2025, eTail Boston. Keynote Fireside Chat: Reimagining Retail Services: How Lowe's is Powering Personalized, Scalable Solutions Through Technology

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: good morning everyone, and thank you for having us. It's nice to see some smiling faces. I hope you all had fun last night. Just like Elizabeth said, I'm here with Ron this morning and we're super excited to chat about some tech and some upgrades that Lowe's has been making over the past couple of years.

Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: Ron, thanks so much for being here with us. Yep. I think that it's safe to say the vast majority of you are pretty familiar with Lowe's as a company, but maybe I would like to hear from you, Ron, a little bit about your specific role and the types of things that you oversee.

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah, absolutely. Good morning everyone.

Megan said, hopefully everyone's awake. We'll hopefully wake you up by the time we get done with this session here. Yeah, so I oversee the the UX product and engineering here for our home services business. And we really focus on all the technology for growing that particular business.

We've been focused on really transforming and creating this end-to-end experience. We'd like to call it from inspiration to installation, across the board. And it's really been something that we've focused on to make sure our customers, our associates, and our providers who are installers.

Really have this broad ecosystem that they can stay in sync with everything they're doing from end to end. 'cause it's a, it's quite a journey to go on something like this, a project. And an investment. So that's where we've been focused and I'm excited to spend a little time here this morning to share a little more about it.

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: For sure. You mentioned that it's quite a journey and I would agree. I think for me it would be quite the journey to endeavor on any DIY home improvement project, but I know that home improvement can be difficult. So how is Lowe's helping to overcome the key challenges that your customers face when they're trying to start a home improvement project?

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah. Home, like you said, home improvement. You think about these categories, they're. Fundamentally different than a lot of other retail categories like apparel. When customers start off, they're trying to figure out where do I start on to get this project going? What are all the steps along the way?

It's gonna help me understand, where do I go next? What do I do? How long is this gonna take, right? So you have a lot of these questions that are really top of mind for the customer going into it. And so what we've been focused on is really demystifying. That experience and making it a lot more seamless and more intuitive for the customer.

Don't be mistaken. The every entry point that they start at, it could be online, it could be in the store, it could be through their app, and we wanna make sure that we're in a good position for that. The customers also, I think all of us can relate to this from a value perspective, right?

There's an expected value you're getting out of your project. Quality is another. A key aspect of make sure it's quality product that we're getting a quality installation and that's where they're, we're there for 'em, right? To make sure that all that comes together and that builds up that trust and that confidence when they know that they've got the insights throughout that whole process and really getting 'em to a point where, hey, I'm feeling good about what I'm doing, so For sure.

Yeah.

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: You just talked about a lot of different facets that customers are looking for when they're embarking on this home improvement project process, but maybe you can say a little bit more about how you guys are working to deliver this confidence that customers expect when they're coming into that process.

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah, so really it's about creating that seamless omnichannel experience, end to end. And that's what gets them more confident to, to know that we understand where they're at in that journey, no matter which channel they're shopping. And it ties nicely into our, mission statement, which is solving problems and fulfilling dreams for the homes.

It's it's really fits very nicely with that. And so we've been focused on things like, Hey, what are the right kind of visualizers we could create for the customers so they can actually see what this is gonna look like what are the right kind of estimation tools that we can put in place so that they get a better idea up front what is this gonna cost?

And, I gotta also put a plug in for ai, right? It's been a common theme across the the conference here so far. But we've done a lot with personalization. When a customer's shopping with us, especially online, we wanna make sure that they're getting the right kind of recommendations.

The content is relative to what they're looking for. When you think about what is the intent, right? How do you understand that intent of the shopper? And then you're giving them the right kind of content. And things to make 'em feel like, Hey, Lowe's is, Lowe's understands me and understands my journey and what I'm really going after.

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: For sure. At the outset of the conversation, you spoke about the concept of inspiration to installation. Maybe you can walk us through what a really connected customer journey looks like and how you guys are working to bring all the pieces that you just mentioned together.

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah. In this connected journey from we talk about the customer and I'll reiterate what I was saying before too.

You have the customer, you've got the associate, and you have our provider who's the installer all connected in this whole process. I think it's easiest if we, let's take flooring as an example. Lemme just walk through that. If customers sitting in their home and they're looking, they're looking at their flooring in a certain room, say it's carpet, and they're trying to figure out like, Hey, I know I wanna replace this.

Do I want to replace it with carpet? Do I want to put in hardwood? Do I want like vinyl plank flooring? That's a decision they gotta make on how it's gonna look and feel. And the great thing is go out to our website, customers start searching for different flooring options. They can click on it.

They go right to visualize in their space. They'll be able to pull it up. They can actually, they'll take a picture of their room and they use a slider where they can look and see, Hey, here's my flooring before, here's my flooring after. And it tells 'em right there. It's visually showing them what my room is gonna look like through that whole process.

And at that point, we're already helping the customer to feel inspired by what they're wanting to go do next. Giving them the these options so that they really understand, Hey, where do I go? From there we guide them into the measurement process. So we'll send an installer out to their home.

They'll actually measure all the rooms they're looking to get their flooring replaced in. Once we get those measurements in, we capture all that digitally so we make sure we have the accuracy of it, and then we're getting ready to turn around a quote. And so we send, we create this quote, we actually do a push notification to the customer and they can get that quote, review it.

Sign it. The great thing is they could be at their son or daughter's soccer game. It doesn't matter where they're at. It's really on that customer's time. And that's really what's important to us is that we're making it convenient for that customer wherever they're shopping at experience. And then we use what we call tender anywhere.

That customer can actually transact right there on their mobile device. And then once that's done, they move into the install phase, and then that's when the installer. It comes back in and they actually get the product and install it in their home. And then we'll do some post follow up with the customer to make sure that everything was done to their satisfaction, and then now they've got their new floor and satisfied with what they've chosen.

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: Yeah.

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah.

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: Make it sound so simple. But I think we all know in this room there's a lot of systems that underlay that kind of process. So I would love for you to talk about the technologies and platforms that are actually powering this customer experience that you're delivering from end-to-end.

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah.

So there, there are, there's several moving parts. We definitely make it sound, sound simple but from the, from the beginning we built a lot of this in-house our, on our platform so that ecosystem I was describing earlier. We've got a lot more control over it. We can ensure that the quality's there, the scale and make sure we've got that interconnected experience for all those personas that are involved.

And so that was the foundation of it. That experience I was describing with the flooring from the point that customer was getting inspired and they're looking at, Hey, what are these different flooring options that I want to go with? We'll create a project in their profile. And so they'll have, it's called my projects.

And at that point, that's kinda like your pizza tracker, right? So now the customer can see where am I at through this whole process, and it's gonna tell 'em what are the next steps? We're gonna be sending 'em notifications along the way, keeping 'em informed about that entire journey. And then on the provider side, our installers, we created a we call it the provider app.

It's a mobile app that our providers can actually download and it'll. Tell them what are the jobs they have coming up. It may be a measurement job, it may be an install job That'll map out where they gotta go for the visits that day. And the great thing is they have those visits and they update the progress on that.

That's real time updates coming back in. And again, customers inform the associates, informed. Everybody knows where they're at along that process. And then we did the last thing I'll highlight on the tech side. An important one though is in partnership with OpenAI, we created Milo and it's really one of the first home improvement assistant engines that we have out there.

And the great thing with Milo for our customers, for Red Vest Associates they can go out and you can ask questions like, Hey, how do I fix a leaky faucet? How do I install a deck, for my home? You have these kind of extremes of something maybe more simple to a much larger project.

And the great thing is with that is that it'll give you all these step-by-step instructions on how to walk through it. It'll even tell you what tools you need. If you're, there's some DIYs in the room here. You can get some, the tools you need, the product you need to go with it. And that's how we're really stitching together all these different technologies to create a great experience for everyone involved.

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: Yeah, I think it's really interesting because your team obviously has to think about all three of these different buckets, right? Customers, providers. And then the last bucket, which we just started to talk about, red Vest Associates. Yep. So if anyone doesn't know Red Vest Associates are Lowe's in-store associates.

Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: So maybe it would be helpful to hear you talk about how you're empowering these Red Vest associates through technology to enhance specialty selling and hope improvement projects.

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah, the Red Vest Associates, they definitely play a key role right in, in our entire ecosystem. And they're engaging the most with the customers when that customer wants to go from online, and actually in the store.

But the digital capabilities that we've been building out, they're really there to compliment the red vest and assist them. And I was talking about the platform that we're on. If a customer start out online. And this foreign example. And if they were wanting to look, go in the store, touch and feel maybe different carpet types, textures, things like that they go in the store and talk to the associate and an associate can pull their information up and see what they've been already browsing, what they've been interested in.

And so that's, that helps that red vest feel more confident when the customer's coming in instead of feeling like they gotta start from ground zero. That can be frustrating as a customer where. Hey, I've already been out here, I've been looking at things. Now I gotta start all over again with this experience.

So that cut that associate, the red vest gets a lot more confidence in going through that. And so a lot of these tools and things that we've enabled are really meant to be omni-channel and cover, all these different personas and the red vest the example of tendering the transaction when we send out push notification, they're freed up to where they don't have to keep.

Following up and doing things, they can start working with other customers that are coming in the store. 'cause that's really what we want them to do. We want them to be able engage with those customers and help them that are physically there looking for products. Lot of great progress there.

But keeping them well in that ecosystem has been a priority for us.

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: Absolutely. You spoke about the the customer coming into the store after starting their journey online. Maybe you can tell a little bit more about how exactly that works when you're in the store. So if I'm a customer and I come in and I speak with the Red Vest associate, how do they know where I'm trying to pick up?

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah. What happens is when the customer comes in, they can give that that red vest associate information. It can be a phone number, it can be email address, it can be either Milo's account number, part of our loyalty program. At that point, the red vest could actually pull that information up.

Understand, they could have an existing project that's underway that's in the middle of an install, and they can pull that information up about 'em and they can see exactly where the status is and help answer any questions they have or if they're looking under to understand, hey, what is the next step, in this, if they just had questions around that, the red vest is in, feels like they have the information at that point to address anything that's on top of mind for them.

For sure, but that's how we keep them. Keep them connected to it.

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: Absolutely. It sounds like you guys have invested a lot of time in upgrading your customer experience over the years, which is great. I know there's a lot of research and customer insights that are underneath that, so maybe you could talk about how customers' expectations and demands have evolved in recent years and how Lowe's is preemptively working to stay ahead of those changing trends.

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah. Make no mistake about all of us being customers in the room. We've all been very demanding. You can go back to. The pandemic, even how it just changed the way that we shopped, right? Where hey, everything is digital. And the flooring example that I was using earlier, they can do everything from the time they want to visualize to actually getting it installed, never leaving their home.

You can do all that through our digital channels, which is a great thing about how we've enabled that. And so with the customer expectation, whether. You're buying a, a grill or you're getting your bathroom remodeled. They expect it to all be connected, whether it's in digital or whether they're actually going in the store.

And so what we've set out to do is just, again, make sure we've developed all the right tools, trying to stay out in front of the curve, so to speak a little bit, is as those customer expectations will continue to evolve and that demand will be out there that we're. Make sure we're listening, we're understanding, keeping that customer front and center for us so that we are headed in the right direction.

So

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: for sure. Speaking of the right direction we've talked a lot about good programs that you guys have started throughout this conversation, but it would be helpful to understand what you guys are looking at next. So how do you evaluate your next move with technology and what is Lowe's goals with technology for the latter half of 2025?

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Yeah, so the customer expectations, and I'll refer back to like personalization as a example I was speaking to earlier. Again, they want that experience that is tailored to them. Like they want you to know who they are. They want you to know what their intent is as they shop and that'll continue to be something important for us that we focus on leveraging a lot of our AI capabilities to really hone in on that and make sure we're doing that very well.

Number one. The second thing I'll say is that from a from an overall investment perspective, our total home strategy really drives a lot of the technology investments that we do today. And that'll continue to be the case as we take that forward so that we're not, we're really big on don't just do tech for tech.

It's really gotta have a value tied into it, an outcome that we're really looking to achieve. And so we're gonna continue to keep that customer, front and center for us. I always say we will take it one project at a time and keep moving forward. So

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: for sure. You're not like your customers who are trying to do eight DIY projects at a time.

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: You're doing one at a time. Exactly. Exactly.

Moderator: Meghan Hall, Business & Technology Reporter, Sourcing Journal: Awesome. This has been a great discussion. I loved learning a little bit more about Lowe's tech strategies, so thank you so much, Ron.

Ron Baker, Vice President, Technology, Omni-Channel Projects, Services & Specialty Selling, Lowe's: Thank you.