Experts of Experience - #37 The Need For Speed in Customer Experience

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

On this episode, Tom Williams, Chief Experience Officer at Discount Tire, shares his journey from a part-time tire technician to a leadership role. He emphasizes the importance of empowering employees and listening to their ideas. Plus, he explains how Discount Tire prioritizes the customer experience by introducing innovative concepts and technology.Key Takeaways:Empowering employees and listening to their ideas leads to great choices and better customer experiences.How Discount Tire prioritizes the customer experience Ways Discount Tire uses technology to empower and educate consumers in their tire-buying process.Why Discount Tires evaluates success based on whether they are building dreams for their people and generating profits to invest in their vision for the future.Starting with empathy is key when designing customer experiences.–How can you bring all your disconnected, enterprise data into Salesforce to deliver a 360-degree view of your customer? The answer is Data Cloud. With more than 200 implementations completed globally, the leading Salesforce experts from Professional Services can help you realize value quickly with Data Cloud. To learn more, visit salesforce.com/products/data to learn more. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Our founder made a decision that, hey, you know what? We're going to fix tires for free for everybody, regardless. Whether they bought them from us or not, most people are charging $20 to $30 to do a flat repair. We do six to seven million flats a year free, so you can do the math. Without the people, it's nothing. Our whole company is that way. You're there to take care of people.

The thought was, when someone has a flat tire, you're having a bad day. We weren't planned for it. Instead of making someone's bad day even harder, why don't we make it a little brighter? I think it's so important that businesses are willing to give first, not only make revenue. You're really thinking about the human experience. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today, I am joined by Tom Williams, Chief Experience Officer at Discount Tire. Tom, how are you today? I'm doing wonderful. How are you? I'm doing very well. I've been so excited to chat with you because in looking at your experience, you've been with Discount Tire

since early on in your career. You were a part-time tire technician from what I gather. And 38 years later, you're the chief experience officer, which is an incredible journey. And I'd love to kick us off by hearing a little bit of your story and also how that experience of being there at such an early stage in your career and growing with the business has really empowered you to be the leader that you are today. 38 years ago, I got recruited by a friend of mine that was working part-time with the company and really fell in love with it. And so I joined on and worked my way through all positions within the organization.

So I started changing tires as a kid and fell in love with the company and decided to make it a career. And at that time, we had like 155 stores in the organization. Wow. How many stores do you have now? We have 1,200 stores. A lot of growth. Yeah, a lot of growth over the years. So made a career out of it. And when you did that, you started working out through different levels in the organization from starting the backroom changing to starting to handle more of the consumer side and the sell side and all those other pieces. And you worked your way through until you get your own store, keys to your own store.

And we promote from within the organization, which was great. And then, you know, from there is able to expand to the next role, which we call an AVP role, which you have a group of stores. Did that, was able to navigate through that time and then got a phone call to become the vice president of the Carolinas and ran both North and South Carolina and grew that and then got a tap on the shoulder to become the senior vice president of marketing and advertising and multiple other things. And then took over the operations side for a while of an SVP at Ops and then got a tap to become the executive vice president and CXO for the organization. So it's really been a journey of

this progression of holding about every seat there has been other than, you know, finance. I've never held something like that or supply chain and so forth. But when it comes to the operational side of the business, I've had the pleasure and fortunate time to have pretty much every hat. Yeah. And how has that experience of having so many of the hats within the business really enable you to see the business through a different lens? Something that I always recommend to client-facing leaders or experienced leaders is to spend time at different levels of the organization and specifically with customers themselves. And so it's so interesting to see your experience having

just naturally gotten to do that. How has it really impacted your way of working? It's a great question because we look at ourselves, what we call car builders and car drivers. And we look at our stores and our associates out there as car drivers. There's one out there delivering on the experience that the car builders build, and we got to do it together. And I think by being able to be in all these different roles, it's truly allowed me to have this broader perspective. And coming out of the stores, I didn't understand it and respect it. So when I was in operations for all those years, running a store, running a group of stores, running a region, you only have that narrow lens. And you're in the race, right? It's happening, it's going on,

and things are moving very fast. And so you're very focused on needs of today, but you don't tend to look down the road as much. And so it's just given me a chance to step back and really understand the complexity of the car builders and how they need to be more forward-looking. And they do have to think about those things while they take care of the race that's happening right now. So when I came into this role in the corporate office, it just opened my world up. And I was a very narrow thinking. And today it's just given me a chance to kind of look across the enterprise and understanding all the different parts that makes this overall car run. That's hopefully the best

way I'm describing it. It's a lot of fun. It's just changed the perception. Oh, that's great. Yesterday I was speaking to a principal at a VC fund, random story. And she was telling me how so many of the leaders within the organizations that they invest in tend to just look at their silo and how when she comes in as a board member, it's difficult or challenging at first because the data that she's getting is like, oh, sales did so great. We increased by X, but then customer success on the other hand is like, well, a lot of those customers left. And that, you know, the great work that sales did in the grand scheme of things for the whole business isn't really, you know, as something as to celebrate as much. And so I think it's interesting what you're sharing about being able to really see different parts of the business as you've worked your way up so that you have more

of a holistic view, which I think is such an important skill for every executive and also for leaders who aren't yet in that executive position to start looking forward and think, what do the executives or what do the board members want to see and hear so that we can really be having an aligned vision of the organization instead of staying in our silos? So great to hear that you've gotten to have some experience there. So I was reading through your LinkedIn and I noticed you had a really, really great line that I wanted to pull out here that it all boils down to a single idea. When people are empowered, they generally make great choices. And I'd love to hear a little bit of what that outlook means to you.

Your people have the answers. Right. And, you know, our founder really embraced that. And that's that's something he really drove in all of us. You know, we have this vision and we have this expectation and, you know, that we're all aligned to what we want to deliver on as an organization. But how we get there, empowering people, because there's different ways, there's different paths. So when I look at it, our people have the answers. And when we listen as leaders, you're going to be able to take and help, one, grow them and to achieve the mission. And so we're passionate about that.

We're passionate about listening to the people out there that drive this organization because they have the answers. And we've got to make sure, you know, we do that as leaders. How do you go about listening to your teams? Well, the best way to do is get on the floor. You can't do it from an office. You way to do it is get on the floor, right? You can't do it from an office. You can't do it from a video conference call. So we travel, we're always out there talking to the people on the front lines to understand, taking their ideas and sharing those ideas and then implementing them. That's one source of the feedback. We have,

you know, obviously technology that we use to kind of solicit feedback. But we're constantly serving our people relentlessly to hear from them on the challenges we may have and let them share their ideas so we can determine what's the best path forward. It's where the best ideas come from. Yeah. People who are actually faced with the problems, right? They will tell you real quick. They will tell you real quick. They will tell you, but it's such an important practice to, as you said, get out on the field, spend time with your team. I think it's,

it's something a lot of executives struggle with because of time, but how do you find the time to do that? Well, it goes back to the empowerment, right? So you have, you have leaders and you have to work through your leadership. I think that's the best thing. So, I mean, me personally speaking, I have, you know, three direct leaders that I work with and they're here to run the shop. It allows me to get out there and see our folks and speak with them, travel with my operations partners because they're a customer. The other thing that's interesting sometimes, you got a lot of pitches coming at you, right? You just have to determine what are the right pitches to swing at. And that's the big thing that I look at is to filter out that noise. You just, you have to, because you can get overwhelmed real quick, right? I mean,

and so you just need to be looking at what are those critical pitches that you need to swing at that's going to be the greatest impact for your people. Well, that was actually my next question is how do you decide on what to swing at, as you said, because it can be very noisy when you open up the floodgates of feedback. And I think a lot of leaders also get overwhelmed by all of the feedback or all the ideas or all the insights. And so how do you really choose which ones are the most important? You know, I mean, how well they align to our strategy? And does that make sense?

So I think when you start looking at it, there's all these things that are great ideas, things we need to do. No doubt. Are they important? Sure, they are. But you do have to make choices, and those choices are aligning to the strategy. Where are we going and why are we going there? And are these things aligning to that? And if they are, then we need to take a swing at it and look. If they're not, then it's something that we need to come back to and visit. So. Yep. I love the parking lot. Great idea. We'll address it later. And the hard part is actually going back to that parking lot or acknowledging, you know, why an idea is not going to be pursued with the folks in the business, whether it's technological,

or I saw that you had recently done a, was it a merger with Tire Rack? So collaborating, you know, bringing other organizations into the organization. When it comes to that change, how do you really ensure that your team gets aligned and that the customer experience isn't impacted? Acquisitions is new for our organization. We've been around 64 years and it was a big one. But I think it's been pretty easy. And the reason being, I would say that is any company that we, like Tyrek, let's use them. They were a great balance to us. They're a pure e-commerce player. But more importantly, the acquisition is really the merger of the cultures because we are so much alike. Family owned and operated. We're family owned and operated.

Those values that they have instilled from the beginning are the same as ours. Really, I look at it and I don't want to speak for our chairman and everything else, but it's the merger of the two of us and the experience because our values were so closely knitted. It was just natural. But I would say that we've had others. So like Dunn Tire that we've acquired, smaller 25 chain location in the Northeast. It's a little different, right? And they're a full service shop. So how do we make sure that we align our experiences? And it's really just embedding. And we actually are doing that. We embed some of our very senior executives to be in that organization, really sharing with them who we are and what we stand for, why integrity is so important in what we do in our industry.

So it's just a relentless effort of driving home that mission. I think when people hear our mission, our mission as an organization is to make dreams come true. And so when you hear that, you know, okay, you're a retailer, that seems odd. But our founder was so passionate about making dreams come true for people. So the companies that we have acquired, when they hear that, they get taken back. Yeah. You know, and, you know, our mission is to open so many stores a year and everything else. No, no, no. Our mission is to make dreams come true. That alone allows this natural integration to happen. That's the best way I can describe it. And they align to something that's bigger than

themselves. And that's what's so fun about it. How do we continue to do that? So I don't know if I'm rambling here, but no, I love this because this mission that our founder came up with, well, that's why I sit here today after 38 years, you know, he believed in that mission and I get to be a living success of it. And so all these companies that we've been acquiring when they hear it, their dreams are coming true because we're opening new doors to grow them and the people around them. That's great. How do you make your customers' dreams come true? Always use empathy. The way we look at it is customers, wherever they're at in that stage, we got to make sure that their first consideration is their safety. And we take that to heart and to the point where we're not going to let a customer leave unsafe. And up to the manager, give the

tires away for free. If they can't afford it, they can't do the right, you know, take care of the customer most importantly. And I think there's so many stories out there that have happened where managers do that and they use that empowerment. I go back to that. Empower people to do the right things and they will. There's more good in the world than bad. I don't know that it makes dreams come true, but I do know it can change people's lives based on where they're at and take what could be a horrible time and make it a great time. Completely. Completely. I mean, I think when it comes to your tires, there's a lot of fears that I'm sure people have about their car not working or getting into an accident or things like this. And the opposite of that is that those fears don't have to exist. And you can actually just live your life and drive your car and go on that road trip and take

your kids to school safely. I'll share the story with you real quick. So our founder back in the 80s, we just made a decision that, hey, you know what? We're going to fix tires for free for everybody, regardless. Yeah. Whether they bought them from us or not, just fix them free. And I'll never forget that because everybody's like going, OK, most people are charging up to, you know, $20 to $30 to do a flat repair, right? We do six to 7 million flats a year free. So you can do the

math. Wow. And whether you bought them from us or not, right? And the thought was when someone has a flat tire, you're having a bad day. No one planned for it. You're either late to getting the kids to school or you're late to work or something is going on. Instead of making someone's bad day even harder, why don't we make it a little brighter? And how can we do a little gesture of a good deed? And I think what's fun about that, that then spurred to other bigger things to kind of continue to do. So that's really the passion about who we are is making safety the first consideration. And don't take someone's tough times to make them harder. How do we make them better? I think that ties a little bit into you making dreams come true. I don't know it's dreams, but it's definitely making sure that we use empathy at the core

of everything that we do. That's great. And I think it's so important that businesses are willing to give first, not only make revenue, right? Like you're really thinking about the human experience and what it is that you're offering. Getting a flat sucks. It's like, no matter what, the people who are coming in are probably really stressed out. They're annoyed or frustrated or just dealing with a lot. And if you can make that experience just a little bit better by comping them the actual work, then great. So I really see that. And the other side of it, how it makes our people feel. I mean, they feel great giving a gift to a consumer and surprising, right? It's a lot of joy. And I can speak firsthand doing that. The first time I get to look at the consumer and saying, you know, they're like,

how much is this going to be? It's like, well, can you just, just have a better day? And I'm sorry this happened to you. And the customers leave there and I feel great because they just got a gift in a way, right? It's just, it's fun. And it's really fun to see how much our people, you take that from too. And it doesn't want to be Santa Claus every now and then. Completely. And going back to that empowerment piece with employees, I think it's something I've built and led multiple customer service and customer success teams. And for the folks who are facing the client, it can be a really, really tough job. And if they have to jump through hoops in order to do that job, if they have to go and get approvals to spend or to give away $20, then that's just making their already hard job harder.

So how can we remove those barriers? And I'm really hearing in what you're sharing many examples of you doing that. And it sounds like a great place to work. I mean, good enough that you decided to stick around for 38 years, clearly, but that's awesome. And it also sounds like there's very strong values within Discount Tire. And so I wanted to come back to the conversation around the acquisitions. It sounds like as you've been incorporating those different cultures into your culture, you really have a strong sense of value that you're using as you bring those companies in to really create that consistency in your organization. Would you say that's correct?

Yeah. There's these five life lessons that we really, you know, we live by. Our founder instilled in all of us. And, you know, the first one is be honest, work hard, have fun, be grateful and pay it forward. These are what we really instill in every, whether it's an acquisition or not. And how do you not line up to those? Those are good life lessons. That's really our key pillars.

And whenever we, something's going on, we apply that, right? We always start with who we are and how is it what we're doing aligning to these values that we care so much about. Yeah. So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about technology. We've covered a lot of the human stuff. I want to talk about how you actually run the operation in making sure that you're able to live up to the efficiency that you promise your clients. Because from my understanding, you have a 20 minute service turnaround time. Is that true? It takes about 20 minutes to service a vehicle. Our total wait time is a little longer than that in a typical store, but to actually

service the vehicle itself, our average service time for the vehicle is going to be in that 20 minute mark, a little bit more. When you're using Salesforce to tackle your company's most important goals, failure is simply not an option. That's why their most highly skilled advisors, Salesforce CTOs, are available to help you succeed with expert guidance and implementation support at every step of the way. Learn more about Salesforce CTOs at sfdc.co slash professional services. And so how do you structure that? How do you organize your teams and what tools do you use to really make sure that you're able to keep things moving and get those cars out on time? through really very specific layouts of our equipment, very specific tasks by your person to kind of execute towards. So it would be more of the tools that they're using as the equipment. I don't know that technology is the big piece of this part.

It really is going to be the layout of the store, the layout of the equipment, and the very clear roles and responsibilities within the team that we've incorporated within the organization that allows us to have this consistent execution of servicing those vehicles that's allowed us to do it. Now, what I can say, we are trying new concepts out there. We've built a new store that we call PitPass. It's a store with no inventory. It's a buy online, pick up in store experience that we're delivering. And that does have some technology that we've deployed to kind of drive efficiencies and transparency for consumers. The drive over tread scanners where you can drive over reads the tire treads, serving that up to the consumer.

Wow. Those type of things have allowed us to kind of change that experience for consumers where you're arriving at the store in time for your product and you're in that. It's a planned visit, the best way I can describe it. So most consumers that walk into a store, hey, I need a set of tires. You're going to wait in line. You're going to talk to an associate. You're going to go out and assess your needs, go back front. Then you're going to sit in queue for your car to be serviced and you're out of there. That's an end-to-end experience. It's a little longer than that. But what we've been doing right now with the adoption of web, you know, online e-commerce that's growing in ourle that we've built. It's proprietary to us.

That gives you recommendations based on real-world data to take the mystery out of buying tires and attack what we call these emotional targets. You know, so consumers, when they go to buy tires, they don't feel empowered. Treadle helps empower them. They don't have peace of mind because they don't buy tires that often. It only happens every couple of years. So it's a little different form. So we looked at how do we really deliver that experience online, bringing the in-store experience to the online experience? How are associates when they build that relationship with you? We've been building this experience out there by getting more consumers to transact online. That way, when you arrive, that planned visit, you truly are at the store 20 minutes end-to-end versus double that.

Yeah. So you're taking some of that work that the consumer has to put in and you're making it easier for them online. And then they can just come in, show up, get it done, and walk out with their tires fixed. That's right. That whole end-to-end changes. You go from,

call it 45 minutes to an hour, down to 20 minutes because you've had that same recommendation online as you would in the store. And we hope to make it much more intuitive for them. Wow. Well, I need to get new tires and I've been dreading the process. So I'm so happy to know about this. I'm definitely going to discount Tire to get that done. Tell me a little bit about the process of innovation to come up with PitPass and really build out the different features of that experience that really address the customer needs. Well, we just started looking at the consumer journey as it is today. We started envisioning on where we want to go based on customer feedback. And so, you know, our biggest pain point in the industry and organization is weight, the wait times. So that's part of it. Then we also did a lot of research on what that buying experience is like. And that's when they came

back with images of the tire experience. And it was, it was hard to watch and look at, you know, consumers saying, tell me about it. And one of the pictures was of a sumo wrestler standing in a very, in front of a little small person because they feel out matched. And that's how it felt in the experience. Another image they shared was, you know, an individual, it looked like Tony Soprano, you know what I mean? You know, cause they, the view of the industry is it's a mystery, right? And they feel like everybody's out to get them. And so we had all these images that then came up with these emotional targets I was telling you about. So when we looked at that and we started stepping back saying, okay, how do we attack these emotional targets? And how do we deliver an end-to-end experience through this journey? And we started looking at our store layouts.

We started looking about the product delivery. And then we started looking at our store layouts. We started looking about the product delivery. And then we started looking at the digital adoption and just started looking at all of it and mapping these journeys out. And we took a swing at doing something different, which was new for us. And we built a whole new concept store and are iterating off of that. So when we look at innovation, it really starts with that consumer research. What's going on? And what are those pain points? And how do we innovate around that?

And that's kind of that rinse and repeat that we do. Completely. And especially the perception of the industry, I think, is such an important thing to think about. Because consumers will tend to just bucket all, for example, in this case, like all tire shops is the same thing when in the reality, it's not. I used to work in real estate and we had to face this with the perception of the real estate agent. People just kind of say, oh, they're all bad when in reality, there's many fabulous and amazing real estate agents out there to help you get that done. And so it's important to really think about not only what's their perception of us, but also the perception of this whole space

and how can we be different in it? So you were taking through, you were doing all these customer journey maps, really understanding what those pain points are, and then you created a concept store to test it. What have you found to work? And then on the flip side, has there been anything that you tried that there been anything that you tried that didn't work that you're, you're taking out of the experience? Yeah, we try a lot of different things. I mean, at the store, we try to kind of what we, you know, we, we too looked at the self-help at the store and you've seen grocery stores and stuff like that. That didn't work. That didn't work. Part of it's the product we sell. It's a, it's

complex. It's, you know, fitments are very challenging. So that didn't work. But what has worked, which has been an overwhelming success, our NPS score at the store has been holding at 97 for over a year and a half. Yeah. And what we've learned, it's really telling. And what we've learned is consumers don't even have to get out of the car. So if you've made that purchase, you drive up to the store, we greet you at the canopy, we validate the purchase, you pull forward, you don't even have to get out of your car. Car goes in the air, we service the car, goes down, and you leave. What we have seen right now that that's been just a grand slam. I mean, it's just been fantastic from that aspect. The consumers are loving it. The big thing is because their end

to end wait time has been average of 18 minutes at the store. So that planned visit, showing up, not having to get out of the car, get in, get out. It's allowing our people to plan for a better day, our customers to be able to plan their days better. And we're delivering something that's been truly, truly unique. I mean, it's been, it's been exciting. So that's worked really well. And we didn't know, cause we still fighting the drive up consumer, right? They see our stores pit pass by discount tire. They think a discount tire, the traditional stores and where you can pull up, we've got 3000 units in the back room. We've got a lot of choices on hand that we can sell you that day. This store has nothing on hand. And so if you do drive up, we make sure we sell you the right tire. And I think that's important right now. So I go back

to emotional targets. So there's a difference between selling what you have in stock and selling what truly is best for you. Right? And so that's been the fun part is being able to build that trust with the customer and ensuring that, Hey, we're going to make sure you have the tire that meets your needs, not our needs. So being that consumer advocate, and we were a little worried about those drive of consumers. Would they come back the next day to put them on? And the answer is yes, because you know, most consumers, Hey, I planned my day. to put them on? And the answer is yes. Because, you know, most consumers, hey, I planned my day. I'm going to come in and get a set of tires. Oh, hey, welcome to Pit Pass by Discount Tire. By the way, we have no tires in inventory.

What? Right? And so, however, we've got them. They're going to be pickpacked and shipped overnight. If you come back here tomorrow and can give us 20 minutes of your time, we're going to get you in and out. Yeah. That experience is really working and growing fast. Great. And you're also getting them exactly what they need. That's right.

And that's a big change. And the customers feel it. They can see that we're not just trying to sell them the best tire that's on our shelf in the back room. We're trying to sell you a tire that's truly right for you. I want to come back to what you found didn't work, which was the self-service. Because it's really interesting. I see so many companies doing this and it is great in some scenarios. And then it also is adding more effort and time to the customer in other scenarios. And I think we have to be so conscious of that because as you're saying, people love the fact that they can get in and out in 18 minutes. Time is our

most valuable resource and you're really honoring that with the current setup that you have. But what do you think wasn't working about the self-service kiosks? Well, I will say time, right? The time that the process, just the process itself wasn't as intuitive, as hard as we kept trying. It was just challenging. And because of the nature of the product we sell, fitment's so key. And so you've got to have year, make, model, and most importantly, trim.

And trim is really going to determine the right application for the tire. So most consumers don't know their trim. And it's a very big pain point. So then they'd have to get out of their car. They got to kind of try to figure it out. So it was just this little clunky process that just wasn't intuitive enough that was going to allow them to kind of self-serve themselves and feel comfortable about, I selected the right tire for my needs. It just didn't work. Yeah. They needed to talk to associates. Again, we surveyed our consumers. What's the number one reason that you don't purchase online or you don't hit that in cart?

And they want to talk to somebody to just make sure they've made the right choice. And that just wasn't working the self-serve. That's what we do. Yeah. How do you solve that online? Well, we have done things enabled where keying in your license plate, we can then get down to the VIN of the vehicle because it's associated to get to the right setup for your vehicle. That's one thing that consumers are

starting to do there. We've done a lot of education as you go through the process, whether through video or other things, let them know how to make sure they're picking the, you know, the right trim for their vehicle in educating them that way. So there's all these different steps that we're trying to imply, you know, get done there for them. Yeah. Awesome. Are you using AI at all? I have to ask this question because everybody's talking about it. Everybody's talking about it. We, we, we are not, we're not using AI, you know in the, in the consumer experience in that, in that aspect.

Yeah. not using AI in the consumer experience in that aspect. There is a piece of AI that we are utilizing within our Treadwell product and how we interact with consumers and make recommendations based on real-world testing and real-world results. Awesome. I think my take on the AI topic of just, as I speak to so many people about this, is the technology's not quite there to solve all of our problems. And it's important to have our minds open to where can we use AI to solve problems, which it sounds like you found a use case, but it's not necessarily, for example, going to help someone choose the right tire because it really requires that expertise that we may not be able to trust AI quite enough yet to do that.

So it makes a lot of sense. Another feature that I heard you've implemented is a digital queue system so that people can see where they're at in line. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how it's impacted the customer experience? We call it the journey tracker, and it's just simply giving our consumers a better visibility into when to arrive to the store for their time to be serviced. So go back to, we only need your car for this finite amount of time. And so by giving consumers the ability to get in queue and then see a window of arrival based on the cars that are already ahead of them, allows them not to have to sit around the store all day. They can arrive to that store in this window

and really shorten that experience at the store, which go back to time, right? Nobody wants to hang around a tire store. I call it hurtful, but we understand. We want to hang out with them. But it's really changed. I go back to the end to end. It's allowing customers to have more flexibility

and be at the store when we need to, you know, for the service time versus waiting for their car in queue, waiting at the store for calling an hour or so, waiting for your name to be called. Completely. Now you can kind of pull up. We greet you. Hey, Lauren, how you doing? You know, you're arriving in that window of time. We get you in and out and away you go. So this sounds magical. And I love the concept of being able to kind of track where you are in line. I think it's in many ways like an Uber effect where we've gotten so used to being able to see, okay, how far is my ride away from picking me up or with, you know, Postmates or Seamless, we can see, okay, where is my order? How far away is it? I can kind of see how it's going. We want that control to be able to see

exactly when things are happening and not be caught off guard or get somewhere and then end up having to wait. We want to be able to see the full experience. And I think that's a really smart feature to implement for those reasons. So it sounds like you've been making a lot of investments in improving the service and the customer experience overall.

And I'm curious to understand, how have you been managing the balance between investment and managing pricing and supply chain and all these other aspects of the business? Has there been anything in particular that any strategies in particular that you've implemented to really manage that balance of investment as well as costs? Well, I mean, we have three strategy buckets that we look at and focus on, and it's the balance between them. And we call the one the fundamentals. That's our COO driving that. And then the second one is the customer experience. It's the strategy bucket I own that we look at. And we look at three things within it. How do we create that digital trust? And how do we create time transparency? How do we create more predictive impersonalization?

Big buzzwords you hear it all the time. And then we have a chief revenue officer that's overseeing our emergent acquisitions. So when we look at this in totality, we're balancing it through, you know, again, I go back to our strategy and all these things. How do we make sure that the things that we're investing are driving towards that strategy? It's a balance between those three that we negotiate of what's going to get us there long term. We're always looking at this 2030 vision right now of where we want to be. So we're kind of backing into that knowing that, hey, these are the big things we want to have done by 2030. We know that there are steps to get there. And you got to kind of balance between the fundamentals of running your business today. It goes back to the drivers. And we know that that is, that's priority number one, because that's what's driving, you know, the tools that we need to invest in the future.

And so we balance it heavily in that bucket. I can tell you that right now. So you don't, we call it, don't play with the mothership, right? And the mothership is that revenue that's driving these drivers are doing right now. The two other buckets that we have are the investments more longer term. We sit down and start aligning with our COO and our CRO saying, OK, we got X amount of our budget dedicated to this fundamental bucket. The rest of it, we're going to start doing piecemeal here as we work on things. So three buckets we look at. Don't play with the mothership. That gets the big part of it. And then we rest into the future. Yeah. I love that. Don't play with the mothership.

Yeah. Are there any specific tools that you implement within Discount Tire to really help you and your team provide a great customer experience? We do something we call the Discount Tire Management System, right? And it's something that we have here. We look at what we call the puzzle pieces, and that is how we guide ourselves. I mean, it really is throughout the organization and all that we do. And we kind of fall back to this and use it as our guidelines. Great. So I have three last questions for you. Firstly, how do you evaluate success? And how often are you making changes to your strategy? I would say if our people's dreams are coming true.

We call profits tools. Those are the tools that we get to invest to make dreams come true. Part of it is building more stores because that's the dream. We have 29,000 associates out there. And every time we build a new store and we get to give keys to an individual, we've built another dream. So that's a big part of what we look at is, are we building dreams? And those dreams are sometimes is they get keys to that store and they are, you know, they're the manager, they're running this business, they're driving it, they're empowered to drive it. And there's a book out

there called Six Tires, No Plan. And it's about our founder. And our managers are compensated really well. And I think if you read the book, you'll see. And that empowerment makes dreams come true. So a big measurement for us is, are we building more stores to build more dreams for our people? Are we generating the profits tools to get that done? And if we are, then we're doing our mission. Great. That's very inspiring. I love it. So I have two more questions for you that we ask all of our guests. The first is we'd love to hear about a recent experience that you've had with a brand or a company that left you impressed? What was that experience?

All right. Home Depot. I mean, it was a holiday weekend. They tend to get busy and it was the whole end-to-end experience and how seamless it was for me. I mean, honestly, it's from the purchasing online to getting the message the product was pulled to the arrival. It was there. It was to the easiness with the associate. There was a mound of people there. They had mobile devices in their hands to kind of start meeting people and do things to try and drive. What you go back to time, I didn't want to walk around the store and spend there. So I know it's kind of maybe small, but it was, it was like, Hey, on a holiday weekend, when you got things going on, it was like this great experience. I was like,

this is fantastic. I want them all like this. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. And then my last question for you is, what is one piece of advice that you think every customer experience leader should hear? Whatever you do and whatever experience that you're designing or creating or going after, start with empathy. Empathy's at the core. And when you do that, you're going to find a better outcome most of the time.

I love that answer so much. It is so, so important for us to empathize with our people and our customers. That's the only way that we can really understand what it is that they're facing and what problems they're struggling with so that we can actually work together to move through them. So thank you for that. That is very sage advice and something everybody should take to heart. So thank you so, so much, Tom, for coming on the show. It's been wonderful to have you.

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