If you want to be a good manager, you should always begin with the end in mind and think of the customer at the centre, according to Rohan Cherian, Toys R Us Canada’s associate vice president of e-commerce and consumer technology. Speaking at the Signifyd FLOW Summit this week, Cherian said that having a seamless omnichannel approach proved to be the best strategy to adopt during Covid-19, hands down. But the modernisation and new channels that retailers adopted last year were actually just an
ust an acceleration of their five- to 10-year plans, according to Cherian.
To stay ahead of the game, he shared the following tips:
1. Think on your feet and make decisions quickly
Cherian said the pandemic presented many challenges to businesses, especially in the first few months, with governments implementing lockdown measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, so they had to make changes and do them fast.
“How do you connect the dots within your organisation? You don’t get to go to the office to do the key things that you need to do,” he said. “Regulations across Canada during Covid changed often so we always had to think on our feet very quickly, make decisions and look into our people, teams, the process of doing things and the technology.”
2. Pay attention to the voice of the customer
According to Cherian, they learned to value their customers even more during the pandemic, and most especially their feedback. They wanted to know what the customers wanted from them.
“A loyal customer is a valuable asset, but it is also amazing if you have a customer that gives feedback. And that was something we had to pay close attention to, the voice of the customer,” he said.
3. Look at all your channels and optimise where you can
“There is a lot of great stuff happening in our commerce world and you just have to tap into them. Think about your channels, think about how to use them, gather data,” Cherian said.
Toys R Us introduced curbside and in-store pick-up last year and partnered with food delivery service DoorDash to offer same-day shipping for products that were available in-store.
4. Always have open communication across the board
To have a seamless process in your organisation, Cherian said communicating with each other is always necessary.
“Open and honest communication is needed so you can all move in the right direction,” he said.
5. Ask the “dumb question”
“You can ask all the dumb questions, for us, there are no dumb questions. ‘Why are we doing this?’ ‘Why do we care?’ ‘Who’s going to benefit from this?’ and ‘Do we have everything we need?’,” Cherian said.
“Everything we were doing at the height of the pandemic all had that ‘fail fast’ mindset, testing everything, and yes, even asking the dumb questions.”
6. Always thank your team
Cherian said the Toys R Us team worked seamlessly during the pandemic, even with their test-and-learn model.
“Thinking about the partnership with DoorDash was a pivotal moment. Kudos to our team who came up with that solution and the offerings,” he said. “We didn’t actually think that was going to be something that would differentiate us.”
“All our teams did fantastic work during Covid, and they should know that.”
