A plan to enhance Walmart Customer experience

~ Sai Tarun Myneni

Context

• Yesterday that is 8/9, I am checking Walmart to buy stuff for my new apartment and I faced a slight friction(in my world) with the experience in creating a list of the things I wanted to buy.
• The Walmart app lets me make a list and then add the items from my previous purchases. The more fascinating thing is I can use Google voice(already integrated with Walmart app) to add things to my cart or list.
• Same day, I visited the store with my list in mind and on app. I saw some customers, who brought their list on paper* and going aisle by aisle, in search of them.

Context

• *Carrying a physical list is pretty common in India, because the number of options I have is limited or the customer knows the preferred brand. They just ask for it.
• This is so called pick-up feature add in Walmart, but that’s how we did for centuries. No offence, but It just saves a lot of time and money.

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Users

• There are millions of customers for Walmart spread across locations, age groups, purchasing power or their needs.
• Based on my thinking I would broadly categorize them into 3 groups.
• New to Walmart
• Regular customers (at least once a week)
• Customers who stop by at times
• Here sticking with the Walmart’s mission to “Save people money. So, they can live better” I would choose my group to be priority to be regular customers who buys a lot and high scope to save their money.

User Personas

Name: Linda

Age: 67

Sex: Female

Location: close to Walmart supercenter

Shopping Frequency: once a week

Additional Information: she is a retired woman, who lives with her husband. she likes going to Walmart and buying things with her own hands. she writes a list in her book, that she carry every time she comes to Walmart. Then ticking off one by one, as she adds the items to her cart. She has a smart phone, but not a lot into it.

Pain points:

• she sometimes forget her list at home.
• she skips items at times, as she walked past the aisle.
• She thinks it taking too much time and effort to find the items in the list.

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*Note: Imaginary persons with realistic pain points

User Personas

Name: Kenda

Age: 40

Sex: Female

Location: 20 min drive to nearest Walmart

Shopping Frequency: sometimes more that once a week

Additional Information: she is a working woman, living with her family of 9(husband and 7 children). There is no Walmart nearby. so, She drives to Walmart as she gets all the things at a fair price. At times in urgency, she rushes to a nearby regional grocery store to buy items, which are pricey compared to Walmart. Technology is a part of her day, she uses voice assistant to set reminders, play music, make a list of items.

Pain points:

• She finds It hard to maintain the stock. Missed adding items to list and had to buy them at higher price at a nearby store.
• Picking a time to make it easy and effective(saving money).

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*Note: Imaginary persons with realistic pain points

User Personas

Name: Edwyn

Age: 21

Sex: Male

Location: college town with Walmart

Shopping Frequency: whenever he feels like

Additional Information: he is a student, living in an apartment, paying his own bills. Pretty open to trying new things, products. Never makes a list of things to be bought, usually walks in when ever he needs something and buy.

Pain points:

• Preferred items out of stock
• Price change from last time

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*Note: Imaginary persons with realistic pain points

User Journey

Priority

• Based on the impact each step has, it would be good to further pursue steps 2, 3 and brainstorm a few solutions for them.
• Here I am taking some considerations of previous methods used to make lists and how technology can be incorporated to make it better.

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Solution – Effort - Impact

Sample workflow

Walmart – User journey

Metrics to measure

• As we are concentrating on repeated customers, my metrics would be.
• Lists made using this feature
• Time spent on Walmart app
• Maps generated
• App reviews
• The north star would be to see how much additional revenue this feature is bringing in through A/B testing.

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