Kroger’s CIO weighs in on digital innovation trends at NRF show

Yael Cosset, chief information officer and senior vice president at Kroger, joined Sucharita Kodali, vice president at Forrester Research, at the National Retail Federation's Big Show for a conversation on Kroger's digital journey and how that transformation impacts customers and associates.

"We continue to invest in our digital transformation journey by enhancing our customer and associate experiences, recognizing that both are equally impactful to gaining loyalty and earning our customer's next trip," said Cosset. "Our aim is to be the fresh food destination by providing customers with an experience that gives them exactly what they want no matter how they shop and use our digital capabilities to support associates, making their jobs easier and enabling them to spend more time doing what they are best at—interacting with customers."

Cosset explained Kroger has invested significantly in customer facing digital innovations to provide greater value and savings. He cited examples such as making weekly circulars digital, so ads can be shopped from directly and digital improvements to make customers aware of available savings they have not engaged with on products they shop and love the most. The associate experience has too benefited from tech upgrades, Cosset shared, referring to mobile technology in stores offering tools for customized learning and training experiences, task management and providing the ability to better assess product availability to support in stock levels and fulfillment.

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Asked what digital transformation efforts successfully help to find, train or retain the best associates, Cosset said, "Digital transformation efforts have dramatically reduced our time to hire by implementing digital-first HR solutions. Training applications have been developed using world-class design practices to emphasize ease of use, enhancing speed-to-excellence. Lastly, as we do for our customer experience, we are measuring if the technology we are deploying improves the associate experience by monitoring Net Promoter Score for our associates' solutions so that we can constantly improve the impact digital transformation has on associates."

Cosset also shared insight on the retailer's approach to artificial intelligence and how GenAI can help the retail grocery industry.

"Above all, we remain committed to growing and retaining the trust of our customers and that means responsible AI development to benefit customers with an enhanced experience and even greater value," Cosset said. "I believe gen AI is already impacting and will continue to impact the grocery industry broadly and in a transformational way. We continue to use AI and GenAI across the business for improvements such as more relevant creative marketing content, better search outcomes on digital platforms, greater personalization for customers, easier solutions for our associates, and many more areas. Like all technology, we view AI as a resource for our customers and associates to improve our human connections, not replace them."

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