“Hi, welcome to Office Depot,” doesn’t minimize it for Kevin Moffitt.
Every week, the workplace provide retail chain led by Moffitt tracks its “greet score”—the share of shoppers who say they had been welcomed on the entrance of the shop. Throughout that greeting, associates are additionally anticipated to ask pointed questions.
“It’s really intended to be a ‘What brought you in today? What are you looking for? What problems are you trying to solve?’” Moffitt tells me from Workplace Depot’s HQ in Boca Raton. The aim: “To try to get to know a customer as soon as they walk in the door.”
For Moffitt, who’s additionally president of OfficeMax and govt VP of mother or father firm The ODP Company, making that connection is a option to construct belief.
“It’s really thinking about the entirety of the customer experience and trying to create an environment where they feel like they are not only purchasing a product but solving a problem.”
In a digital world the place we spend a lot time watching a display, that’s extra essential than ever, reckons Moffitt, who’s been president since 2022 and leads some 12,500 associates. “There’s an overwhelming amount of choices available to just about anyone at any time,” he says. “And there is the lost artform—or it seems at times—of actually talking to another human being.”
Right here, Moffitt sees advantages for small-business prospects, whom he describes because the core of Workplace Depot’s shopper base. In buyer satisfaction surveys, the three issues that at all times earn the best marks are the corporate’s “helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable” associates, he says.
“Those words encapsulate exactly what we’re trying to do and our competitive differentiation in the marketplace, and I do think that comes down to trust,” provides Moffitt, who joined ODP in 2012 and was beforehand Workplace Depot’s chief retail officer and chief digital officer. “Having someone that you know and trust to do a job for you, particularly in the world of small business.”
Many small-business purchasers are regulars. “I’ve heard our customers say that, you know, ‘Susie in your copy and print center, I think of her as my marketing team,’” Moffitt explains. “At the core is this human-to-human opportunity for interaction that I think is really important.”
Workplace Depot balances its willingness to cease and chat with an acknowledgment that some folks want their ink, paper, and staples in a rush.
The corporate runs what Moffitt payments because the quickest retailer pickup program within the nation—with a assure. “If you don’t get an email from us in 20 minutes that your order is ready to pick up, we automatically send you a $20 coupon.”
Though it’d sound counterintuitive, Workplace Depot additionally enlisted synthetic intelligence to spice up human interplay.
ODP constructed an AI device connecting workforce members with firm data that was historically saved on an intranet, and even in a binder someplace, he explains. All associates carry cell gadgets with this digital assistant. If a buyer has a query like “How do I laminate this menu?” even a brand new affiliate can reply it, Moffitt says.
“It allows them to easily get access to that information and the processes or procedures involved so that they can take care of that customer right there in the store.”
For any retailer that wishes to construct belief, it begins with asking some primary questions, Moffitt suggests. “How would you want to be treated?” he says. “How would you treat one of your family members or friends? How would you want them treated if they were to walk into one of your locations or visit your website?”
ODP has a “5C” tradition that CEO Gerry Smith outlined early in his tenure, Moffitt notes. Its ideas: buyer, dedication, change, caring, and creativity. “My favorite C is customer,” Moffitt says. “If you start with the customer at the center and work your way from there, I think you’re going to have a whole lot better chance of creating that trust.”
Downside solved.
Nick Rockel
nick.rockel@marketing consultant.fortune.com
IN OTHER NEWS
Born with it
Warren Buffett had good motive to belief that he would develop rich, he simply revealed in a letter to shareholders. “As I write this, I continue my lucky streak that began in 1930 with my birth in the United States as a white male.” The billionaire investor identified that his two sisters didn’t get the identical rights as him till a lot later in life, Sasha Rogelberg experiences. “So favored by my male status, very early on I had confidence that I would become rich.” Buffett has lengthy seen success as largely a matter of luck—prompting him to pledge 99% of his fortune to charity. Discuss cash nicely spent.
Tough begin
If anybody doesn’t belief AI, it’s Gen Z. Roughly 60% of that era assume the know-how may substitute their jobs within the subsequent decade, a current survey reveals. Against this, simply 6% of administrators and VPs imagine AI places their roles in danger. Youthful staff in all probability really feel extra threatened as a result of they’ve little energy over how the know-how impacts their firms, Chloe Berger writes. They may even be nervous as a result of they’re simply beginning out—and infrequently doing entry-level work that AI can replicate. Truthful sufficient.
Social name
With regards to retaining youngsters off social media, Australia isn’t trusting platforms to police themselves. The federal government has proposed new legal guidelines that would see Fb, Instagram, TikTok, and X get fined as much as $32.5 million for failing to dam youngsters below age 16. In the event that they go, Oz could have among the hardest guidelines aimed toward defending children from social media. One massive query is how purveyors would implement such a strict age ban, with observers doubting it’s technically possible. Certainly these Huge Tech brains can determine it out.
Empty energy
Apparently, European grocery customers can’t belief their very own eyes. That’s the warning from EU auditors, who say shoppers are susceptible to being tricked by complicated and typically deceptive meals labels. Though the EU requires producers to record substances, allergens, and different info on packaging, they’re additionally allowed to magnify potential advantages and downplay different qualities. Including to the confusion, totally different front-of-pack dietary labeling methods are in play all through the 27-country bloc. Time for an easier recipe?
TRUST EXERCISE
“For decades, scientists have published peer-reviewed studies on hazardous chemicals in plastics and have called out for action, all to no avail. Now medical practitioners on the front line of this plastic crisis are sounding the alarm ahead of the final round of UN negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty. The urgent message cannot be overlooked: Plastic is a threat to human health.
The lack of transparency around the plastics industry has led academics and campaigners to search for facts—and those facts are startling. Some 16,000 chemicals are used in plastic and yet only 6% are currently subject to international regulation. Of those 16,000 chemicals, many are endocrine disruptors, meaning our hormones and bodily functions are under constant attack when exposed. With a new chemical being produced every 1.4 minutes, our exposure is only set to rise.”
You’re soaking in it—the poisonous soup created by the plastics business, which has betrayed its public belief. These chemical compounds trigger most cancers, infertility, coronary heart illness, and different sicknesses, notes Leonardo Trasande, director of the Division of Environmental Pediatrics at New York College’s Grossman Faculty of Medication. Recycling—pitched by the business as a panacea—may make publicity even worse.
Trasande flags the massive social prices of plastic chemical compounds too: 1.22% of America’s GDP, or $250 billion in annual well being care bills.
He additionally warns firms and traders that they will’t escape company liabilities for plastic-related air pollution. By the tip of the last decade, that tab will in all probability high $20 billion within the U.S. alone. In different phrases, legal guidelines—and lawsuits—are coming for offenders’ income.
With ultimate negotiations on the International Plastics Treaty underway till Dec. 1, Trasande needs to see a cope with tooth. The keys to company accountability and lowering public danger: necessary testing of all chemical compounds, funding to scale up pure options, and a cap on manufacturing. The payoff? A future that isn’t made from toxic plastic.
