Page 12 - Conveniece World Magazine Nov/Dec 2020

PETROL & CONVENIENCE SUMMARY FROM PAGE 9 to our NightOwl family. We’ve made many improvements and upgrades to stores to continue to provide competitive customer in-store experiences that bring new interest to our stores. Other achievements include a refreshed website and mobile app upgrade, the successful rollout of a new campaign to boost basket size at our fuel sites, and the development of an exciting new summer campaign including an in-app game with a fun Australian theme. To sum up our 2020, perhaps Billy Ocean said it best: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”. NightOwl looks forward to continued company growth in 2021. UCB CEO Darren Park 2020 for me has been about toilet paper panic buying, social distancing, lockdowns, hotel quarantines, Perspex safety screens, super enhanced personal care, elbow-bump greetings, grocery power games, border closures, floods, bushfires and Zoom meetings. It’s also been (and will always be) about people: my UCB team members and their families, our UCB members, their teams and their families. UCB trade partner friends and their families, too. When things get tough, we gravitate to those that we care for. It seems that 2020 has delivered so many challenges, one on top of another. But we’re surviving, and for the Australian convenience channel, we’ve seen shoppers’ trust as like never before. As always, there are experiences that shine brightly, too, and one of those for UCB is the August 2020 CMA Shopper Report, where UCB and our members recorded the highest ever net promoter score of 80. This is a moment of pride and encourages me to keep building. I’m proud for the members of our UCB family, who execute in-store plans and serve shoppers with heart and passion every day. I’m also proud of the UCB team, who strive to deliver the best retail program they can. Shopper feedback is exactly that: it’s from the people who vote with their hard-earned cash. Peer results are wonderful, but nothing drives us more than shoppers engaged in what we’re all trying to do, which is to serve them better. We aren’t done with 2020 yet and there are still challenges to think through for 2021. We aren’t out of the Covid-19 woods yet. We still need to be disciplined and diligent and keep ourselves safe and healthy. Every year typically has a few defining moments, and for 2020 so far, it’s been about seeing how good we are when we work together. It’s with this in mind that what I’m truly looking forward to in 2021 is getting together in April for our annual UCB Member Conference and Trade Show on the Gold Coast. It will be an occasion to remember and we want as many members and trade partners to be there. Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci It’s been a year of relentless change and challenge in Australian retail, as we’ve weathered everything from bushfires to record demand surges, to a once-in-a- generation pandemic. I’m incredibly proud of the way our team has worked tirelessly to provide for the essential needs of the community throughout 2020. From the outset of the pandemic, the safety and wellbeing of our team members and customers have been our number one priority. We put the needs of our most vulnerable customers first with Community Hour and Priority Assist. And we moved quickly to invest in store safety and personal protective equipment. Innovative digital tools like Q-tracker and QR code sign-ins have also offered peace of mind to our customers. It’s clear we’ll be living in this new normal for some time. Covid-safe has become a part of everything we do. 2020 has also accelerated the rise and rise of digital and e-commerce. We’ve experienced three years’ growth in three months, and it’s been all hands on deck to keep pace throughout the year. We’ve served more than 800,000 new online customers this year. Of these new customers, around 60 per cent have shopped with us online again. Once customers try online, it becomes a key part of their shopping repertoire and they don’t tend to turn back. It’s clear we have to re-engineer the way we do business to meet the needs of changing customer expectations. We’ve made good ground this year converting more than 200 of our supermarkets into online stores and more than doubling our delivery capacity with the help of on-demand specialists like Uber, Sherpa and Drive Yello. More recently, we launched our first micro-fulfilment site out the back of our Carrum Downs supermarket in 10 CONVENIENCE WORLD NOV/DEC, 2020