YouSaid · the spoken record

Sumit Singh

lines on the record: 31
first: 2020-04-25
most recent: 2020-04-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Oh my goodness, it's all over the place. I mean, our customer service and product teams came together and over a weekend launch 13 customer-facing innovations that are allowing customers to self-service themselves better at this point so that they don't have to wait in line to speak to an agent during this time. Our marketing teams have taken a completely new approach to communication with customers. It's switched from, hey, pets are happy. This is a happy and healthy world to we're here for you and find moments of comfort with your pet during this time. Really relevant innovations during the time. It's been incredible seeing the camaraderie and the innovation spirit across the company.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think reflection on, we're now in week number seven or eight, even though there was no playbook, I think when I look back, our playbook has been a combination of three things in my mind. One is communication. Number two is innovation because nothing innovates like a crisis. And third is perseverance. We've needed the agility of a sprint and the endurance of a marathon. And I think that's going to be important as we continue to navigate through this pandemic.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have a four year old child and a five year old shitsu. So I have two kids. And I think out of this environment, kids under five or six years old and dogs likely are going to come out happiest because they're getting so much attention and mom and dad are working from home. So it's great.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not stressed. I'm optimistic. What I do to manage my stress is I take a walk in the morning. I'm an early riser. And I essentially get my exercise in, get my walk in, spend a lot of time with my family, and really leaning on the team at this time. It's been great to see the camaraderie and the team spirit that has come through during this time of crisis. I think we draw our strength from each other, from our families, from our team members, from our colleagues, and from all of those customers who are out there cheering and rooting for our brand to pull through during this time. I think that provides a lot of strength and helps you manage the stress.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you just have to deal with the reality. Internally, in the company, it's not easy to keep your rational mind away from your emotional mind. I mean, it's unprecedented times. We've got people who are working from home while homeschooling their kids. We've got folks who are coming to work because they're afraid because they need the money. We've got younger team members who are hearing all of these news about furloughs and layoffs and they're worried for their own future. I think there is appropriate stress in the environment, which is why the optimism is important. But you really got to live it on a day-to-day basis.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, now more soever, it's important to remember your purpose for existence. Our purpose is to be the most convenient, trusted destination for pet parents and partners everywhere. During this time, the difference in emotion inside the company is we're not excited to be here. We're proud to be here. The difference there is that there is a tone of optimism which is essentially going to carry the company through this time of duress. And we empathize, sympathize, and we are there for our customers as much as we are there for our partners. Our participation with the shelter community is a proof point of that. We're happy and proud that we are able to service that community.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of behavior shift is what I think needs to be seen. It takes seven repeat occurrences to essentially institute a behavior change in a consumer's mind. Does it last that long? Does a consumer get trained this well? Does our service hold up to their expectations and standards? And we hope so. And if not, then I think the team stand ready to deploy a set of go-to-market actions to be able to turn these customers who are requiring now to become long-term sticky customers.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think a couple things are known to us. We've always known, at least for those of us who've operated in this sector, that there is a secular shift that's happening from retail to online. What this crisis will do is, A, it confirms the acceleration of that shift into online. So I do believe that there will be a genuine hearts and mind shift, a behavior shift from the consumers who were shop in retail to those who are now trying out new services. People are trying home delivery, people are trying e-commerce services. We're even trying virtual services through content. And all of those industries are kind of seeing the demand lift. So that part I expect to continue, which then says, hey, we should definitely expect the continuation of demand patterns. The hard work here is going to be how many, depending upon how long the pandemic lasts, the permanence”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bring in to help knock the blacklog down. And in parallel, we've been communicating with our customers. And this is an important one for us. Customers are disappointed if you surprise them. We're already disappointing them in longer.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's actually not our transportation partners who are the cause of that. It's our own fulfillment center backlog. Again, elevated demand pattern. Here's what happens. Think about the fact that in the United States, the e-commerce demand really peaks during the Q4 holiday season. Everybody knows that retail's really hot during the Q4 November-December timeframe. But that is a predictable surge. You plan for that. I mean, right now, we're talking about demands of those levels that have actually shown up to your doorstep unannounced, and you don't know how long they're going to last. What do you do there? Well, you react to it. You let backlog build up and you care for the team members, but at the same time, you communicate with your customers as honestly as you can and expect and hope that they would understand during this time. So we're doing both. We're actually investing in the fulfillment center network, and that's where the comment of hiring up to 6,000 people in the Fulfillment Center network comes from, because those are the hourly associates that we've”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And we offer choices, and we found that people during this time were a little more experimental in picking up something because it's the need of the hour versus totally discretionary about, oh, I'm going to pass that on because I just don't like it right now. And so I think the impact there has been muted. On the hard good side, which you would consider toys and crates and gear and stuff like that, there, I think the timing of the event was such that most of our supply chains international, about 20-30% of the volume, and that was planned conjointly with the Chinese New Year. So we got lucky and we were able to get ahead of that. So it's a combination of planning and a bit of luck that we've been able to manage it so far.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we've done a couple things. One, 70% of our sales are consumable products, what you would consider food treats and general consumables. And most of that supply chain is here in the United States. And so we've seen little disruption in the core supply chain for our suppliers. The demand shocks actually impacted everybody. And with the elevated demand shock, we haven't had chronic out-of-stocks, but we have had a certain portion of our portfolio that's been out of stock for a temporary period. What we did there was we actually quickly updated our recommendation engines and essentially allowed people to self-select into different brands, different sizes, different patterns. So the impact overall was muted there.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think there's a lot of learning that is going to come out of this experience that all of us are collectively going through. And those dimensions of learning are going to be across engagement, morale, productivity, experience, the challenges of figuring out coordination in an environment where you have to or are forced to or choose to work from home. So I fully expect a great set of learnings and at least starting with customer service, which is really recent, I wouldn't think why we wouldn't think harder to say, hey, this is a really plausible solution, both from an agent experience point of view and a company acumen point of view.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, exactly. So we removed a chair between the customer service agents and created as much social distancing as we could. And now since then, we've been actually able to also figure out how to send phone agents home. So at this point, over 90% of our customer service is working from home.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For social distancing for the rest of the agents that were on site. And that's what we did. And it bought us a little bit of time.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have never worked from home across corporate or customer service. And it's just not something that we've prioritized. Look, Chewy is a nine-year-old company. And in nine years, we've hit nearly $5 billion in revenue. Looking back, there are some things we would have done differently from a business continuity point of view, but this wasn't one of them. So we had to innovate really quickly. So now I'm on the second part of what leaders do or should do in a crisis. The first is communicate, the second is innovate. And in this case, we innovated our product and tech teams internally, figured out a solution, and we created homegrown technology that we first applied to our writing portion of the team. So agents who handled chat and email. And so whatever 20, 30% of the capacity, we actually took them offsite. And that was the first wave. With that wave, what allowed that to do is, one, the teams were immediately enthusiastic about the fact that you're caring for us, but now I can create space.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, first of all, they're recovering well. And we found out about it is this is the preemptive part of the process that we've set up and why I'm proud of the team. What we did here was we disincentivized people from coming to work if they're sick. And the way we did that is when we updated our policies, we updated them such that if you're sick, regardless of why you're sick, stay home and don't worry about your job. Don't worry about the attendance. Don't worry about the wages. So what we had here was there was an individual who actually fell sick, who registered a temperature. And it was nine days before we actually found out that they had a confirmed COVID case. So that's kind of the timeline we're dealing with here. So nine days prior when we found out that this individual was sick, we sent them home. Not only did we send them home, we actually proactively figured out who they were in contact with and quarantined everybody else, self-quarantined. And along the way, we were monitoring if anybody else felt sick and they didn't. We were able to very transparently go back to the team and say, hey, here's what happened. And it allowed us to...”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Available for our team members so that if you feel more safe and secure, here they are for you. And clearly we've seen in the last”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. We've gotten two kinds of feedback, and it's absolutely right to acknowledge that folks are duly stressed. I mean, it's a time of duress. And on the flip side, we acknowledge the fact that we'd rather be in this kind of stress where obviously we have to care for the well-being and safety of our team members, but team members also realize that we're the platform that's been deemed essential. So we're lucky to be here. We're proud to be here. How do we manage that? And that's kind of been the sentiment, which is why the communication portion is so important because people are afraid what they can't comprehend creates transparency and creates trust. And we've been listening and adapting. So what are the two types of listenings that we've been doing? We got ahead of the curve. Initially, when the CDC was still figuring out our masks important or not, our gloves important or not, or should be mandatory or not, we said, you know what, we're going to roll them out. Not on a mandatory basis, but we're going to make them.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're just walking in normally. And this thing is calibrated to pick up a temperature beyond a certain range. And if it beeps, what you do is you end up going through a secondary screen process just to make sure that there are no false positives. And we started testing it about a week and a half ago. So far, we've got it across half our network. And over the next week or so, we expect to be fully rolled out through the rest of the network.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we've been mulling over this for a while and we've been watching the news. We've been following what everybody else is doing because, again, absence of pattern recognition, what you can do is sort of lean and benchmark from each other. And there really hadn't been so far a great solution out there. So we started thinking about, hey, how can we create a non-invasive, non-contact, distant but also rapid temperature monitoring that will allow us to not slow us down? Because when a shift starts in a fulfillment center, if you're having somebody stand there and take temperatures, even if they're protected and secure, you're going to slow down that shift start by about an hour because you've got thousands of employees wanting to get in. And so not only is it inconvenient, it's just not scalable. We partnered with the right manufacturers. We've got technology that acts as a scanner and a camera that's actually positioned in two places. So there's a primary screen and a secondary screen. And we've got these social distancing markers set up in the fulfillment sites. And as you're walking in,”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These kind of steps are important because trust is incrementally built. And so when people don't see or can't see what's coming, they've got to see you out there communicating clearly and taking the necessary action so they can trust the system, that the system will work when something bad happens. And that's essentially what we're doing. And then finally, we've been able to figure out work from home for our customer service teams. We're proud in the way that we've managed it. Our fulfillment centers continue to run without material disruption. And our customer service teams and corporate teams also continue to march forward.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Saying, look, what are going to be the elements of playbook that we are going to have to play out here? And we didn't know. So the only thing that we knew was we've got to start communicating with our teams early on. And that's what we did. So that came first. Initially, we assembled our 160 leaders who are directors at ChUI off the 13,000 people that we have. And we met with that team and we said, look, we're starting to hunker down. We're starting to plan for this. Here's everything that can be expected. That quickly shifted to us updating policies in our fulfillment centers and customer service sites and across corporate. That has then evolved since into appropriately providing appreciation, wage increases or short-term bonuses for people to allow them to not only work, but work a little bit more stress-free, materially increase levels of sanitation and cleansing across our facilities. By materially, I mean visibly materially. And the reason”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About leadership or lack thereof, at least in my opinion, is most visible during a crisis like this. Why? Because pattern recognition fails in a crisis like this. And that's when the true test of leadership or team and a leader actually begins. So let me explain that. Good leaders are able to look around corners and plan accordingly. They also, like a chess grandmaster, are adept at recognizing patterns and reacting to those quickly. Here in the COVID crisis, both were somewhat absent or incredibly foggy at least. So the playbook has had to be invented along the way. So how did we start? Coming out of that first phone call in late February, we internally immediately set up a COVID, call it a SWAT team, ranks didn't matter on the SWAT team, only expertise did. And we assembled a team of seven people across the company who represented core communications for the company, customer service, fulfillment center, HR. And we started...”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pets is the only category in retail where customers refer to themselves as pet parents. The only other category you do that is kids. And so the fact that pets are like family members to us and there's a hundred million households out of the 160 in the US who have pets, yes, we were fairly confident that, look, we're about to be put into a position which is going to be unprecedented and something that we're going to have to prepare for and react very quickly to.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the first wave was when this thing broke out in Washington and the folks who heard it across the coasts. The second wave really came when stay-at-home orders started to be issued. And between the first week of March and the last week of March, we went from 40% of Americans staying at home to 93% of Americans staying at home. So sort of the two weeks at mid-March timeframe was the second wave. And I think the third one we've yet to see because depending upon how long the pandemic lasts, this is going to alter not only hearts and minds, but behaviors of folks in a way that pattern changes, in a way that seasons change here. And nobody knows how this thing is going to play out. So I think there's a third way of post what we're living in right now.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pattern that we see in a hurricane, right? It's the first wave of customers who go to the grocery stores and clean out those aisles. And so we're sort of trying to correlate here what exactly is going on. And we noticed that our active customers were just our basket sizes continued to grow over the last four or five days. And we're like, well, that's customers definitely stocking up in the early days. So that's really how it started. The second thing I said was there's two more waves coming. And if there is something going on here, we've got to protect the supply chain for what might be a prolonged outbreak or a crisis. But honestly, I could not look back and say that we predicted it, nor could I say that we've actually seen it all the way through. So we've been playing a playbook that really hasn't existed so far.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was in Singapore in the December January timeframe. And as I was exiting Singapore, I started hearing about, hey, there's something like a coronavirus that's emerged in Asia. And like most leaders, I didn't really pay attention to it. It was something to just watch out for. Life resumed as normal. Then one Saturday in mid-February, I was attending my daughter's school function. And my chief supply chain officer called me and he said, hey, demand's starting to spike and backlog's building. We've seen this pattern now for the last four days. And we're trying to look into it and we can't really sort of explain. There's no new marketing out there, et cetera, et cetera. So as we started looking into it, even then it didn't really hit us up until a week and a half later when the news started breaking out. So that was sort of our introduction to it. But I do remember saying two things. I said, one, if there's something going on here, it's like the first wave of three to come because you've got a no-bob. Living in Florida, one thing that we're used to is hurricanes. And it's kind of the...”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I am the fourth person in this office. So it's incredibly quiet. Well, seven, if you consider that we've got three dogs out there. So it's seven of us, four dogs and three humans. And it is incredibly quiet. We've got two headquarters here in Florida and Boston, and our team's been working from home for the last six weeks. So it's all good so far.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Switched from hey pets are happy. This is a happy and healthy world to we're here for you and find moments of comfort with your pet during this time. Really relevant innovations during the time. It's been incredible seeing the camaraderie and the innovation spirit across the company”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I could not look back and say that we predicted it, nor could I say that we've actually seen it all the way through. Pets is the only category in retail where customers refer to themselves as pet parents. The only other category you do that is kids We were fairly confident that look, we're about to be put into a position which is going to be unprecedented and something that we're going to have to prepare for and react very quickly to. Leadership or lack thereof, at least in my opinion, is most visible during a crisis like this. Chewy is a nine year old company. And in nine years, we've had nearly $5 billion in revenue.”
2020-04-25 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT