Once upon a time I remember being able to walk into a grocery store on a bustling Sunday afternoon. I’d grab a basket, browse the aisles with the other Sunday shoppers, eat samples that were offered to me, fill up my containers in the bulk food section and wait my turn in line to checkout, sometimes chatting with the other shoppers that were waiting in line. This was my pre-COVID-19 shopping experience.
Enter present day and grocery shopping isn’t quite the same. With our current shelter-in-place guidelines (I’m in San Francisco) the only outdoor activities I can partake in are ones that involve walking to essential businesses, so I’ve come to cherish my walks to the grocery store. To keep my outings varied I go to different stores and I’ve observed that my shopping experiences are vastly different depending on the store. These are trying times and I think it’s fair to say that most of us have never gone through anything like this in our lifetime: being told to stay at home as much as possible, to constantly wash your hands, to stay 6 feet away from anyone outside of your household. Many are overwhelmed, anxious, and confused, and this has led to things like panic-buying and tense shopping incidents.
There’s one store, however, that acted swiftly to the ongoing changes, and adopted service design principles to enforce the city’s measures in a way that helped customers have a less stressful shopping experience. I’d like to shine the spotlight on Rainbow Grocery.
Service design, according to the Nielsen Norman Group, is the act of “designing, aligning, and optimizing an organization’s operations to support customer journeys”. All parts of a service need to be aligned and involves multiple touchpoints. To be successful at this there are 3 key components:
- Tools — physical or digital artefacts that support a customer’s experience
- People eg. employees
- Processes — the workflows required to meet customers’ expectations
Service design is often likened to the frontstage and backstage of a theatre performance — the front stage being where customers see and experience everything the theatre wants them to see, and the backstage, which consists of the behind-the-scenes team that is integral to a customer’s experience.
So how does this apply to Rainbow Grocery?
Let’s start with the tools
Rainbow has placed signage in appropriate places to help manage customers’ expectations, which is important when entering unfamiliar territory.
This sign in the photo below is loaded with important information to show how Rainbow is responding to the ongoing changes:
- New store hours (which are temporary)
- What hours are reserved for high-risk shoppers
- What time to arrive by to be guaranteed entry into the store
Before even entering the store Rainbow has informed customers how long they can expect to wait. I’ve always appreciated knowing estimated wait times, whether it’s waiting my turn at a rollercoaster or enduring the agonizing wait to get to the front of an airport check-in counter.
Rainbow has also placed signage to remind people to stay 6 feet apart and included orange markings on the ground to help with the visualization. Instacart workers (a delivery service) know not to wait in this line and to head straight on and line up by the garage.
Once inside we’re reminded once again to maintain distance from other shoppers and a sanitizing station is set up to help customers feel safe and protected during their shop. Other signs are appropriately placed to let us know why things aren’t business as usual. When I first arrived at the bulk food section I was disappointed to see everything closed off but upon reading the sign’s reasoning the disappointment eased into understanding.
A final sign is appropriately placed once we’re ready to pay for our items to wait in line and to use the marked taped lines when standing behind other waiting shoppers. Having spoken to people how uncomfortable they feel asking others to move away, these clear visual indicators likely help mitigate this issue.
And now for the people
When I told the cashier how wonderful the shopping experience was (especially compared to what I’d gone through at Safeway the previous week…we don’t need to get into that) he thanked me and said he’d pass on the message to all the staff, who have been working so hard to adapt to the store’s changes. The cashier then said to me: “our main priority is to help customers feel calm”. When I heard him state this goal out loud I realized the Herculean effort it must’ve taken to achieve this goal.
How did Rainbow employees help customers remain calm?
- It was drizzling the day I came. Never in a million years did I expect an employee to walk up and down the line asking if anyone would like an umbrella.
- As I entered the store employees thanked us for our patience and directed us to the sanitizing station, which was complete with spray, hand sanitizer and gloves for us to wear while shopping.
- Because Rainbow were limiting the number of people allowed in the store they were more available to assist with customer needs. I’m not sure if I have a very obvious ‘I require help’ face or if employees have have a 6th sense for lost customers, but help was offered before I even had a chance to ask where I could find items.
- There was someone dedicated at the checkout line to manage the flow of traffic and direct customers which register to go to.
And the processes
This component may not be as obvious to the naked eye because it involves the workflows that are essential to maintaining that level of customer experience we’ve now come to expect from Rainbow. Changes to the workflow may have come from Rainbow management itself or guidelines imposed by the government. Changes could include, for example, training staff how to handle various situations or closing the store earlier to give employees more time to restock shelves so customers can be faced with a fully stocked store the next day.
Rainbow Grocery as a Service Design Blueprint
I’ve gone through my customer experience at Rainbow Grocery from start to finish and have broken down the key components that helped to elevate my positive experience. Now let’s see how all the processes, both front stage and back stage, work together to deliver this customer experience in a service design blueprint. Service design blueprints serve to document a particular customer journey and how an organization works across various levels to support this journey.
As you can see, Rainbow Grocery has implemented a lot of changes due to the pandemic from one’s typical shopping experience: arriving, browsing, paying, bagging groceries, and leaving.
New store and government policies have dictated new changes that have resulted in removed services (no bulk foods, limited cash handling, not using own personal bags/containers), additional precautionary steps (waiting in line to enter the store, wearing gloves, using sanitizers), and behavioural changes (maintaining 6ft distance away from others and avoidance of personal contact).
This snapshot view from one person’s lens is by no means a comprehensive service design project and merely serves to show how even some purposeful changes across different levels and touchpoints can enhance a customer’s experience. Reflecting back on the cashier telling me “our main priority is to help customers feel calm” I can see from the blueprint a glimpse of the processes that went into creating an orderly flow to achieve this goal. Rainbow Grocery has, knowingly or not, used design principles to adapt to their customers’ current needs from what is currently a chaotic situation.
