Dive Brief:
- The Home Depot has created an operations experience manager role, responsible for “managing customer service more broadly,” Senior Executive Vice President of U.S. Stores and Operations Ann-Marie Campbell said on a Q4 2025 earnings call Tuesday.
- The operations experience manager is tasked with driving uniform operational processes in stores to enhance interconnected shopping and last-mile fulfillment experiences, according to Campbell.
- The new position builds on the pro customer experience manager role, which Home Depot introduced in fall 2024 to better serve professional contractors. The pro manager role “continues to elevate the pro experience in all stores,” Campbell said.
Dive Insight:
Home Depot’s investment in new associate tools and processes over the past year have improved associate engagement and, in turn, the store experience and performance, according to Campbell.
“As you heard from us in December, we are focused on the core and culture of our company,” Campbell said on the call. “Our associates are the key to delivering an exceptional customer experience.”
Home Depot is freeing up associates to focus on assisting customers by transitioning non-customer facing tasks to a dedicated merchandising execution team, Campbell said. The transition is still in a pilot stage, but it is contributing to a “meaningful” increase in productivity in stores where merchandising teams are active.
Investments in the store experience are paying off with higher customer satisfaction scores, which increased every quarter in 2025, according to Campbell. Additionally, the average tenure for store associates is the highest it has been since 2017.
“We are relentlessly focused on delivering the best customer experience in home improvement, and we know that our efforts are positioning us well to grow share in the market,” Campbell said.
Home Depot invested in CX outside of the store as well. The retailer rolled out real-time delivery tracking and additional communication tools for big and bulky deliveries in the fourth quarter, according to EVP of Merchandising Billy Bastek.
“This enhancement gives our customers greater visibility and certainty on the timing of their delivery,” Bastek said during the call. “We know that as we remove friction from the experience we see incremental customer engagement, leading to greater sales across all points of interaction.”
Home Depot’s CX improvements were a bright spot in an otherwise relatively mediocre quarter. Comparable sales rose 0.4% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to an earnings report. Net sales fell 3.8% year over year to $38.2 billion.
The results were in line with expectations, President and CEO Ted Decker said in the earnings report.
