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AI, Tasks & Culture: How The CoOp Is Redefining Frontline Retail · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  The key thing about AI is a genetic AI is the ability to
• 0:03
  have multiple agents that can connect, talk to one another and
• 0:07
  execute intelligent processes. So do things for us, right?
• 0:11
  So there is a real benefit there.
• 0:24
  Hello and welcome back to the Retail Podcast.
• 0:26
  Now, I'm always spoilt when we have a retailer and partner on
• 0:30
  the call with us or on the episode with us.
• 0:33
  And today is one of those episodes.
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  So Chris, why don't you start us off?
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  Why don't you give us a quick one minute on who you are and
• 0:41
  what you do? Yeah.
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  Hi, Alex. So I'm Head of Store Support for
• 0:45
  the Mid Counties Corp. I've been working for Mid
• 0:48
  Counties for 28 years now and over half of that time was I was
• 0:53
  either a store manager or a district manager running stores
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  for our food business. So in my role today, I really
• 1:00
  feel that I'm best placed now to support those stores with what I
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  know and I hold responsibility for a loss prevention team, our
• 1:08
  communications team, our manager operating model, also
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  simplification and continuous improvement.
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  So we counties is one of the leading independent cooperatives
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  in the UK, got over 750,000 members, 6 1/2 thousand
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  colleagues. We operate across food, travel,
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  early years, childcare and also utilities.
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  But from a food perspective, we mainly operate out of our core
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  counties have gone up lost to share Worcestershire, Wiltshire
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  to Shropshire and sort of West Midlands.
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  And yeah, so really kind of mixed estate lots, lots of
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  interesting things going on and that's why we were really keen
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  to look at this kind of solution.
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  That's fantastic. Thank you.
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  Mark. Why don't you give us an
• 1:49
  overview of who you are and what you do?
• 1:51
  Hi. Thanks, Alex and hello
• 1:52
  everybody. So Mark Williams, Managing
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  Director for Workjam EMEA, been with Work Jam for four years
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  now, brought in to set up and lead our European expansion.
• 2:03
  Prior to that 16 years with Shell in global retail
• 2:07
  operations. I've got a passion for kind of
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  where technology meets kind of business process and how we
• 2:13
  extend that to the all important frontline because for me that's
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  where it really matters. That's where the rubber hits the
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  road. They're the individuals who are
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  dealing with the front line customers coming into the store
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  or into the operation day in, day out.
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  So without engaging them, without communicating them and
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  providing them with digital tools to do their job, you don't
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  tend to get the productivity that you need off what is a very
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  cost sensitive, cost conscious, typically operating environment.
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  It's perfect. Chris, I want to start by
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  casting your mind back because obviously you've been in the
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  business a long time. When you were looking at the
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  problem, there must have been early signals or early signs
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  that the existing system for frontline communication.
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  And being someone who's come from that world, I understand
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  that sometimes there is nothing apart from, you know, pen and
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  paper when people are talking to each other.
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  But I was, I'm curious in, in what were those signals that you
• 3:10
  saw when prior to all of the transformation that you've gone
• 3:13
  through that this way of working is no longer fit for purpose?
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  And then if you, if you don't mind, how did that conversation
• 3:21
  evolve into a partnership with with Workjam?
• 3:25
  Yeah. So what we started to see was a
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  really sort of disparate frontline that we're just
• 3:29
  overloaded with tasks and activities and communications
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  coming up them in all kinds of different manners, none of which
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  were particularly productive. And they had to go and search
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  for those communications. So we really were trying to
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  start a journey of understand how do we put communications and
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  tasks into the hand of our frontline colleagues at the time
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  that they need them for the right people at the right time.
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  This really started as a bit of a task journey for us.
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  We were really trying to find a vendor that could support us in
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  terms of managing our tasks of frontline.
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  As we went through the process, we realised there was lots of
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  opportunity to try and bring in a much more sort of virtuous
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  circle of bringing communications and tasks and all
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  the kind of things that colleagues would need to find or
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  to sort 11 place. We realised quite early on that
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  actually we were really, really tasked hungry as a as a food
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  retailer in particular, and trying to find a way that
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  converted tasks and communications in a simple form
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  to to the frontline colleagues was absolutely vital for us.
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  So I think that piece of work that we realised quite early on
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  was that we needed something more than a task provider.
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  We need something that brought it all together and would
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  surface to all colleagues at all times.
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  I. Got you.
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  I'm just curious, how much of the sort of feedback did you get
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  from the shop floor? How much were they involved in
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  the process? Yeah.
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  A lot. So we've done some early, this
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  was quite early in odds of what we call our simple store
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  journey. And we were really trying to
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  understand the kind of complications of for frontline
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  colleagues, both in food but also in our travel and early
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  years nurseries. And so we do regular pulse
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  surveys with our colleagues. So that was a key part of the
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  information we get back. We hold colleague council
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  meetings. So this is kind of tends to be
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  more of our frontline colleagues rather than managers who would
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  give us regular feedback as to what was stopping them being
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  productive. But most importantly, my team
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  were out there on the ground in the field being side by side
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  with the team just to really understand what were the the
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  points of friction, what was causing them issues?
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  What was stopping them being as productive as they possibly
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  could be. I.
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  Got you. Mark, in terms of when you
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  obviously look at customers that are similar to sorry yeah to
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  customers who've had the same challenges as Chris and mid
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  counties Co-op. What do you feel are some of the
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  sort of the things that have gone sort of silently by people
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  haven't really understood what's going on or or the need for
• 5:55
  transformation? What was unappreciated by
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  retailers that have gone on this journey?
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  Yeah. So I think it's two things.
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  It's it's helping them initially understand that the frontline is
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  kind of forgotten in any digital transformation.
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  So in the head office, we all have teams, we all have
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  solutions and tools that help us do our day job better or more
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  effectively and more efficiently.
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  But that never really penetrated down to the frontline.
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  There still tended to be dated standards, dated approaches, Pen
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  and paper and and a lot of retailers can kind of miss that
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  or perhaps they hear it, but are a little bit in denial.
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  It's only the forward thinking kind of retailers like like
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  Chris and the mid counties Co-op that that really say, OK, I
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  understand I have a problem here.
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  I'm I'm going to own that problem and how can I go about
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  fixing it? And when they get into the how,
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  how am I going to fix that? That's when the pocket of
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  values, pockets of value appear, right.
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  So, you know, yes, there's a productivity gain there.
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  Oh, look, there's, you know, some time liberation there,
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  which I can redeploy for more customer facing time, perhaps
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  talking about an upsell, perhaps increasing that basket spend, or
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  perhaps it might be the other way.
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  Perhaps it might be more efficient and effective
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  compliance procedures and audits, making sure things like
• 7:12
  Natasha's law, health and safety requirements are met in a more
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  timely way and a more controllable way and reportable
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  way. Again, liberating time.
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  That time then is kind of of redeployed and, and let's face
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  it, we're in a particular period of, you know, of, of almost
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  chaos, aren't we? I mean, there's been so much
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  disruption in retail and other industry verticals which we
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  serve as well over the last sort of 18 to 24 months, months that,
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  you know, people are now looking for that kind of that
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  productivity gain, that cost saving, that value add, where
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  they can get it. I got it.
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  Thank you. Chris.
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  Coming back to you when what's interesting when I read about
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  this is something that retailers try to achieve, but not
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  necessarily through this type of transformation.
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  And that's basically looking at the culture.
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  And so when you've got such a disparate business, when you
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  mentioned earlier you've got you've got stores, you've got
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  nurseries, you've got travel branches, how intentional was it
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  to sort of achieve A cultural outcome?
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  And what lessons would you share with other retailers who are
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  actually trying to build community at scale?
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  I think you're quite right. I think culture was something
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  that we really, I don't think we grasped initially.
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  It's something that we built on over time as we, as we
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  established work jam into the business.
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  I think the mistake a lot of businesses make is they think
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  the technology is going to drive the culture, but actually the
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  business drives the culture, that the technology supports the
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  culture. And I think everyone was looking
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  for that golden bullet, that work jam would just coming to
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  the business and suddenly the culture would be exactly how we
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  wanted it to be. And actually, that's not how it
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  works at all. It's, it's that tool to enable
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  us to drive a different type of culture within our within our
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  business. And I think it was little steps,
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  you know, understanding, for example, the difference between
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  what is a task and what is a communication, I think is a
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  great example. So, you know, the communications
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  team that worked for me when we actually really analysed it,
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  when we started putting it through the funnel of work, Yam
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  was actually 95% of what we sent out was a task.
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  It wasn't a communication, it was a task.
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  And we were telling people to do things all the time.
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  So we started to break things into buckets of what is a tell
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  and what is an advice and what is a comms.
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  And we started to change that. And where it was kind of
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  borderline, we're trying to tweak it towards the comms
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  because the comms is more engaging than a tell.
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  But then when there's a clear, you must do this by this time,
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  then that would be a task. And then we'd use that
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  functionality so that that really slowly but surely sort of
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  changed that, that that cultural direction of the business where
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  we tried to make more things more communicated using its
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  communication rather than the task wherever possible.
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  And but then also it's really important to try and find
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  something that worked across central support teams, across
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  the different trading groups and all the kind of like disparate
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  outposts of the of the business, I guess.
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  How does that, I mean, I'm just curious in terms of
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  prioritisation then in terms of how that has an impact on how
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  managers are prioritising work or or measuring in what, what
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  gets sent to stores from head office.
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  Has that had an impact on that or or not?
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  Because obviously 95% what was called communication is that is
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  a huge number. Yeah.
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  So what it what it's done is allowed us to very much
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  streamline those activities over over multiple years now.
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  So it's not been something that we did straight away.
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  Initially we effectively replicated our paper based
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  system into digital form and we didn't really change too much.
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  But that immediately had a lot of upside in terms of being able
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  to remotely see performance, remotely see things are being
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  done without having to send people to a store to see that
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  that work had been completed. Over time, it's allowed us to
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  really effectively understand when and where people are
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  completing tasks, why they're and also the sort of the
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  validity and the value in those tasks being completed because
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  now we've got better data. If we're not really doing
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  anything with that data, why did we ever ask them to do it?
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  So that really helped us to question that over time.
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  And actually, we've probably halved our tasks now over the
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  last year. In fact, we've taken over 3/4 of
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  a million tasks, annual tasks out of our business.
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  Is it in the last 12 months? Wow.
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  OK. That's so I don't know if this
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  sort of follows on from that point.
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  But when you when you're when you're both looking at AI
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  integration and how you're helping colleagues find answers
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  to questions faster and then to be able to act with confidence.
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  How do you envision AI sort of in the future?
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  Or can you talk through what that experience is from the
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  frontline in terms of how how this is helping frontline
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  employees with with their query, sorry, with their queries.
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  Yeah. I mean, I can probably take the
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  AI question here. So, so yeah, I mean, AI is, you
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  know, it's I'd say it's in its people would say it's maturing
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  and that's been around for a little while, but I would say
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  it's still in its infancy. The key thing about AI is a
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  gentic AI. It's the ability to have
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  multiple agents that can connect, talk to one another and
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  execute intelligent processes. So do things for us, right?
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  So there is a real benefit there.
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  In the example that you gave something like work jams AI
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  agent, it is there solely for the front line.
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  And that is exactly to do what you said.
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  It's to give them access to something immediately.
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  They might not know what it is that they're looking for, but a
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  few keywords, a couple of asks into the AI agent and they can
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  link directly to it. It might be a manual, it might
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  be a process, it might be a follow on education, it might be
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  a learning management fast track programme and all of that is
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  great. What's coming next from Work Jam
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  are all of those other agents as well.
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  So when they ask that question about a management referral
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  programme, it automatically enrols them and unlocks the
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  training for them to, to start on that particular journey.
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  And it also unlocks the HR agent, which perhaps flags them
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  for a fast track or additional increment or a reward and
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  recognition coming from the HR team.
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  So AI is going to touch the frontline, I think in a big way.
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  It's, it's, it's going to blow up in the next 12 to 18 months.
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  The other key side to frontline AI is all of the VMS, all of the
• 13:20
  visual merchandising, all of the visual merchandising standards,
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  some of the, you know, optical recognition capability that's
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  out there today looking products, are they accurate on
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  the shelf? Do we need to restock?
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  Can that agent then speak to a stocking agent which will then,
• 13:38
  you know, get to the distribution house to send more
• 13:40
  stock into that store? Now we're really getting
• 13:43
  intelligent and automated processes as a result of a
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  genetic AI working well together.
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  That's how I see it evolving. And as I say, we're, we're
• 13:50
  starting and leading with our kind of AI agent and then that
• 13:53
  will connect out into into other capabilities.
• 13:56
  Chris, I know it's something that you're looking at from from
• 13:58
  Work Jam to support you with as. Well, yeah, I think it's the how
• 14:01
  it takes it to the next level. So we very much built our
• 14:04
  initial rollout of Work Jam with every core knowledge centre for
• 14:08
  example. But it's quite practical, you
• 14:10
  know, encyclopaedia of information, but it's quite hard
• 14:13
  to maybe pull some of that information out really easily.
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  So we want to make it incredibly easy for the frontline
• 14:18
  colleagues just to be able to ask a very simple question and
• 14:21
  go directly to the right solution or answer for them, the
• 14:24
  right policy, whatever it might be.
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  I think it's also how it enables our central teams to be able to
• 14:29
  analyse data quick, more quickly.
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  So for example, quite as retailers, we've got often ask
• 14:35
  stores to submit a photo to show, you know, adherence to
• 14:38
  some display or something like that.
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  Then the exciting bit for me is how the AI can analyse the
• 14:43
  photos that come in, for example, and just say every
• 14:45
  store's compliant with immediate effect rather than someone
• 14:48
  having to sort of have a look and through all that
• 14:50
  information, try and understand this.
• 14:52
  Some real gains for us there, both in productivity at the
• 14:54
  front and done, but also essentially as well.
• 14:56
  Looking at the final two questions, when you when you're
• 14:59
  looking let's go from the frontline in terms of privacy
• 15:04
  and frontline colleagues being worried about their privacy, was
• 15:08
  that Chris, is that I'm trying to sort of separate fact from
• 15:11
  fiction. What what was, what's the
• 15:13
  reality in in the real world where it's been deployed?
• 15:16
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:17
  Reality was there was some concerns about that in the early
• 15:19
  stages, no doubt at all, because it's the first time we'd really
• 15:22
  asked other colleagues to join a sort of central application on a
• 15:27
  on a on mask on a basis. However, the reality was that we
• 15:31
  had every individual site, every individual travel branch
• 15:34
  probably had their own and WhatsApp group, Facebook group
• 15:37
  that was completely unmonitored on police from a central
• 15:40
  perspective. And you know, anything went on
• 15:43
  those. The beauty of being integrated
• 15:46
  with work, we have our messaging facility that works within the
• 15:49
  application and we now get thousands and thousands of
• 15:52
  colleagues talking to each other on a monthly basis within
• 15:55
  Workjam. And that means it's controlled
• 15:57
  as in it won't let them. We don't monitor it, we don't
• 15:59
  watch it, we don't need to, but the philtres within it stop
• 16:02
  certain things being discussed but also our open in channels.
• 16:05
  It means that colleagues are sort of self policing
• 16:07
  themselves. So when colleagues talk to
• 16:09
  colleagues, they tend to answer each other's questions, they
• 16:11
  tend to police each other. We don't very, very rarely get
• 16:14
  involved in any discussions that are going on.
• 16:17
  On the application. There was obviously a level of
• 16:18
  concern around sort of the bring your own device conversations of
• 16:23
  the stores of concerns that we're going to walk into shops
• 16:26
  and everyone's walking around with their phone in their hand
• 16:28
  and they're staying at the screen and not talking to
• 16:30
  customers. But actually we found completely
• 16:32
  the opposite because it's about freeing colleagues up to have
• 16:34
  more time to deliver that customer experience.
• 16:37
  And, you know, we've really seen that benefit.
• 16:40
  Mark, do you have anything on that?
• 16:42
  No, just it's a very familiar story, Chris is kind of, we call
• 16:45
  it shadow IT. So we talk about those WhatsApp
• 16:48
  channels, we talk about those Facebook pages, unsecure,
• 16:52
  unsanctioned with, with with our products and putting everything
• 16:56
  into work jam. Now we take care of all of that
• 16:59
  in the back end with the data privacy, with all of the
• 17:02
  philtres, that profanity philtres and everything else
• 17:05
  that's built into that as as well.
• 17:06
  So it we actually see see the opposite and people learn more
• 17:10
  towards it, thinking I feel a little bit safer and I feel more
• 17:13
  secure now. Perfect.
• 17:14
  Thanks, Chris. Final, final question and just
• 17:17
  my chaotic brain can't sort of break it into two, so I'll throw
• 17:20
  it out. That's one question and let you
• 17:22
  decide which way you want to answer it in terms of looking at
• 17:26
  the future of Frontline and what what they have on their belt as
• 17:30
  they used to call it. I'm really curious on on your
• 17:33
  thoughts of the future and what that looks like.
• 17:36
  And then in the mix, what was the biggest surprise that the
• 17:39
  business sort of said that? I don't know.
• 17:41
  Was there an unexpected consequence of this
• 17:44
  transformation? Yeah.
• 17:46
  So in terms of in many ways I see us refining and refining
• 17:50
  Work Jam over time, there'll be certain other things that we
• 17:53
  bring in. So there'll be we want to bring
• 17:55
  in more integration. We want, we want Work Jam to be
• 17:57
  the front door for our colleagues for everything in our
• 18:00
  in our business. So in fact, they know they log
• 18:02
  into Work Jam, they can find out about where that helpdesk job
• 18:06
  has got to. When's that engineer coming to
• 18:08
  fix this in my store, you know, where can I get access my
• 18:12
  colleague pulse survey? Where can I access any
• 18:14
  information that I want to get to?
• 18:16
  So there are some more integrations and more work we
• 18:18
  want to do, but that's actually reducing the amount of separate
• 18:21
  platforms into one hopefully. So it feels it's all under in
• 18:24
  one place. But we do want to refine and
• 18:27
  refine tasks and communication. So it's really the critical
• 18:30
  information at the critical time for that frontline colleague.
• 18:33
  So certainly in the past, you know, you, you would have to
• 18:35
  send that everything to everyone rather than it saying this is
• 18:39
  relevant to a colleague who has got post office in their shop.
• 18:41
  This is relevant to a colleague who has got, you know, every
• 18:44
  parcel service in their shop. So only that relevant group of
• 18:47
  people would get that relevant piece of information.
• 18:50
  And then in terms of the sort of unintended consequences, I think
• 18:53
  that the, the messaging piece I just mentioned, I think was the
• 18:56
  big one for us because what we found, and we had a, a couple of
• 18:59
  examples where, you know, we had a system crash on a Sunday on a
• 19:02
  particular system. And before you know it, there's
• 19:06
  a couple of 100 conversations going on within the channels and
• 19:09
  all the colleagues are helping each other and fixing it.
• 19:11
  And we never had to get involved in anytime.
• 19:13
  And, you know, people telling each other solutions, they've
• 19:15
  worked it out for themselves. It's, it's so much quicker and
• 19:18
  more efficient than actually our central teams getting involved
• 19:21
  in the conversation. So some of those wins have been
• 19:23
  really fantastic. That's.
• 19:24
  Wonderful. Yeah.
• 19:25
  Anything that impact when you see natural conversation from
• 19:29
  your frontline, you can't. I'm going to talk fast because
• 19:31
  we're going over time and I promise that we'll get it.
• 19:33
  Mark your thoughts on the on the front line of the future.
• 19:37
  What's your vision of that? Yeah.
• 19:39
  So I think fully informed, I think being able to get what
• 19:45
  they need to do their job in the most effective and efficient way
• 19:49
  possible within seconds, almost instantaneous, remove burden,
• 19:54
  remove noise and get them focusing more on the on the
• 19:57
  customer. You know, as retail moves more
• 20:00
  and more touchless, we want to make sure that those experiences
• 20:04
  when customers actually are face to face are the best that they
• 20:08
  possibly can be. So the more time that we can
• 20:10
  liberate, more processes we can automate, and the more human
• 20:13
  interaction we can have. The better that's that's it for
• 20:17
  me, I think no. That's wonderful.
• 20:18
  Thank you. No, the only the reason I
• 20:20
  brought you all in is because I'm always curious.
• 20:22
  I always have to ask a closing question.
• 20:25
  Is there a question I should have asked that I didn't ask
• 20:27
  because you know, is it like I'm not a specialist in all elements
• 20:30
  of frontline and I'm just curious, is there is there
• 20:34
  something that normally people ask you that I've totally
• 20:36
  missed? If not fantastic.
• 20:39
  Thank you so much. But I'm just, I, I have to
• 20:41
  finish off with like making sure I've captured everything.
• 20:45
  Is there, Chris may be with you? Is there, is there a question
• 20:48
  that people always ask you that I've not asked you?
• 20:49
  Yeah. The question I get typically
• 20:51
  asked is, is the level of activations, how many colleagues
• 20:54
  are actually involved in in the platform and things like that.
• 20:56
  So I'm glad. I asked the question, why don't
• 20:58
  you tell us the level of? Yeah.
• 21:01
  So typically we're seeing now kind of about 92% activation
• 21:05
  level across across the business across 6 1/2 thousand colleagues
• 21:09
  and on a we track then are kind of what we call our active
• 21:12
  users. That's colleagues that log into
• 21:14
  work jam more than a week. And we're averaging about 50%
• 21:17
  on, on that, that now. So really pleased with the
• 21:20
  progress we're making. This isn't it takes time.
• 21:22
  It does take time to get particularly frontline
• 21:24
  colleagues. You've got to give them a reason
• 21:26
  why. Why do I want to log in this
• 21:27
  week? You know, we have 100% active
• 21:30
  users when it comes to our store management levels, but it's the
• 21:33
  frontline colleagues who sat on a checkout on a Saturday
• 21:35
  evening. Why do they want to log into
• 21:36
  work jam and see what's what's going on?
• 21:38
  And we're on that journey and it's really growing.
• 21:41
  That's. Fantastic.
• 21:41
  Mark, is there anything from your side?
• 21:44
  I think typically I get Mark, that sounds great, but where and
• 21:48
  how do we start? It's, you know, it's yeah, we're
• 21:51
  a frontline platform that that does a lot, lots of modules that
• 21:55
  interoperate seamlessly and then people go blind.
• 21:58
  Me, it's comms. Is it task?
• 22:00
  Do I look at shift? Do I look at learning?
• 22:02
  So, you know, we have to unpack that and simplify it and say,
• 22:05
  look in, you know, 6 to 8 weeks, we can have you up and running
• 22:08
  communicating with, in Chris's case, 92% of of his workforce.
• 22:12
  It's just and we can use, we can use that as a change enabler for
• 22:16
  what comes next. And that's what I say in
• 22:18
  response to to that question. That's fantastic, Chris.
• 22:21
  Mark, thank you so much for giving up your time and I look
• 22:24
  forward to seeing how maybe if you're at NRF US catching up and
• 22:28
  seeing how how are you both getting on?
• 22:30
  Thanks. Alex.
• 22:31
  Good to talk to you. Thanks, Alex.
• 22:33
  Thanks.