The document provides recommendations for improving customer service at Walmart Corporation. It identifies opportunities such as adding more associates, keeping shelves stocked, improving technology like the inventory system, and obtaining customer feedback. Benefits of improving customer service include increased revenue and better inventory tracking. Risks include time/costs and employee turnover. The recommendations are to improve the S.M.A.R.T. inventory system, create a unified improvement plan, hold weekly corporate meetings, and document improvements.

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Improving Customer Service for
Walmart Corporation
Prepared for
Walmart Corporation
Prepared By
Jeffrey Bonanno
February 28, 2012

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Table of Contents
PAGE
Title Page.........................................................................................................................................1
Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................2
Executive Summary......................................................................................................................3-4
Introduction......................................................................................................................................5
The Opportunity...........................................................................................................................6-7
Current Situation..................................................................................................................6
Key Success Factors............................................................................................................6
Analysis of Alternatives.......................................................................................................7
Strategic Options..................................................................................................................7
Benefits and Risks of Improving Walmart Customer Service.........................................................8
Benefits of Improving Customer Service............................................................................8
Risks of Improving Customer Service.................................................................................8
Final Recommendations...................................................................................................................9
Power Point Slide Link..................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Executive Summary
Walmart is one the biggest retail store in the country and mas many customers that come
in and out of the store for many reasons. Customer service is the most important factor for a
retail store because there are a lot of certain aspects that are linked to it. This summary will
briefly go over Improvement and opportunities that exist for this retail organization. There are
also many benefits and risks involved with improving customer service. Change is always on the
radar for Walmart and thinking of alternatives are always on the horizon. Process improvement
requires critical thinking, this is something that corporate needs to discuss in order to take
Walmart onto the next level beyond the competition.
Walmart Improvement and Opportunity ideas
How to improve Walmart customer service can be a difficult task in itself. Some of the
first thoughts that might come to your mind might be to add more associates and registers. This
is probably one of the most important things besides making sure the shelves are stocked. The
more associates you have the more customer service you can provide. This is something that is
lacking in the organization right now. Their main focus is having the least amount of associates
while being able to maintain the same scores and percentages as having more associates. This is
something that I believe is heading in the wrong direction for the company in the long run.
Having associate incents will always help as well because it will incent the associates to maintain
good work ethics. Providing feedback will help the organization get an idea what they need to
improve upon. If there is no feedback than you don’t know what direction you’re heading and
you will not know how to get to that next level.
Technology improvements can always be added to help such as self-service registers and
an improved inventory system. The self-service registers will help ease the express registers, this
will help reduce the lines and provide faster service to the customers. Self-service registers are
up to the store manager’s discretion. An improved inventory system will greatly help improve
customer service mainly because it can find products in a more efficient way. Another alternative
method is a special phone application that can be used to scan items that you can put into a
virtual cart. There will be a special register that you can check out at that reads your phone.
Everything can be paid for at this register, once this is done than you can grab your items and
leave. This would help improve line wait times.

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Benefits and Risks in Improving Customer Service
Benefits
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Better Inventory Tracking
Merchandise Searching
Improved Ordering System
Improved User Interface
Risks
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Time and Costs
Scheduling and Timeline
Employee Turnover
Requirements Inflation
Recommendations
For recommendations the main key points are as follows:
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Improved S.M.A.R.T system
Unified Improvement Planning
Weekly Corporate Meetings
Improvements Summaries/Documentation
These are the main recommendations that I have for this customer service improvement. This
will be later discussed in the final recommendations section.

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Introduction
Walmart’s focuses mainly on their strengths which is their customers. Every year
Walmart increases their sales in millions every year. They improve upon the gross margin and
cash sales. Their business model revolves around change, change and change. Constantly
evolving as a company and trying to rise up to that next level as the leading retail industry for
many years. Improving customer service is something that every retailer can improve upon and I
believe Walmart is not exactly leading in the right direction or if so it’s a block in the road to
move on to that level as the greatest retailer in the industry. Improving customer service is not an
easy task for any retail company. This can require a lot of trial and error or talking to other
corporate managers for what works and what doesn’t. The big question is how can Walmart
improve customer service? There is no simply answer or solution but there are many aspects that
you can combine that will greatly improve their rating in time. Some main improvement ideas
include; more associates, keeping stocked shelves, technology and providing feedback. These are
the four main aspects that will greatly help Walmart’s customer service. The opportunities will
be greatly discussed in this discussion.
The four main opportunities:
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The current situation
Key success factors
Analysis of alternatives
Strategic options
Benefits and risks are very important because this can make or break any decision that is
made to improve customer service. Scheduled meetings and critical thinking must be used to
determine what needs to be done. Here are my main key benefits and risks that I will be
discussion briefly about.
Benefits:
• Better Inventory Tracking
• Merchandise Searching
• Improved Ordering System
• Improved User Interface
Risks:
• Time and Costs
• Scheduling and Timeline
• Employee Turnover
• Requirements Inflation
These are the main points in my discussion that I will be briefly discussing. Improving
customer service can make or break a company. I believe if the current customer service plan for

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Walmart continues this way they will not improve to their full potential. This discussion is based
to enlighten and inform of the possibilities that Walmart can achieve in the future.
The Opportunities
The Current Situation
The situation at Walmart as a whole is quite well. The organization is the top leading
retail store and is making millions every day. The current situation at Walmart could be better
though. Restocking and making sure the shelves are also stocked to ensure the customers are
guaranteed products. There is also The S.M.A.R.T system, this has huge opportunities. It’s a
software that has all the inventory information, scheduling, ordering and product look up. Right
now the SMART software is quite basic with not a lot of user interface. The software only allows
you to type in the UPC numbers and the basic functions of “no” and “yes”. I would like to
implement that but more in a graphical interface like UNIX and Windows. You will be allowed
to do much more such as being able to type “words”, connect to the internet, upload to the cloud
and search the cloud.
Temporary employees is another issue that I believe is hindering Walmart’s progression
as an organization. These employees only will last with the company for 90 days and will either
be rehired as a temporary again or as a part time associate. But this could be an issue because the
associates hardly will have any incentives for providing good customer service because they
don’t quite feel “part” of the company. This Is an important factor because these new temporary
employees might not care as much as if they were a part time associate because they will only be
around for 90 days than let go. This both has risks and benefits to the company, this will be
briefly discussed in the risks and benefits section.
Key Success Factors
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Corporate meeting decision making – These meetings need to happen on a weekly basis
to keep in touch on how their company is accepting the change and how the scores are
looking compared to before the changes. New immediate changes must be made
constantly to keep improving upon the changes that might need tweaking. Two main
factors are listed below that will help add to these meetings.
o Critical thinking
o Social networking
Inventory turnover – a very important factor. Even though Walmart is keeping their
shelves stocked the company needs to make sure that
Maintain competiveness – you want to keep competitiveness by being able to match what
the other retail stores are selling their products. You also want to do what other retail
companies are not doing by introducing new products and innovating new changes to the
company.
o Price matching
o Low prices
o Changing

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Analysis of Alternatives
The main focus for the alternatives is the S.M.A.R.T system. There will be some other
alternatives that will be briefly discussed.
Improved inventory S.M.A.R.T system – this is something that will help Walmart grow
and become a great leader in the retail industry. There are a few ideas that can vastly improve
this system to bring Walmart to the next level. The idea behind this new improved smart system
is that it will have a graphical user interface that is easier for the associates to use. These are the
main improvements that this software will provide
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Graphical user interface
Cloud computing – the thought behind this is if all Walmart’s inventory counts and
products would be on the cloud for easy searching.
Word search for products – this would be part of the graphical interface being able to
search for product with words instead of only being able to use a UPC number.
Scheduling system – easier scheduling system for the managers using a graphical
interface.
Ordering system – using a graphical interface and easier to maintain ordering. This
graphical interface will help better determine what needs to be ordered and what does
not. This will also use the cloud to see what other stores are doing as well.
Improved inventory – better and easier to understand for the managers and corporate.
Expand company growth
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Countries – expanding to more countries that are not as known will help the growth.
Neighborhood markets – have more mini markets that just sell food, kind of like a Sweet
Bay and Publix.
Gas stations – Have gas stations that are like 7-elevens.
Strategic Option
Strategic options to actually accomplish this is not an easy task.
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Corporate meetings – this was briefly discussed. This needs to be done on a weekly basis
to ensure the strategic options can be met.
Critical thinking – this is one of the most important. Having a lot of people on the team
and meeting on a daily basis will help improve the strategic option. The more brains the
better.
Unified Improvement planning – a model can be used to help determine what needs to be
done in a step by step process to be able to have a successful strategic option

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Benefits and Risks of Strategic Options
The benefits outweigh the risks for improving customer service in the long run. This is
something that will take many years to overcome. This should be more like a 5+ year plan to
successfully start the transition to these changes. Doing everything at once will more than likely
fail, this would be caused by too much at once. Small changes need to be made over a monthly
basis. Here are the main benefits and risks.
Benefits
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Better inventory – This benefits the company a lot because the better and more improved
inventory you have the more revenue and profit you can bring in.
Increased revenue and profit – this is an obvious benefit because the company will have
increased revenue and profit because of the better customer service that will be provided.
Customers will want to come back to your store.
Better shopping and work environment – Customers will want to come back to your store
because it will look clean and professional.
Smart system benefits
o Easier merchandise searching for customers – This helps find products faster
providing great customer service.
o Improved ordering system – this will help improve turnover. Every store wants to
have a low turnover and to successfully do this you must keep your inventory in
check. A better system will help do the job.
o Better inventory tracking – This will help find what specific products that you are
looking for either for your managers or a customer.
o Improved user interface – this makes it easier for the associates and managers.
o Cloud computing – all the Walmart’s can be connected via the cloud. This will
help find any product that is needed to be searched for. You can look up products
that you may not sell in your store but are in other stores so you can locate what
store what store sells that product for that customer.
Risks
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Time and costs – this could lead to more costs than expected and could lead to a longer
process. This is one of the most important risks.
Scheduling and timeline – scheduling is not that big of a deal they can always find people
that meet the requirements but sometimes a timeline can change which leads to more
costs.
Conflicts of personalities – this can be tough, you need to find people that have great
communication, team ethics and open minds.

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Employee turnover
Requirements inflation
Hard time adapting to the changes – this is a risk during the process of change.
Associates and managers might have a hard time adapting to change. Sometimes the
change can be ignored completely.
Final Recommendations
Final recommendations
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Improved S.M.A.R.T system
Unified Improvement Planning
Weekly Corporate Meetings
Improvements Summaries/Documentation
The improve S.M.A.R.T system is one of the main keys for improving customer service. In
order to do this the company needs to create a unified improvement plan and have improvement
summaries/documentation. In order to keep track of all this weekly meetings need to be held in
order to successfully transition the changes. These are my final recommendations for improving
customer service. Change is always constant, this is something Walmart has come accustomed to
and I believe this is something that can be accomplished by such a large organization. A change
of open mind is needed and perhaps success might be down the horizon.

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Power Point Slide Link
My Final Power Point SlideShare Link

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References
Howard, C. (2013, April 12). Walmart aims to improve customer experience. Retrieved from
http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/clark-howard/shopping-retail/walmart-aims-improvecustomer-experience-stores/nXJ6p/
Susan, B. (2013, January 15). Wal-mart tries to improve its battered image. Retrieved from
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-15/wal-mart-tries-to-improve-its-battered-image
Customer service flub hurts wal-mart. (January, 2013 28). Retrieved from
http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/01/customer-service-flub-hurts-wal-mart.html
Walmart’s dismal customer service scores drive customers away. (2013, March 19). Retrieved
from http://www.serviceuntitled.com/walmarts-dismal-customer-service-scores-drive-customersaway/2013/03/19/