What it takes to ensure a positive customer experience It's easy to take for granted the complex web of dependencies that go into making an everyday occurrence like grocery shopping a safe, pleasant, and valued experience. The people who work in a Winn-Dixie retail store must coordinate their activities with several behind the scenes departments that are also interacting with each other. These include Marketing, Merchandise, Operations, Facilities, Environmental Health & Safety, and Training.

Imagine 3 different kinds of audits scheduled for one store, all at the same time! A surprise facilities audit for 4 hours. A surprise safety audit for 5 hours. On top of this, the store's doing an inventory check. With no disruptions, an inventory check takes 10 hours. Each one demands the store manager's full attention, Martinez says. An inventory check pulls our retail floor team away from shoppers. This means we have to hire extra staff to tend to our customers. The two surprise audits caused a major bottleneck. The manager had to handle the audits first. It held up inventory and we were forced to eat the cost of idle workers.