Walmart
Provide a comprehensive overview of the current Walmart customer experience.
The brief
Walmart, a retail giant, sought to understand the current state of its customer experience across multiple locations. Our team was tasked with uncovering pain points in both in-store and digital interactions, providing Walmart with actionable insights to enhance the overall shopping experience. Our findings were instrumental in shaping a strategic plan that we presented to Walmart’s board and CEO.
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Provide a comprehensive overview of the current Walmart customer experience.
Gather a range of insights across 3 different states (Texas, North Carolina & Illinois) and play these findings back in a digestible and actionable format. -
x6 team members split across 3 states (Texas, Utah & Illinois). Focussed research plan and defined research methods prior to arrival.
Impact
🔍 Conducted a thorough 360° evaluation of the Walmart Customer Experience, mapping all user interactions and identifying enhancement areas.
✅ Delivered a scored and prioritised backlog of actionable improvements, many of which were successfully executed to drive measurable impact.
🚀 The project paved the way for a dedicated second phase, focusing exclusively on optimising Walmart’s pickup and delivery services.
📈 Empowered the team with clear, data-driven recommendations, setting the stage for ongoing innovation and elevated customer satisfaction.
Phase 1 - Plan & Diagnose
The project began with an extensive research and discovery phase, designed to capture the full picture of the Walmart customer experience across different regions. Working as a team of six, we carried out research across three states to ensure we were reflecting both national consistency and local variation.
Approach
Our methodology combined multiple research techniques to uncover insights from both customers and staff:
Customer shadowing – Observing real shopping journeys end-to-end to identify friction points and moments of delight.
Focus groups – Gathering customer perspectives collectively to explore perceptions, expectations, and behaviours.
In-depth interviews – Speaking with both customers and Walmart staff to understand motivations, challenges, and opportunities.
My Role
In a limited timeframe, I took responsibility for coordinating research across the three teams working in different parts of the country. This included ensuring consistency in methodology, capturing enough detail to reflect the entire end-to-end experience, and synthesising findings to be shared across the wider project team.
Phase 2 - Digest, synthesise & summarise
With such a broad volume of research gathered across three states, it was crucial to make sense of the detail in a way that was both comprehensive and accessible. To avoid overwhelming stakeholders, we set out to capture the depth of insights while making them clear, structured, and actionable.
Approach
Progressive documentation – Each research activity was documented as we progressed, ensuring nothing was lost and insights could be referred back to.
Thematic synthesis – On returning, we revisited the findings, grouping them into themes and identifying patterns across customer and staff behaviours.
Digestible storytelling – Insights were restructured into formats that told a clear story of the current state without flooding stakeholders with data.
Outputs
Individual reports for each research method: customer shadowing, staff shadowing, focus groups, interviews, and environmental analysis.
A summarised video capturing the essence of the research in a compelling, shareable way.
Insight posters to bring findings to life visually across the business.
A presentation deck to provide a structured narrative of our research and findings.
My Role
I played a central role in shaping these outputs, ensuring that the research not only reflected the detail of what we’d uncovered but was also presented in a way that stakeholders could engage with quickly and act upon.
Phase 3 - Provide direction
After synthesising and packaging the research, the final step was to ensure it drove clear, actionable change across Walmart.
Approach
Showcasing the journey – We presented the findings as a cohesive story of the end-to-end Walmart customer experience, making the complexity of the research digestible and compelling.
Multiple playbacks – Due to the impact of the work, it was presented numerous times across the business, from operational teams through to board members, and eventually in a summarised form to the CEO.
Action-oriented outputs – Every presentation was structured to not only share insights but also highlight tangible opportunities for improvement.
Role
Produced a Service Blueprint to map the existing experience and highlight opportunities for improvement.
Delivered a strategic roadmap to guide future enhancements in both customer-facing and operational services.
Supported stakeholders in understanding how the findings could be implemented across teams and functions.
Outcome
The work had a significant influence across Walmart, driving both awareness and action. Following the success of the project, we were commissioned to focus specifically on Pickup & Delivery Services, where we were able to implement a number of physical and digital changes to enhance the customer experience. (Work cannot be shown in detail.)
