Hear Why One Walmart Executive Thinks Omni Is Walmart's "Superpower" at Scale

Welcome back everyone.

This is our final interview of the day here.

This is Omnitok Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are here at the Walmart Seller Summit and standing between us we have a lovely guest to conclude our coverage and that is Karthika Krishnasamy.

And Karthika is the VP of Omni Growth Experiences and Services at Walmart.

Karthika, welcome, welcome.

Thank you for having me on the show.

Yeah, it's great to meet you.

It's great to have you on.

So tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and your role.

Well, hardware engineer by choice.

Okay.

Turned software engineer.

Hardware to software.

Yes.

Got into consulting, insurance, telecom, defense, retail.

Loved retail.

My God, if you did not want to leave retail checking boxes off for you.

This is incredible.

Yeah, Done a bunch of stuff in retail like buying, pricing, inventory, much ops, specialty retail, Sam's Wholesale and now at Walmart us.

And now I've been at Walmart us.

So this is my second time with the company.

So I'm a boomerang to the company.

Boomeranger, yes.

It's been a year.

Okay.

Yeah.

If I take my first time and second time, I'm close to eight years for the company.

Yes, well, Walmart specifically will focus on that.

One of your many roles, but that one right now we.

Walmart describes itself as a tech powered Omni channel retailer.

What does the word Omni mean to you and why is it so important, especially at Walmart?

Omni is truly our superpower, if I really think about it.

And the proximity of our stores, our app which is truly an Omni tool and the services that we provide, all three combined, we are truly creating an ecosystem if you really think about it.

And it's beyond channels.

And we want to serve our customers and members where they are, we want to meet them where they are, whether they shop with us on our app, at the comfort of their home on the go or in one of our stores.

So we want to unlock Omni at scale and provide convenience that no other retailers can unlock.

Yeah, yeah.

So Karthur, I'm curious, I'm going to put you on the spot here, kind of play Stump the guest here with you being this, this being your first time on omnitalk.

How do you know your omnichannel strategy's working though?

Well, our numbers speak for itself.

It's kind of an interface response.

I was hoping you'd say that, quite honestly.

Of course.

Yeah, of course.

We love numbers.

Our omnishoppers truly Shop with us more often.

They buy more product categories, they spend with us more, they visit us more, they shop with us both in store and online.

And they love what we offer.

And it's very clear in our NPS their satisfaction scores are way higher than a one channel shopper, whether it's physical or online only.

So it's super clear that they just love and our strategy is working.

What surprises you most or what have you found are changes to how an omnichannel shopper is shopping.

Like, what's different now?

That's actually a fun one.

I mean, if I really think about it.

So let's play it out, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's say the winter is coming.

Yeah.

We're gonna buy a set of four tires.

All right, you're at your home, you're on our app, trying to browse, discover you found the best brand.

It's a marketplace item.

Yeah.

You can literally ship that item to our store.

You can get our service appointment booked from the comfort of your home.

Drive the car, drop the car off.

And while the car is getting serviced, you can check off your grocery list.

Right.

It's immunization season.

You can get your flu vaccine.

There we go.

All right.

You can get your prescriptions.

Your car is done.

Off you go.

One stop shop.

One stop shop.

The intent of the customer actually started at home, but then you finished your shopping at our store.

So the lines between physical and digital are truly blurring.

And it's our job to show up for our customers and members in an omni way.

And I think we are doing it.

And we have tons of examples.

And that's just one example of a journey that we unlocking.

Right.

So you can get your tire.

So basically my big takeaway is through Walmart's capabilities, I can get my tires rotated and getting a shot in the arm all in the same trip.

That's what I used to take away from the groceries.

Yes.

And your groceries.

And bananas.

And bananas.

Let's not forget that.

All right, all right, all right, all right.

Well, let's get you out of here on this kind of.

The topic du jour in many conferences that we attend is AI.

How are you specifically looking at that emerging technology in your role?

Yeah, AI seems to be the buzzword right now.

And I can give you one example that my team is really working on.

So Gen AI.

So as you walk into our store today, if you want to find an item or you want to check for prices, you can do that with our app.

But what we really want to Unlock is as soon as you walk into the store, imagine your weekly grocery shopping list pops up and then we can navigate you personalized to that specific store aisle by aisle and check off every single item on the list and make it conversational.

So that's something that we are truly trying to work on and unlock from an omni standpoint.

And that's a gen AI capability.

And AI is like a spectrum of capabilities, right?

We use ML, it's there, we classify, we predict.

And obviously like gen AI is a thing right now.

We create content and then we think about conversational AI, which you heard from Tracy speak about Sparky.

And then we are also trying to think about agents who can act on your behalf and then multi agent.

So from classification all the way to multi agent, we are thinking about this space truly and innovating for our customers and members and how do we make our shopping easier, faster, seamless, right?

Wow, Karthika, I'm looking forward to that day.

I can't wait to check back in with you again in a few months or days maybe.

I don't know how long that will be, probably months.

But I love that you didn't say years either.

That's great.

No, love that you had the time to share your experience with us today and give us a few examples in our audience, a few examples of just what we can expect from the shopping experience at Walmart.

We want to give a big thank you also to Walmart for hosting us today, for helping us to bring you the perspectives of Karthika and all of the wonderful Walmart executives that have joined us on the show today.

We are signing off for the afternoon.

Thanks to all of you who've been following along and until next time, be careful out there.