← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#816: Shipt's Courtney Owumi on achieving and demonstrating CX ROI
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The agile brand.
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Welcome to Season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast. This season we're going all in on Expert Mode, MarTech, AI and Customer Experience, talking with the people and platforms behind the brands you know and love. I'm Greg Kilstrom, your host and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of martech, AI and marketing ops. Hit subscribe or Follow to make sure you always get the latest episodes and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And make sure you check out our sponsor TecSystems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com now let's dive in.
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What if your most persistent customer complaint wasn't a flaw to be fixed, but a key that could unlock an entirely new business model? Agility requires not just the ability to pivot, but the organizational courage to act on customer insights, even when those insights challenge your most fundamental business assumptions. It's about being willing to dismantle something that works in order to build something that works better. Today we're going to talk about CX that pays off and how both achieving and demonstrating ROI is key to becoming a truly insights driven organization. We're going to explore how a major brand listened to a difficult truth from its customers and completely transformed its marketplace strategy, turning a major pain point into a massive competitive advantage. And we're doing it live from Las Vegas at the Medallia Experience 2026 event here at the Wynn Resort. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Courtney Owumi, VP of Consumer Experience and Membership Engagement at Shipt. Courtney, welcome to the show.
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Thank you for having me Greg. So happy to be here.
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Yeah, really looking forward to this conversation here. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Shipt.
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Of course. As you said, I'm the Vice President of Consumer Experience and Membership Engagement at Shipt. Under my remit I have product marketing, membership marketing because we're a subscription based program as well as consumer and customer insights. Shipt, if you're not familiar, is a same day delivery service. We partner with retailers and grocery stores to provide goods same day we shop the goods and deliver them to our customers. We are a wholly owned subsidiary of Target and and we really strive to have the best customer experience that we can.
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Great, great. So yeah, let's dive in here and gonna talk about a few things but I wanna start with the strategic layer here and in looking at a case study on Shipt's successes, it mentions the cost trifecta. So markups, fees and tips as a key insight driving a churn. Many companies collect this kind of feedback, but acting on something so fundamental to the business model is a huge leap. What made this particular insight to ignore and elevate it from a data point to a strategic imperative?
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Yeah, so the cost trifecta, we deem it that at Shipt, that's what we call it. But these issues are industry issues. When you are in a third party marketplace, it is the most pervasive issue for your customer perception. It is also inherent to the business model of running a third party marketplace. We do not own the inventory. Thus, instead of getting your eggs for $4 on one of these third party platforms, you may be paying for 20. Right. And we keep that 20 cents for our revenue cost structure. So it is known throughout the industry what made it so imperative. As we were thinking through how do we take this specific set of guests? We were working with Target for their membership program, target circle 360. And we were brainstorming how do we bring enterprise value to this select group of guests. And we turned to the customer data. This is the issue as we think about that cost trifecta of markups, fees and tips. We can't get rid of tips. Those are for the shoppers, the gig workers fees. There are regulatory fees, there are reasons to have fees. Sometimes our retailer contracts need fees. Markups is a lever that we own that we can control. So that's how we landed on this could be the thing that could change the industry. Nobody else is doing it. We can do it for this select group of customers. And, and we're excited about the results that we've seen so far.
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Nice, nice. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about this then. So you mentioned the no markups initiative was specifically for the Target Circle360 membership. What was the strategic thinking behind using a membership program as the vehicle for something like this rather than implementing something like a universal price adjustment?
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Yeah, I think a few reasons. One, like I said, it is part of the cost structure. So we had to be thoughtful and select as we thought about having this type of benefit for the customers. The reason we chose to do it through the Circle360 membership is we were already a benefit of the Circle360 membership. Shipt already comes with your Circle360. You get the best of Target, same day delivery and the best of your local grocer or your local pet store. But we wanted to encourage folks to really Explore that third party marketplace and really understand what they, the full breadth of benefits that they have access to that they can't really get anywhere else through any of the other competitors. So that was really one of the main drivers on why we focused on that subset of guests. Cause we felt like if we were going to make that investment, that would be the place that would have the biggest benefit. And it opens the door for shipt to be able to talk to millions of new customers.
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Yeah, of course a change like this touches a lot of parts of the organization. It's not just something that one team can do and kind of not disrupt everybody else. Finance, marketing, operations, technology, even the retail partnership. From your perspective, what was the single biggest operational or organizational hurdle that you had to overcome to bring something like this to life?
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Yeah, two things come to mind as I reflect on this. And I wouldn't call them hurdles, but I would say they took the longest to overcome. The first one was just the initial stage buy in from executive leadership to make this investment. Right, to make this possible. What was so difficult about that is we had to develop a business case based on very little information because we had never done anything like this before. And we, we did run a small pilot to help us, you know, figure out some proof points that we had in our business case. But it was a process and not only was it we, we had to build this business case with a lot of unknowns, but we also had to do it very quickly and garner that momentum that we had in that moment. That was one hurdle, I think after we overcame that, the next hurdle, you know, it was clear product and engineering, they knew the capability they had to build that was super clear. The business development team knew what they had to do with retail partners. One of the other pieces that took a while was actually how do we market this? You know, how do you take such a complicated message that is not mass. Right. It is for a certain group of people. And how do you make it something that is an easy get, that is exciting and that conveys no one else is doing this and the value it can bring? We needed to convey all of those things as simply and as effectively as possible. And on top of the fact these, these are fees. Right. So there is legal guidance. So, so that, that was all the fun, working with a hand in hand with our legal partners and our creative teams to bring this to life. But through message testing and understanding how we deliver that message very clearly, we were able to do so.
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Yeah, because I mean that, I think that's an Important thing is the consumers. There's a lot going on behind the scenes. Right. So you know, and you don't necessarily need them to understand all of the things going on behind the scenes. And yet you need to communicate the value. Otherwise it's kind of you're just giving up money otherwise.
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Right, right. And they don't understand, they don't use it, they don't renew their membership. And those were all the things we were trying to get them to do.
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So let's talk about the impact and measuring the impact. And the results cited from the case study are certainly impressive. Multifold growth in order volume, double digit increase in cross shopping. How does having the right measurement and CX management platform enable continued growth here?
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Yes, I think it's critical. I think one thing that really helps us as we continue to measure this is thinking about the business impact alongside the CX impact, making sure we understand how is the customer sentiment or perception changing alongside how are behaviors of that customer changing? Because that helps us understand are we making lasting impact. So it's definitely a continuous cycle. It's not a a one and done. As we continue to refine this program and refine this benefit, but working closely with Target, working closely across the enterprise to make sure that we're able to offer the best value for our customers and keep a pulse on that is what's really important to us.
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Yeah. And then from the long term measurement perspective, how has this Maybe changed the way that your team measures and even thinks about customer lifetime value. Has the definition of a valuable member evolved as a result?
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It has, it has. So as I mentioned before going back to this, this flips our, our profit model on the head for this select group of customers. So the old way that you or the traditional way you would think about customer lifetime value is a little hidden and it's actually a journey we're currently on as a company. As we think about how do we think about lifetime value? Because these Circle360 members inherently have less revenue attached to their orders or but they are ordering and they are extremely valuable. So how do we think about changing our definition of value to understand how do we continue to invest in the right groups of customers? We have other levers of value that we pull for other groups of customers as well. So just thinking through how do all of those get incorporated? That's a journey we're on right now.
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Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, all of this just at a fundamental level is using data and insights to make better business decisions, better customer experience decisions as well. What general lessons, or maybe future lessons has doing something like that. You know, this is one initiative, granted, a very successful initiative and a journey that you're on, as you were saying. But how has this changed the culture and even the role of how experience insights are used at Shipt?
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Yeah, I would say we are very lucky at Shipt. I would say Shipt is truly a consumer centric company. We've been on our CX journey since about 2020 now. Shift is relatively young, so for about five years we've been six years we've been on this journey. And I would say about two years ago we made the choice as a company to say we are truly customer centric and we are going to put customer sentiment metrics in our company okrs and accompanying all of our company strategic initiatives with these types of metrics. I think it speaks a lot to how empowered our team is to think about these things and how we measure that sentiment in combination with those business metrics and the why. And I'm really excited for what it will continue to evolve to.
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Yeah, yeah. And I love that you brought up the empowered part of that because I think that's the having access to data, having access to tools is great, but when employees and team members are able to use that and, you know, democratizing access to that, it really unlocks, you know, so much potential, both short term and long term. How do you see technology evolving? Your ability to not just react to feedback, but to do things like you've already shared, like proactively model and shape the customer experience.
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Yeah, I love that you said that about democratizing data. I tell my team that all the time. I feel like our job is to be influencers, right. We need to democratize the data in a way that everybody can understand and feel empowered to use it and that's how we know we've influenced them to leverage it. So I love that. But going back to the point of your question about how we're excited about the future, you know, I'm really excited about how AI is going to help enable us, you know, top of this year, to start getting to our insights faster. And I'm really excited about how we'll be able to leverage some of these new emerging tools to really synthesize data and spend less time mining and more time acting in. Looking forward to a time where we can start to your point, foreshadowing what could happen. Right. Like being more proactive versus reactive. I think we're starting to get on the cusp of making that switch and it's exciting to know that it feels like it's closer than further away.
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Yeah, Love it. Well, as we wrap up here, a couple, a couple last questions for you. I know we're in, you know, early days of the conference here, but what's been a highlight of Medallia experience so far for you?
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Yeah, you know, I work from home, I'm remote, so it's just been so lovely, the energy with everyone here, so many like minded individuals. I have some of my team members here with me, so it's great to connect with them in person and other folks in the industry. So I think it's just the energy of being in person is really awesome and it doesn't hurt that it's Vegas and the weather is nice, right?
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Exactly. Love it. Well, last question for you. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently, instantly?
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I'm curious. Right. Never stop learning. I do have two engineering degrees even though I sit in marketing now. And I think within me is an innate desire to just know why? Root cause analysis. So always asking questions, making sure I really understand the problem, I think is what I like to do to make sure I'm always learning.
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Love it. Well, again, I'd like to thank Courtney Oumi, VP of Consumer Experience and Membership Engagement at Shipt for joining the show. You can learn more about Courtney, Shipt and Medallia by following the links in the show Notes
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this episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack, tech services, talent solutions, and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn more@teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you like the episode, hit subscribe and drop a rating. Subscribe so others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just visit GregKilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S T r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co. Op. From ideation to create creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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The Agile Brand.