What if your most persistent customer complaint wasn’t a flaw to be fixed, but a key that could unlock an entirely new business model?
Agility requires not just the ability to pivot, but the organizational courage to act on customer insights—even when those insights challenge your most fundamental business assumptions. It’s about being willing to dismantle something that works in order to build something that works better.
Today, we’re going to talk about customer experience (CX) that pays off and how both achieving and demonstrating ROI is key to becoming a truly insights-driven organization. We’ll explore how a major brand listened to a difficult truth from its customers and completely transformed its marketplace strategy, turning a major pain point into a massive competitive advantage. And we’re doing it live from Las Vegas at the Medallia Experience 2026 event here at the Wynn Resort.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Courtney Owumi, VP of Consumer Experience and Membership Engagement at Shipt.
About Courtney Owumi
Courtney Owumi is a seasoned marketing executive with over a decade of experience in consumer insights and loyalty marketing strategy. She currently serves as the Vice President of Consumer Experience & Membership Engagement at Shipt, where she leads Product Marketing, Consumer Insights & Strategy, and Membership Engagement to deliver a best-in-class experience for Shipt members and provide extended value for Target Circle 360 members. Prior to her time at Shipt, Courtney served on Target’s corporate strategy team, and prior to that worked in management consulting, focusing on e-commerce fulfillment strategy for retail clients. Her expertise spans across corporate strategy, retail, consumer packaged goods, and the gig economy, reflecting her versatility and forward-thinking mindset.
Courtney Owumi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneyowumi/
Resources
Shipt: https://www.shipt.com
Medallia: https://www.medallia.com
Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code AGILE at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c43e68ce5cfb321e
The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703
Catch the future of e-commerce at eTail Palm Springs, Feb 23-26 in Palm Springs, CA. Go here for more details: https://etailwest.wbresearch.com/
Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://aglbrnd.co/r/d15ec37a537c0d74
Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom
Don’t miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba
Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com
The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company
Transcript
[00:49:15] Greg Kihlstrom: What if your most persistent customer complaint wasn’t a flaw to be fixed, but a key that could unlock an entirely new business model? Agility requires not just the ability to pivot, but the organizational courage to act on customer insights, even when those insights challenge your most fundamental business assumptions. It’s about being willing to dismantle something that works in order to build something that works better. Today, we’re going to talk about CX that pays off, and how both achieving and demonstrating ROI is key to becoming a truly insights-driven organization. We’re going to explore how a major brand listened to a difficult truth from its customers and completely transformed its marketplace strategy, turning a major pain point into a massive competitive advantage. And we’re doing it live from Las Vegas at the Medallia Experience 2026 event here at the Wynn Resort. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Courtney Owumi, VP of Consumer Experience and Membership Engagement at Shipt. Courtney, welcome to the show.
[01:44:39] Courtney Owumi: Thank you for having me, Greg. So happy to be here.
[01:47:04] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, really looking forward to this conversation here. Before we dive in though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Shipt?
[01:54:11] Courtney Owumi: Of course. I’m as you said, I’m the Vice President of Consumer Experience and Membership Engagement at Shipt. Under my remit, I have product marketing, membership, marketing, because we’re a subscription-based program, as well as consumer and customer insights. Shipt, if you’re not familiar, is a same-day delivery service. We partner with retailers and grocery stores to provide goods same day. We shop the goods and deliver them to our customers. We are a wholly owned subsidiary of Target and we really strive to have the best customer experience that we can.
[02:27:30] Greg Kihlstrom: Great, great. So yeah, let’s let’s dive in here and we’re going to talk about a few things, but I want to start with the at the strategic layer here and in looking at a case study on Shipt’s uh successes, it mentions the cost trifecta. So markups, fees, and tips as a key insight driving churn. Many companies collect this kind of feedback, but acting on something so fundamental to the business model is a huge leap. What made this particular insight impossible to ignore and elevated it from a data point to a strategic imperative?
[02:58:65] Courtney Owumi: Yeah, so the cost trifecta, we deem it that at Shipt. That’s what we call it, but these issues are industry issues. When you are in a third-party marketplace, it is the most pervasive issue for your customer perception. It is also inherent to the business model of running a third-party marketplace. We do not own the inventory. Thus, instead of getting your eggs for $4 on one of these third-party platforms, you may be paying $4.20, right? And we we keep that 20 cents for our our revenue cost structure. So it is known throughout the industry. What made it so imperative as we were thinking through, how do we take this specific set of guests? We were working with Target for their membership program, Target Circle 360, and we were brainstorming, how do we bring enterprise value to this select group of guests? And we turned to the the customer data. This is the biggest issue, as we think about that cost trifecta of markups, fees, and tips. We can’t get rid of tips. Those are for the shoppers, the gig workers. Fees, there are regulatory fees. There are reasons to have fees. Sometimes our retail contracts need fees. Markups is a lever that we own, that we can control. So that’s how we landed on, this could be the thing that could change the industry. Nobody else is doing it. We can do it for this select group of customers and we’re excited about the results that we’ve seen so far.
[04:21:28] Greg Kihlstrom: Nice, nice. So yeah, let’s let’s talk a little bit about this then. So you mentioned um, the no markups initiative was specifically for the Target Circle 360 membership. What was the strategic thinking behind using a membership program as the vehicle for something like this rather than implementing something like a universal price adjustment?
[04:42:25] Courtney Owumi: Yeah, I think a few reasons. One, um, like I said, it is part of the cost structure. So you have to we we had to be thoughtful and selective as we thought about having this type of benefit for the customers. The reason we chose to do it through the Circle 360 membership is we were already a benefit of the Circle 360 membership. Shipt already comes with your Circle 360. You get the best of Target same-day delivery and the best of your local grocer or your local pet store. But we wanted to encourage folks to really explore that third-party marketplace and really understand what they the full breadth of benefits that they have access to that they can’t really get anywhere else through any of the other competitors. So that was really one of the main drivers on why we focused on that subset of guests because we felt like if we were going to make that investment, that would be the place that would have the biggest benefit. And it opens the door for Shipt to be able to talk to millions of new customers.
[05:40:22] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Of course, a change like this touches a lot of parts of the organization, you know, it’s not it’s not just something that one team can do and kind of not disrupt everybody else. So, you know, finance, marketing operations, technology, even, you know, the retail partnership. From your perspective, what was the single biggest operational or organizational hurdle that you had to overcome to bring something like this to life?
[06:03:13] Courtney Owumi: Yeah. Two things come to mind as I reflect on this. And I wouldn’t call them hurdles, but I would say they took the longest to overcome. The first one was just the initial stage buy-in from executive leadership to make this investment, right? To make this possible. Um, what was so difficult about that is we had to develop a business case based on very little information because we had never done anything like this before. And we we did run a small pilot to help us, you know, figure out some proof points that we had in our business case, but it was a process. And not only was it we we had to build this business case with a lot of unknowns, but we also had to do it very quickly and and garner that momentum that we had in that moment. That was one hurdle. I think after we overcame that, the next hurdle, you know, it was clear product and engineering, they knew the capability they had to build. That was super clear. The business development team knew what they had to do with retail partners. One of the other pieces that took a while was actually, how do we market this? You know, how do you take such a complicated message that is not mass, right? It is for a certain group of people and how do you make it something that is an easy get, that is exciting and that conveys, no one else is doing this and the value it can bring. We needed to convey all of those things simply and as effectively as possible. And on top of the fact these these are fees, right? So there’s legal guidance. So, so that that was all the fun working with a hand in hand with our legal partners and our creative teams to bring this to life, but through message testing and understanding how we can deliver that message very clearly, we were able to do so.
[07:44:03] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, because I mean, that I think that’s an important thing is the consumers, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes, right? So, you know, the and you don’t necessarily need them to understand all of the the things going on behind the scenes and yet you need to communicate the value, otherwise it’s kind of your you’re just giving up money. Right. Otherwise, right.
[08:04:13] Courtney Owumi: Right. And they don’t understand, they don’t use it. They don’t renew their membership and and those were all the things we were trying to get them to do.
[08:16:47] Greg Kihlstrom: So let’s talk about the the impact and and measuring the impact. And the results cited from from the case study are certainly impressive, multi-fold growth in order volume, double-digit increase in cross-shopping. How does having the right measurement and CX management platform enable continued growth here?
[08:36:12] Courtney Owumi: Yes, I think it’s it’s critical. I think one thing that really helps us as we continue to measure this is thinking about the business impact alongside the CX impact. Making sure we understand how is the customer sentiment or per perception changing alongside how our behaviors of that customer changing? Because that helps us understand are we making lasting impact. So it’s definitely a continuous cycle. It’s it’s not a a one and done as we continue to to refine this program and refine this benefit. But working closely with Target, working closely across the enterprise to make sure that we’re able to offer the best value for our customers and keep a pulse on that is what’s really important to us.
[09:18:78] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. And then from from the long-term measurement perspective, how has this maybe changed the way that your team measures and even thinks about customer lifetime value? You know, has the definition of a valuable member evolved as a result?
[09:32:93] Courtney Owumi: It has. It has. So as I mentioned before, going back to, this this flips our our profit model on the head for this select group of customers. So the old way that you or the traditional way you would think about customer lifetime value is a little hidden and it’s actually a journey we’re currently on as a company as we think about, how do we think about lifetime value because these Circle 360 members inherently have less revenue attached to their orders, but they are ordering and they are extremely valuable. So how do we think about changing our our definition of value to understand, how do we continue to invest in the right groups of customers. We have other levers of value that we pull for other groups of customers as well. So just thinking through, how do all of those get incorporated? That’s a journey we’re on right now.
[10:20:96] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. And and so, you know, all of this, just at a fundamental level, is using data and insights to make better business decisions, better customer experience decisions as well. What general lessons or maybe future lessons has doing something like that, you know, this is one initiative, granted a very successful initiative and and a journey that you’re on as as you were saying, but how has this changed the culture and and even the role of of how experience insights are are used at Shipt?
[10:51:98] Courtney Owumi: Yeah. I would say we are very lucky at Shipt. I I would say Shipt is truly a consumer-centric company. We made we’ve been on our CX journey since about 2020 now. Shipt is relatively is relatively young. So for about five years, we’ve been six years, we’ve been on this journey. And uh, I would say about two years ago, we made the choice as a company to say, we are truly customer-centric and we are going to put customer sentiment metrics in our company OKRs and accompanying all of our company strategic initiatives with these types of metrics. I think it it speaks a lot to to how empowered our team is to think about these things and how we measure that sentiment in combination with uh, those business metrics and the why. And I’m really excited for what it will continue to evolve to.
[11:38:81] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. And I I love that you brought up the the empowered part of that because I think that’s the having access to data, having access to tools is great, but when employees and team members are able to use that and and, you know, democratizing access to that, it really unlocks, you know, so much potential both short-term and and and long-term. How do you see technology evolving your ability to not just react to feedback, but to do things like you’ve already shared, like proactively model and and shape the customer experience?
[12:11:32] Courtney Owumi: Yeah, I love that you said that about democratizing data. I tell my team that all the time. I feel like our job is to be influencers, right? We need to democratize the data in a way that everybody can understand and feel empowered to use it. And that’s how we know we’ve influenced them to leverage it. So I love that. But going back to the the point of your question about how we’re excited about the future, you know, I’m I’m really excited about how AI is going to help enable us, you know, top of this year to start getting to our insights faster. And I’m really excited about how we’ll be able to leverage some of these new emerging tools to really synthesize data and spend less time mining and and more time acting. And looking forward to a time where we can start to your point, foreshadowing what could happen, right? Like being more proactive versus reactive. I think we’re starting to get on the cusp of of making that switch and it’s exciting to know that it feels like it’s closer than further away.
[13:09:88] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, I love it. Well, as we wrap up here, a couple a couple last questions for you. Um, I know we’re in, you know, early days of the conference here, but what’s been a highlight of Medallia Experience so far for you?
[13:21:50] Courtney Owumi: Yeah, you know, I work from home. I’m remote. So it’s just been so lovely the energy with everyone here, um, so many like-minded individuals. I have some of my team members here with me. Um, so it’s great to connect with them in person and and other folks in the industry. So I think it’s just the energy of being in person is is really awesome. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s Vegas and the weather is nice.
[13:42:33] Greg Kihlstrom: Right, exactly. Love it. Well, last question for you. Uh, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[13:50:33] Courtney Owumi: I’m curious, right? Never stop learning. I do have two engineering degrees even though I sit in marketing now. And I think within me is an innate desire to just know why, root cause analysis. So always asking questions, making sure I really understand the problem. I think is is what I like to do to make sure I’m I’m always learning.
