“It’s really simple: If you’re not meeting the wants and needs of the customer, you’re done. There's not a lot of loyalty here."
This week's quote is by the eminent American businessman, the president and chief executive officer of Walmart Inc. - Mr. Doug McMillon
Doug took the reins of of Walmart in 2014, after starting his career at the huge retail chain unloading trucks, when he was just a teenager. He has worked in Walmart ever since. He is the youngest CEO to lead the company since the founder Sam Walton lead the world's largest private workforce, with 2.3 million employees. This retail giant spends more on ecommerce, customer service and in-store technology.
Under Doug's leadership, Walmart is making life easier for busy families and building trust with customers as it is heavily investing in associate wages, benefits and education. That includes a debt-free, dollar-a-day college program and an expanded parental leave policy. It has even launched Project Gigaton, to fight climate change.
Working in Walmart since so many years (started in 1984), he has realised that everything is about meeting the demands of your customers. If you want to build trust and loyalty, you simply meet their demands the best possible way and keep them satisfied.
At CNBC’s Evolve Summit in Los Angeles, he said, “Walmart is not arrogant, we could go away at any minute. I think most of us act that way every day. If you’re not willing to fail — and we are failing at some things — you’re going to go away." He also said that, at Walmart, “everything is open to change.”
He has been taking a lot of steps to work towards this. For example, Walmart launched a membership program last year, 'Walmart+'. But instead of focussing on growing its subscribers, Doug is focussing on enhancing customer experience at every step of the way. Even though he has been getting a lot of pressure to share numbers and upscale it real quick, he said he will never sacrifice customer experience for subscriber numbers.
At the Morgan Stanley Virtual Global Consumer & Retail Conference, he said, “One of the worst things we could do would be to sell a bunch of Walmart+ memberships and then have them be dissatisfied because they can’t get fast delivery times or spots."
"Customer is the king." Even though this is a really old saying, not everyone follows through with it. That is why, at DDSN we resonate with Doug as designing and developing technology for easing the customer experiences is what we do! We help our clients with accessible, beautiful and responsive websites, apps and digital platforms, to improve their customer experience, and also enhance their internal operations, to make it more efficient.
We understand how different businesses have a completely different target audiences. That is why it's of utmost importance to understand the needs and wants of each type of audience, and design digital technology to appeal to them individually. From appealing to the target audience of educational institutions, to associations, manufacturers and NGO's, at DDSN we have done it all.
Today's Quote
Who is Mr. Doug McMillon?
Carl Douglas McMillon is an American businessman, and the president and chief executive officer of Walmart Inc. He first joined the company as a summer associate in high school, he became the company's fifth CEO in 2014. He previously led the company's Sam's Club division, from 2005 to 2009, and Walmart International, from 2009 to 2013.
After high school, McMillon attended University of Arkansas, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1989. The year after that, Doug got his MBA from University of Tulsa. He called Walmart & told an executive that he was interested in training at Walmart to become a buyer after finishing his studies. Soo, he rejoined Walmart, as an assistant manager at Tulsa. After finishing his MBA, he moved to Walmart's Bentonville headquarters to join the buyer-training program.
Doug is also the chairman of the Business Roundtable. It is an association of CEOs of America's leading companies. He serves on the boards of directors of the Consumer Goods Forum, the U.S.-China Business Council and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. He also sits on the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board and the advisory board of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China.
Doug has also been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
At DDSN we continue to work on improving our digital technologies to best service the customers everyday. Customer services lies at the heart of DDSN's operations, and we make sure to develop and design digital platforms that match customer's needs and preferences.