icture.  While it is clear that AI, especially agentic AI, is driving retail transformation, these industry MVPs emphasized the importance of incorporating the human touch while leaning into technological innovation. Improving the guest experience across 1500-plus restaurants During her panel, Applebee’s vice president of consumer insights Jill Marchick delved into the importance of gathering and combining the insights of its cross-functional internal team with those of its franchise team.  While it may seem like overkill to collect information from every level of the organization — from IT workers to managers to restaurant staffers — the data garnered is vital for creating a fully rounded-out picture of the consumer’s wants and needs.  Even as a large-scale franchise, Marchick said “it’s super important to analyze data on the restaurant level”.   Applebee’s collects customer feedback at its 1500-plus locations via its restaurant managers as well as several other consumer entry points. It is also essential that this data is distributed across the entire franchise spectrum, Marchick explained. “Make it easy for everyone to have access to the information,” Marchick insisted, whether that is through a company dashboard or through regularly scheduled group meetings to encourage problem-solving discussions.  Beyond the aisles: Shaping a better workplace through listening Walmart’s group director of global people strategy and innovation Mackenzi Crank and senior director of global tech Anna Khabiblullina discussed the importance of creating a more productive and innovative workplace through listening firsthand to employees on the shop floor.  “Sam Walton [Walmart’s founder] knew this very early on when he founded the company. In fact, it was the reason why he would travel around to stores with his famous yellow notepad, and he would ask associates for their ideas, their suggestions and their feedback, and he would take it back to his leadership teams and ask them to address those issues for our associates. It’s also the reason why he included this as rule seven in his 10 rules for building a better business, which was to listen to everyone in your company and figure out ways to get them talking,” Khabiblullina noted. “In an age where customer data flows in real-time, our ability to listen to the associates supporting those customers is often left behind. We can’t wait a year to ask, how are you [the associate] doing, because by then it’s already too late.” As many a large-scale retailer can understand, the sheer volume of consumer and employee data can be overwhelming. Walmart’s group director of global people strategy acknowledged that the retail giant faces this problem, too.  “We realized we were swimming, not drowning because that would be too far, in data… Swimming around in data reports for different audiences and PowerPoints for different leaders, and yet, when we were looking for meaningful insight across these sources about the associate experience, it was nowhere to be found. So we knew we had to think differently and start to apply new technology and AI differently to bring integrated insights into the organization,” Crank said. Walmart now collects insights from store staff via new technologies, such as the MyWalmart app, which is designed to help Walmart associates with their daily tasks, or AI-powered technological platforms, like Qualtrics.   “Despite Walmart’s size, we still maintain that real-time flow for everyone to come and ask a question or express ideas,” Crank said. “At the heart of it all is our ability and commitment to listen to our associates and just make sure that we pay attention to not just their words, but their lived experiences.” Further reading: How KFC and Shake Shack use data to meet rising customer experience expectations