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“Hi, welcome to Office Depot,” doesn’t cut it for Kevin Moffitt.
Each week, the office supply retail chain led by Moffitt tracks its “greet score”—the percentage of customers who say they were welcomed at the front of the store. During that greeting, associates are also expected to ask pointed questions.
“It’s really intended to be a ‘What brought you in today? What are you looking for? What problems are you trying to solve?’” Moffitt tells me from Office Depot’s HQ in Boca Raton. The goal: “To try to get to know a customer as soon as they walk in the door.”
For Moffitt, who’s also president of OfficeMax and executive VP of parent company The ODP Corporation, making that connection is a way to build trust.
“It’s really thinking about the entirety of the customer experience and trying to create an environment where they feel like they are not only purchasing a product but solving a problem.”
In a digital world where we spend so much time staring at a screen, that’s more crucial than ever, reckons Moffitt, who’s been president since 2022 and leads some 12,500 associates. “There’s an overwhelming amount of choices available to just about anyone at any time,” he says. “And there is the lost artform—or it seems at times—of actually talking to another human being.”
Here, Moffitt sees benefits for small-business customers, whom he describes as the core of Office Depot’s client base. In customer satisfaction surveys, the three things that always earn the highest marks are the company’s “helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable” associates, he says.
“Those words encapsulate exactly what we’re trying to do and our competitive differentiation in the marketplace, and I do think that comes down to trust,” adds Moffitt, who joined ODP in 2012 and was previously Office Depot’s chief retail officer and chief digital officer. “Having someone that you know and trust to do a job for you, particularly in the world of small business.”
Many small-business clients are regulars. “I’ve heard our customers say that, you know, ‘Susie in your copy and print center, I think of her as my marketing team,’” Moffitt explains. “At the core is this human-to-human opportunity for interaction that I think is really important.”
Office Depot balances its willingness to stop and chat with an acknowledgment that some people need their ink, paper, and staples in a hurry.
The company runs what Moffitt bills as the fastest store pickup program in the country—with a guarantee. “If you don’t get an email from us in 20 minutes that your order is ready to pick up, we automatically send you a $20 coupon.”