CONSUMER CHRONICLES
“We Fail Our Customers Today,” Walmart Says
Walmart’s brutal self-own actually poises them to battle Amazon
“We fail our customers today,” reads the first bullet in a slide from a Walmart planning deck to improve customer omnichannel experience, first obtained and reviewed by Insider.
That brutal honesty and transparency set the tone for their project, codenamed Project Glass, which aims to stop losing customers to online rival Amazon. Though some product teams rely solely on SWOT analysis created by management consultants, the presentation, developed with research from Walmart Labs, dispenses with that. Charts can be pretty, but a real turnaround for a failing operation requires a brutal assessment of the ugly truth.
This is precisely what the internal presentation for Project Glass includes, like this nugget, “we turn away customers who want to shop with us.” Ouch.
Walmart’s introspection and harsh realization using a customer-first strategy is a step in the right direction. Companies who see the imperative to disrupt legacy thinking should take notice not just of Project Glass, but also of how Walmart identified the gaps in flagship offerings to spur innovation.
The first step towards recovery is…
