Our colleagues’ perspectives on a historic year: How Digital helped feed the nation
Introduction
2020 has been a year of unexpected change. A change in the way we go about our everyday lives. A change in the way we work — with a noted shift towards remote (and more flexible) working. And for us here at Sainsbury’s Digital, a change in the way we interact with and meet our customers’ needs.
A global pandemic and ensuing nationwide lockdown saw a phenomenal shift towards online transactions vs in-store ones. There was also an extensive surge in the volume of transactions that customers were making. As such, our colleagues needed to work collaboratively across teams within the business, at fast pace and wide-scale, to help ensure we fed the nation effectively in a period of growing uncertainty.
A group of our Sainsbury’s Digital colleagues share their perspectives on how they contributed — both individually and as part of a team — to feeding the nation.
Kate Mellor — Senior User Experience Designer
How were you involved with Feed the Nation?
My work on Feed the Nation began a day or two before we went into lockdown, as we saw the in-store panic buying of early March start to shift online. With unprecedented levels of traffic on the site, our conversations as a business very quickly turned to how we might help as many of those most in need as we could, and it was this central focus that really galvanised us all to get to work, in the hopes that we could make a real difference.
What were the key takeaways you personally got from the project?
What began initially as a quite reactive role, making collaborative changes to customer journeys at a phenomenal pace, shifted into my leading the strategic response for digital customer experience across our grocery website and app. The state of mind of our customer was a core driver of the strategic response we implemented, and we focused on some key principles of clarity and reassurance, with an actionable step wherever possible, to try and limit the stress and cognitive overload that the situation inevitably presented.
I’m sure it goes without saying, but this was unlike any UX challenge I’ve ever faced before. We often remind ourselves as UX designers that we are not our users, but in this case the problems people were facing were so close to home. This was also a challenge that affected the business as a whole, and as a result I feel closer, not just to my colleagues in Digital and Tech, but right the way across Operations, E-commerce, Customer Service and many more. This was a truly cross-functional team effort in every sense, and I have formed new bonds with colleagues, some of whom I’ve never met in person before, and I’m quite sure I owe many of them a drink or two!
How do you feel the project went, and how did you work with your team to achieve your goals?
It feels strange to say this given just how difficult this time has been for so many of us but looking back on our response to the pandemic fills me with a huge sense of pride. From the way we reacted with such purpose, to the intense collaboration and incredible teamwork; even from this relatively close distance, it feels like something I will look back on as one of the most challenging, sleep depriving, fulfilling and rewarding periods of my career.
Madeleine Garcia Munzer — Senior User Experience Designer
How were you involved with Feed the Nation?
I joined Sainsbury’s Digital at the beginning of March and went almost straight into lockdown without much knowledge or background information of the business. During April, I was invited to be part of one of the initiatives for Feed the Nation (FTN). As a UX designer, I contributed by creating a mapping of the user experience of the project I was involved in, looking into the pain points and challenges the user might overcome.
What were the key takeaways you personally got from the project?
My major takeaways were a solid sense of the trust the business put in me, to be so quick to give me the opportunity to contribute to FTN, as well as being trusted to do the right thing for the consumer. Likely, under normal circumstances, I would not have been involved with so many stakeholders so quickly. It gave me the opportunity to see the complexity of such a large business, as well as the chance to see everyone being so passionate in their attempt to deliver a new service to end users.
How do you feel the project went, and how did you work with your team to achieve your goals?
Even though the particular project I worked on didn’t go live, the work we did was revealing. I feel that the mapping I created helped the different stakeholders involved to be able to see the project from an end-to-end perspective. At the time we were having daily meetings, so my work facilitated conversations in those meetings with legal, logistics, call centres and developers to mitigate those pain points before the launch of the project.
Overall, I was proud to be a part of Feed the Nation.
Bryn Anderson — Accessibility Specialist
How were you involved with Feed the Nation?
I was involved in Feed The Nation as a Digital Accessibility Specialist. I had two main focus areas:
- In general I was to stay on top of everything that was getting released digitally — making sure that everything was seamlessly accessible.
- To work with Experience Design Research and the end-to-end teams to establish needs and requirements for specific types of impairments — ultimately to highlight gaps in the proposed solution that would impact some customers with specific disabilities.
What were the key takeaways you personally got from the project?
Having a collective goal was exhilarating and the fact that we were working to support people in real need was very emotionally engaging and motivating. I hadn’t really understood the role of a food retailer in a crisis like this — I had underestimated the importance of groceries and what that means to people’s sense of connectedness and security.
How do you feel the project went, and how did you work with your team to achieve your goals?
It was a real whirlwind, and when there is so much responsibility and focus on you internally and externally — I must admit I was left feeling like I could have done more but without really knowing what I could have done within my capacity.
So, on one hand a real sense of pride to have helped and supported so many people, and on the other the feeling that we could have done even more.
Justin Kim — Senior Service Designer
How were you involved with Feed the Nation?
As a member of the End-To-End team, I addressed two questions as follows:
- How do we ensure we can communicate with our customers consistently across all of our channels?
- How do we ensure we can serve our EDV (Elderly, Disabled & Vulnerable) better to fulfil their attitudinal and behavioural needs?
What were the key takeaways you personally got from the project?
Everyone had a clear understanding of the societal role we had to play to help those in need, and our purpose (i.e. why we exist) was clearly communicated and understood across the business. We were no longer divided into Digital, Tech, e-commerce or HR, but working as one team to solve the issues our customers were facing, in order to help them see it through during these unprecedented times.
I believe one single purpose made one great team.
How do you feel the project went, and how did you work with your team to achieve your goals?
It was such a rewarding experience to be a part of the team. I felt extremely proud to witness how the business put our customers, especially the EDV customers, at the centre of every decision we made. We faced many deadlines (i.e. hourly basis) but were able to see them through as we had very clear team principles, fuelled up by individual passion and motivation to help those who needed our help most.
