REMA 1000's Øistein Burøy Olsen on Hyper-Personalization, Scan & Go & AI | Live from Paris

Hello, everyone.

This is omnitalk retail.

I'm Chris Walton, and I'm coming to you live from the Vuzion podcast studio in booth 043 at the NRF Big Show Europe in Warehouse Paris.

Now, joining me is a man who I just learned spent some time in Arizona.

He's an Arizona Sun Devil by trade, and I love that, if you know me.

And his name is Eystin Olsson, and he's the head of digital customer experience at Rhema 1000 in Norway.

Oistin, welcome to Omnitalk.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Exciting.

Yeah, I can't, first of all.

So how did you end up matriculating at Arizona State University?

I gotta ask that to start.

Yeah.

Long story really short, I went to North Dakota.

You did?

Which Seinfeld said on a show we had there.

Never been there before, never coming back.

Armpit of the usa.

Too cold.

I play golf.

Okay.

All right.

Hence, asu, Arizona.

Asu.

Yeah.

And you're a Seinfeld fan as well.

Not too much happening up in North Dakota, so.

And Grand Forks.

Yeah.

Right.

So nice place.

But that's why I went to that show.

Wow, you're hitting the trifecta of wall and interest.

Arizona and Seinfeld.

My God.

Or the Double Factor, whatever the heck.

I actually started to see the show one more time now.

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while, but starting on episode one.

Are you.

You're watching it again?

Yeah.

That's so great.

Oh, man, you're my best.

You're my best friend already.

I can't get enough of that show.

I watch clips every day before I go to bed.

All right, so tell us now.

Let's dial in the professionalism now.

Let's talk about your job, talk about your role, and also about Raymond 1000 Norway, too, because I don't know that our listeners back home will be as familiar with it.

No, Norway, a small country, and then we are part of Norway.

So I understand that not that many people know who we are.

Soft discounter, one of the biggest in Norway.

If you know Aldi, we're kind of based on Aldi philosophy.

Okay, so that's us.

700 Stores.

700.

Okay.

Yeah.

Norway is actually the country in Europe with highest density of stores.

And if you know the Norwegian landscape with mountains and all that stuff, you wouldn't believe that, but we are.

That's why we have that many stores.

To be a small country.

And my role is head of digital customer experience, which means that I work 90% of our on Our app, which the customers use.

We have one app that covers it all.

Yeah.

Right.

So you spend most of your time on the app space from a digital standpoint.

Yeah.

Really?

Okay, so.

And that covers, you said, 90% of it, for the most part.

90% Of my and our team's time.

But it of course goes into the physical space because we only have brick and mortar.

We don't have home delivery yet.

So, you know, how do you work on how do you bridge the phone?

People have their nose into their phone into the physical space in the store.

Right, got it.

So you guys don't have delivery, and so you're actually looking at your app in terms of how do you create a more engaging in store experience and a more connected, loyal experience with your shoppers at the end of the day.

That's really fascinating.

Yeah.

Both before, during, and after the shopping trip.

Wow.

Okay.

All right.

So what brings you to Paris this week?

What brings you to this show?

Yeah, so first of all, I like nrf.

Never been in Paris at nrf.

This is the first time here.

But I'm speaking later today on the panel, so that's kind of my main reason to go here.

So they invited you to come and speak?

Yeah.

And what are you going to be speaking about on the panel later today?

It's hyper personalization.

Hyper personalization.

As opposed to personalization.

Hyper personalization.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, what are you going to say about hyper personalization?

What are some of the big takeaways for those that maybe aren't going to be able to watch your presentation but are maybe listening at home?

Yeah,.

For us.

And this is going to sound like something everybody says, but it's a customer first.

We have tried to do personalization where we can see the KPIs moving in the right directions.

Everything looks great, but the customers doesn't really applaud us or really feel that they gain something, even though they do, because we nudge them in some direction.

So for us, we're more into actually giving something to the customer that they can help them in their daily life.

Kind of like we usually say, a Spotify experience.

So it's something that you just need to have because it's so great in your daily life.

Right.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but, like, you seem like a very humble guy, too, like the app and the loyalty that you all instill at Rhema.

It's pretty remarkable in terms of the number of downloads that you guys have acquired over the years.

And that's probably because of the digital Customer experience that you oversee, what all went into that to make that happen.

So we've been on journey for about 10 years now.

It started out with being an app where you got personal discounts.

And it was really simple.

It was you got 10% discount on the 10 items you bought or you spent the most money on the last 10 shopping trips.

Okay.

So we call it 10 on 10.

10 On 10?

Yeah.

Okay.

So it was a discount app, basically personalized pricing.

But what happened was that you could just connect your card, your credit card, and then you could actually just delete your app because you didn't need it, because you knew that you got 10% discount anyways and you couldn't do anything else with the app.

And it had some other flaws.

For example, after Christmas, you still got 10% discount on your Christmas items because you, you know, that was the rule.

So we actually changed a little bit.

So we still have personal price or discounts, but it's more advanced, better for the customer.

And now we are trying to create digital experience that actually saves people or help people during the daily life with, for example.

What's an example?

I was going to ask you.

Yeah.

My favorite example right now, because we're all into it, is scan and go.

I know many have tried scan and go also many have failed.

But I think we have pushed it a little bit further when it comes to that.

We have put everything into the app.

So basically the customer journey, if I can tell you that, no, I'm a.

Big fan of Scannigo.

So you please.

Yeah, yeah, please keep saying, please keep talking.

So everything is in the app.

It's bring your own device, you bring your bag or you can pick up a bag and then you bag the items while you shop.

We have a cradle for your phone.

You scanned items, bag them and then you swipe to pay and you get a QR code and you go through a dedicated fast track gate.

So basically you don't go through the self checkout area or anything on the way out, which the customers love.

I bet.

It's amazing how good the MPS are and the customers that start to use it continue to use it.

And this is new in Norway, I know other countries, I don't know about the States, but in Denmark it's quite common.

But you still have to go through the checkout area.

But for us it's a new customer experience.

So now we are teaching the customers and we are rolling it out for all stores during this year.

Right.

Wow, that's exciting.

So the key point there, one of the key points I always mention whenever I hear about a successful scan and go implementation, there's always a controlled exit point.

Still, it's not like you're just letting them walk out of the store, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that is two parts to it.

Okay.

One is so the store manager's control.

And we are a franchisee organization, so we have individual store owners, but it's mostly the customer experience because at least for the Norwegian customers, we're not used to doing this.

So just walking out of the stores feels really bad.

You feel like a thief who's watching me?

But when you can scan the code, a barcode and a gate opens, it tells everybody this person has done everything.

Right.

Now you can leave.

Yeah.

You're kind of hand holding them along the process, so to speak, in a lot of ways, which matters from a consumer experience, design standpoint.

Which gets me to my next question, actually.

So you're here at NRF Paris.

There's a ton of retailers you can learn from.

What do you think makes a great customer experience in the rhema realm of things?

What defines that for you?

Yeah, so we, we're a family owned company and I think when you are a family owned company, you are, at least in my experience, you tend to also look back at what was the beginning of this company, what was the success factors back in the days and what can we learn?

And for our part is.

So you can say that I work in loyalty programs and in that area.

Yeah.

But we actually say that we work with relationship programs.

So we call it even internally a relationship program.

Yeah.

And it heads back to the beginning where if you talk about hyper personalization back in the days before Internet, before digital, you know, it was, it was hyper personal.

Right.

Because you had, you had the.

What do you call it, the store on the corner.

Right.

Pick up the phone.

Yeah.

The store owner or the people that work there, they knew everybody.

And if you go into it, it's like they actually did home delivery as well.

Yeah.

For a lot of people.

And they knew your kid's birthday.

They came to the soccer match, you know, or the football match.

Yeah.

And the best store owners we have still do that.

They know all their customers.

So what we are trying to do when it comes to digital customer experience is just to extend that relationship into the digital so that we help the store owners to have an even better relationship with the customers.

Yeah.

And I imagine too there's an element of the customer being able to kind of personalize their own experience too, as part of that journey as well.

Definitely.

So that they're feeling that or taking the initiative on their own as part of that.

Definitely.

That's a really interesting idea.

I've never thought about that, though.

Like, even if I put that in my own lens of my own life, like my relationship with my wife, let's say I'm in a relationship, I'm not in a loyalty, you know, program, so to speak, which is what you're getting at, right?

That's what it is.

And that's a good lesson.

That's a good nugget for everyone to take back in terms of how are you thinking about loyalty?

Are you thinking about it on a truly relationship basis, and how you would talk naturally with those people that are important in your life.

And I originally come from banking and insurance.

Okay.

And there it's more about KPIs.

Business KPIs.

But my experience in REM1000 is it's more about NPS.

If the customer likes us, everything else just comes along.

The numbers adds up.

We know that if they use the app, for example, if they love the app, they come more often to us and they spend more money.

Right?

Yeah, right.

Right.

So it's a little bit of mind shift, I think, that we also had to go through.

Okay, got it.

All right, well, let's get you out of here on this, because now that I know that you're a Sun Devil and a Seinfeld fan and you just gave me a big nugget on how to think about loyalty, I imagine I'm going to be barking down your doors again in the future to come talk with us and interview with us.

So I'm curious if I say I'm here interviewing you again next year, what's.

What's the one thing you hope to accomplish in your job from a digital experience perspective that maybe you don't have lit up yet at this time that you can tell us about.

Yeah.

So.

And then I have to say AI.

Oh, yeah, we haven't talked about AI yet.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

And for me personally, and our team is so AI.

And we use cloud code.

Okay.

So that just opens up a door within R and D for us, which we haven't really.

We are not that many people because we are a soft discounter, low cost, but now we can prototype test new things a lot faster.

And the domain that we have talked about since we launched the app, which we now can start to test out, is how do we help the customer to know what to have for dinner and if they are missing toothbrush or toilet paper when they come to the store.

You know, the biggest pain for the customers are what to have for dinner.

Right.

And if you in whatever agent you have now, if you hand it your receipts, your personal receipts from whatever company or store and you ask it, what should I have for dinner?

It's pretty accurate, really.

And if we as a company can give it even more instructions or signals, it's even more accurate.

And if we can connect it to our store, what's in the store and what kind of recipes do we have, it's so accurate that I hope the customer just can open their shopping list and it's pre filled out.

You know, so next to really having a success on scanning go, I hope we will have something rolling on that space.

Get to the next edge of generative commerce, basically, is what you're saying.

Yeah, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so you can also tell.

You can also help your customers know what they've forgotten to purchase too.

So it sounds like the toilet, but you know, hey, you haven't bought this in a while.

Do you need to restock?

You don't want to go home and not find yourself with a rol.

Yeah.

Awesome, man.

Well, thank you so much.

That was great.

Really, really a pleasure to meet you and thank you for stopping by.

I know you're a busy guy.

You got to go on stage here in a few minutes.

So really appreciate your time.

Yeah, thank you.

All right.

And thanks to Vujin for supporting all of our coverage.

And thanks to the NRF big Show Europe here in Paris for allowing us to come in and bring you great interviews with my friend, my new friend, my fellow Sun Devil osteen here from Rhema 1000 in Norway.

And until next time, as always, be careful out there.