Turns out that it’s a great idea to have a whole store behave like a Genius Bar or Geek Squad. Or to put it into very old fashioned terminology, make it all about customer service. Customer service in the 2020s looks a little different than it did last century.

Retail has been focused on e-commerce and technology for too long, ignoring the fact that over 70 percent of sales still happen through some form of brick-and-mortar. Office Depot is ahead of the curve in re-engineering their business around the customer rather than around technology. Leveraging the collective learnings of frontline staff, and aligning the entire company around those learnings, is a brilliant move that should quickly yield results.

For the past few years, Office Depot has been innovating and investing in technology that has led to today’s digital teams that can collaborate and effectively apply user-centered design to improve the customer experience. Office Depot invested in focus groups from as early as 2014 to gain insight that led to the smaller footprint and small business focused Store of the Future roll-out in 2017. These investments in innovation helped to refined the user-centered design that is Office Depot’s current focus and I applaud Kevin Moffitt for his efforts to “prioritize opportunities for digital and physical connections to create a virtuous customer cycle.”

Three cheers for the CEO of Office Depot for articulating what many of us know and have been talking about for some time. Get the right staff, well motivated, trained and working together with one focus, the customer, and you are on to a winner. The store staff are the heart of the organization and using technology to help them, train them and share information across the organization is the best use of technology not for its own sake. What he is also talking about is local interactions with the community as well, building the many touch points with their customers and making them feel valued. Well done! It can only lead to more success for Office Depot.

I think connecting more to stores is a great idea, however there have to be some clear boundaries and acknowledgment that it is a partnership. Bed Bath & Beyond is one case study example as they have been doing this for many years. Stores are able on their own to have a localized approach and opt into programs. However there have been instances where the buying team has been at the mercy of a wide range of overwhelming opinions. Bloomingdale’s has an excellent program of “specialists” that are trained in select departments. It’s certainly an easier task to manage with the small number of locations, but this created a forum and structure for trained field staff to communicate with corporate.

The more connection points that a retailer can make with a customer, the more valuable the relationship. The key is that the experiences for the customer, across channels are consistent and positive. By focusing technology on connecting the interpersonal and digital experiences, Office Depot is really on the right track here.

As today’s discussion regarding Walgreens is a perfect example of lack of customer-centricity, Home Depot goes entirely in the opposite direction.

Certainly nothing to disagree with in what’s reported about the general idea. Customers are, as they always have been, the core of success. So we must take into account what serves them best to make progress. On the other hand — the list of actions isn’t very exciting. I had hoped for something showing insight but we seem to have a list of typical corporate actions.

To be honest I’m not sure retailers are focused on either, at least as well as they should be, but I think too many retailers trust their systems more than their people — and by people I mean their employees and their customers. Obviously, with some notable exceptions, most store personnel could be better leveraged. But before you can do that you have to learn to listen to them, reward them properly, and give them the skills they require. As to Office Depot, the website might be fine (technology), but the stores are embarrassing (human intelligence).

I feel retailers should be human-focused first and then tech-focused. I have often observed retailers not ensuring proper knowledge transfer when it comes to using digital equipment. Store staff will never be able to deal with modern-day customer needs if they are not confident with the tools they are using.

Worse still, onboarding store staff for new initiatives becomes awfully difficult for retailers. I remember one of the retailers sharing how their employees hate it whenever they are asked to learn something new. To prevent store staff from rejecting new tech initiatives, retailers need to look out for these few things:

• The digital initiatives they are implementing should be easy enough to grasp and use.
• Come up with better strategies to deal with change management.
• Ensure accurate knowledge transfer before they directly practice tech initiatives with the walk-in customers.

By doing this, retailers will be able to develop store personnel expertise and ultimately ensure a deeper relationship with customers.