Case Study: Regional Grocery Store Chain achieves a refreshed guest experience and a 3% overall satisfaction lift with Service Management Group (SMG)

Bringing new life to the guest experience

Regional Grocery Store Chain, a nearly 500‑location grocer, found its customer experience program had gone stale in year four: flat scores, daily score-chasing, and a focus on numbers rather than improvement. The chain partnered with Service Management Group (SMG) to revitalize the program, moving from IVR phone surveys to SMG’s web survey and reporting tools and rethinking how the program was communicated and used across the business.

Service Management Group (SMG) helped rebrand the initiative as the Guest Experience Program, deploy web surveys with branching, implement SMG Alert®, extend trend reporting windows, form a Service Excellence team, and change recognition and bonus practices to reward improvement. These changes shifted focus to guest comments and behavior change; within one quarter overall satisfaction improved by 3 percentage points (to 59% highly satisfied), the targeted behavior of thanking guests and walking them to the exit rose 4 points (to 26%), and when associates executed all brand behaviors 93% of guests were highly satisfied with Team Member Friendliness.