the long run. Having associate incents will always help as well because it will incent the associates to maintain good work ethics. Providing feedback will help the organization get an idea what they need to improve upon. If there is no feedback than you don’t know what direction you’re heading and you will not know how to get to that next level.

Technology improvements can always be added to help such as self-service registers and an improved inventory system. The self-service registers will help ease the express registers, this will help reduce the lines and provide faster service to the customers. Self-service registers are up to the store manager’s discretion. An improved inventory system will greatly help improve customer service mainly because it can find products in a more efficient way. Another alternative method is a special phone application that can be used to scan items that you can put into a virtual cart. There will be a special register that you can check out at that reads your phone. Everything can be paid for at this register, once this is done than you can grab your items and leave. This would help improve line wait times.

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Benefits and Risks in Improving Customer Service

Benefits

• Better Inventory Tracking• Merchandise Searching• Improved Ordering System• Improved User Interface

Risks

• Time and Costs• Scheduling and Timeline• Employee Turnover• Requirements Inflation

Recommendations

For recommendations the main key points are as follows:

• Improved S.M.A.R.T system• Unified Improvement Planning• Weekly Corporate Meetings• Improvements Summaries/Documentation

These are the main recommendations that I have for this customer service improvement. This will be later discussed in the final recommendations section.

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Introduction

Walmart’s focuses mainly on their strengths which is their customers. Every year Walmart increases their sales in millions every year. They improve upon the gross margin and cash sales. Their business model revolves around change, change and change. Constantly evolving as a company and trying to rise up to that next level as the leading retail industry for many years. Improving customer service is something that every retailer can improve upon and I believe Walmart is not exactly leading in the right direction or if so it’s a block in the road to move on to that level as the greatest retailer in the industry. Improving customer service is not an easy task for any retail company. This can require a lot of trial and error or talking to other corporate managers for what works and what doesn’t. The big question is how can Walmart improve customer service? There is no simply answer or solution but there are many aspects that you can combine that will greatly improve their rating in time. Some main improvement ideas include; more associates, keeping stocked shelves, technology and providing feedback. These are the four main aspects that will greatly help Walmart’s customer service. The opportunities will be greatly discussed in this discussion.

The four main opportunities:

• The current situation• Key success factors • Analysis of alternatives • Strategic options

Benefits and risks are very important because this can make or break any decision that is made to improve customer service. Scheduled meetings and critical thinking must be used to determine what needs to be done. Here are my main key benefits and risks that I will be discussion briefly about.

Benefits:• Better Inventory Tracking• Merchandise Searching• Improved Ordering System• Improved User Interface

Risks:• Time and Costs• Scheduling and Timeline• Employee Turnover• Requirements Inflation

These are the main points in my discussion that I will be briefly discussing. Improving customer service can make or break a company. I believe if the current customer service plan for

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Walmart continues this way they will not improve to their full potential. This discussion is based to enlighten and inform of the possibilities that Walmart can achieve in the future.

The Opportunities

The Current Situation

The situation at Walmart as a whole is quite well. The organization is the top leading retail store and is making millions every day. The current situation at Walmart could be better though. Restocking and making sure the shelves are also stocked to ensure the customers are guaranteed products. There is also The S.M.A.R.T system, this has huge opportunities. It’s a software that has all the inventory information, scheduling, ordering and product look up. Right now the SMART software is quite basic with not a lot of user interface. The software only allows you to type in the UPC numbers and the basic functions of “no” and “yes”. I would like to implement that but more in a graphical interface like UNIX and Windows. You will be allowed to do much more such as being able to type “words”, connect to the internet, upload to the cloud and search the cloud.

Temporary employees is another issue that I believe is hindering Walmart’s progression as an organization. These employees only will last with the company for 90 days and will either be rehired as a temporary again or as a part time associate. But this could be an issue because the associates hardly will have any incentives for providing good customer service because they don’t quite feel “part” of the company. This Is an important factor because these new temporary employees might not care as much as if they were a part time associate because they will only be around for 90 days than let go. This both has risks and benefits to the company, this will be briefly discussed in the risks and benefits section.

Key Success Factors

• Corporate meeting decision making – These meetings need to happen on a weekly basis to keep in touch on how their company is accepting the change and how the scores are looking compared to before the changes. New immediate changes must be made constantly to keep improving upon the changes that might need tweaking. Two main factors are listed below that will help add to these meetings.

o Critical thinkingo Social networking

• Inventory turnover – a very important factor. Even though Walmart is keeping their shelves stocked the company needs to make sure that

• Maintain competiveness – you want to keep competitiveness by being able to match what the other retail stores are selling their products. You also want to do what other retail companies are not doing by introducing new products and innovating new changes to the company.

o Price matchingo Low priceso Changing

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Analysis of Alternatives

The main focus for the alternatives is the S.M.A.R.T system. There will be some other alternatives that will be briefly discussed.

Improved inventory S.M.A.R.T system – this is something that will help Walmart grow and become a great leader in the retail industry. There are a few ideas that can vastly improve this system to bring Walmart to the next level. The idea behind this new improved smart system is that it will have a graphical user interface that is easier for the associates to use. These are the main improvements that this software will provide

• Graphical user interface• Cloud computing – the thought behind this is if all Walmart’s inventory counts and

products would be on the cloud for easy searching.• Word search for products – this would be part of the graphical interface being able to

search for product with words instead of only being able to use a UPC number.• Scheduling system – easier scheduling system for the managers using a graphical

interface.• Ordering system – using a graphical interface and easier to maintain ordering. This

graphical interface will help better determine what needs to be ordered and what does not. This will also use the cloud to see what other stores are doing as well.

• Improved inventory – better and easier to understand for the managers and corporate.

Expand company growth

• Countries – expanding to more countries that are not as known will help the growth.• Neighborhood markets – have more mini markets that just sell food, kind of like a Sweet

Bay and Publix.• Gas stations – Have gas stations that are like 7-elevens.

Strategic Option

Strategic options to actually accomplish this is not an easy task.

• Corporate meetings – this was briefly discussed. This needs to be done on a weekly basis to ensure the strategic options can be met.

• Critical thinking – this is one of the most important. Having a lot of people on the team and meeting on a daily basis will help improve the strategic option. The more brains the better.

• Unified Improvement planning – a model can be used to help determine what needs to be done in a step by step process to be able to have a successful strategic option

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Benefits and Risks of Strategic Options

The benefits outweigh the risks for improving customer service in the long run. This is something that will take many years to overcome. This should be more like a 5+ year plan to successfully start the transition to these changes. Doing everything at once will more than likely fail, this would be caused by too much at once. Small changes need to be made over a monthly basis. Here are the main benefits and risks.

Benefits

• Better inventory – This benefits the company a lot because the better and more improved inventory you have the more revenue and profit you can bring in.

• Increased revenue and profit – this is an obvious benefit because the company will have increased revenue and profit because of the better customer service that will be provided. Customers will want to come back to your store.

• Better shopping and work environment – Customers will want to come back to your store because it will look clean and professional.

• Smart system benefitso Easier merchandise searching for customers – This helps find products faster

providing great customer service. o Improved ordering system – this will help improve turnover. Every store wants to

have a low turnover and to successfully do this you must keep your inventory in check. A better system will help do the job.

o Better inventory tracking – This will help find what specific products that you are looking for either for your managers or a customer.

o Improved user interface – this makes it easier for the associates and managers.o Cloud computing – all the Walmart’s can be connected via the cloud. This will

help find any product that is needed to be searched for. You can look up products that you may not sell in your store but are in other stores so you can locate what store what store sells that product for that customer.

Risks

• Time and costs – this could lead to more costs than expected and could lead to a longer process. This is one of the most important risks.

• Scheduling and timeline – scheduling is not that big of a deal they can always find people that meet the requirements but sometimes a timeline can change which leads to more costs.

• Conflicts of personalities – this can be tough, you need to find people that have great communication, team ethics and open minds.

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• Employee turnover• Requirements inflation• Hard time adapting to the changes – this is a risk during the process of change.

Associates and managers might have a hard time adapting to change. Sometimes the change can be ignored completely.

Final Recommendations

Final recommendations

• Improved S.M.A.R.T system• Unified Improvement Planning• Weekly Corporate Meetings• Improvements Summaries/Documentation

The improve S.M.A.R.T system is one of the main keys for improving customer service. In order to do this the company needs to create a unified improvement plan and have improvement summaries/documentation. In order to keep track of all this weekly meetings need to be held in order to successfully transition the changes. These are my final recommendations for improving customer service. Change is always constant, this is something Walmart has come accustomed to and I believe this is something that can be accomplished by such a large organization. A change of open mind is needed and perhaps success might be down the horizon.

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Power Point Slide Link

My Final Power Point SlideShare Link

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References

Howard, C. (2013, April 12). Walmart aims to improve customer experience. Retrieved from http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/clark-howard/shopping-retail/walmart-aims-improve-customer-experience-stores/nXJ6p/

Susan, B. (2013, January 15). Wal-mart tries to improve its battered image. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-15/wal-mart-tries-to-improve-its-battered-image

Customer service flub hurts wal-mart. (January, 2013 28). Retrieved from http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/01/customer-service-flub-hurts-wal-mart.html

Walmart’s dismal customer service scores drive customers away. (2013, March 19). Retrieved from http://www.serviceuntitled.com/walmarts-dismal-customer-service-scores-drive-customers-away/2013/03/19/