How Albertsons Uses Video Feedback to Drive Excellence

Albertsons Companies has always aimed to keep pace with the way customers shop and interact with their grocery banners. And with so many people adopting mobile, they knew they needed to be digital-first in how they listened to customers as well. Medallia’s Digital Experience research shows that 70% of customers prefer mobile apps as their channel of choice, and 63% used a mobile app in their most recent brand interaction without touching any other channel. With numbers like that, it’s no surprise that Albertsons wanted to move beyond traditional in-store surveys and create a feedback experience that fits naturally into the way customers already shop.

The challenge was that some of their existing survey touchpoints weren’t as flexible to use, meaning they were missing opportunities to capture meaningful feedback at scale. And while standard surveys provided valuable data, they often missed the little details that truly define an experience. As Michael Flatt, Senior Manager of Customer and Market Intelligence from the team explained, “We would get a score of 10 on the survey from the customer and that everything looked good. But one video showed a crumpled bag. The customer thought everything was okay but, looking at the crumpled bag, we knew that wasn’t up to our standards.”

That simple example underscored a larger truth: surveys alone can’t always capture the emotion, nuance, or even the unspoken frustrations of a shopping experience. Albertsons needed a way to make feedback easier for customers to share, and richer for teams to act on.

To bring richer customer voices into their experience measurement, Albertsons began using device push notifications for surveys and video feedback directly within their mobile experience. The goal was simple: make it easy for customers to share, and easy for teams to learn. The new setup checked both boxes. As one internal stakeholder put it, the solution was “really easy to use and slick.” With just a quick tap of the feedback button in the app, customers could record and share experiences soon after a transaction, whether it was curbside pickup, a delivery, or a standard in-store shopping trip.

The videos themselves added a completely new dimension to customer feedback. Beyond written comments, Albertsons began receiving clips that showed what was going well, like friendly employees or smooth pickup experiences, and where improvements were needed, such as occasional frustrations with offers, missing items, substitutions, or quality concerns with produce. Instead of trying to interpret numbers or brief comments, teams could see and hear the experience directly from the customer’s perspective.

Thus far, the primary audience for this feedback has been the e-commerce and store operations teams, who use the videos to orchestrate experiences, inform close-the-loop, business intelligence reporting, highlight wins, and surface areas for continuous improvement. But the potential reach goes much further. Albertsons is already looking at how store directors and business unit leaders could use video feedback as both a learning tool and a way to connect more closely to the customer experience in real time.

Since rolling out Medallia’s video feedback, Albertsons has unlocked a new level of depth in its customer insights. Beyond numbers and scores, the team can now literally see and hear how customers feel — their expressions, their tone, their stories. As Michael put it, “Every one video is worth 3 to 5 comments.” Henrik Christensen, Senior Director of Customer and Market Intelligence at Albertsons agreed, noting, “It adds credibility… the video takes any skepticism out of it.”

The richness of video has also transformed how feedback is shared internally. What might have once been dismissed as “just another survey” is now a vivid customer story that employees across the company can rally around. “You have to see it to believe it,” Michael explained. A single video can reveal things a written survey never would, from a crumpled grocery bag that didn’t meet Albertsons’ standards to the delight on a customer’s face when an order was perfect. The results are translating directly into business impact: an 11% year-over-year NPS gain for DriveUp & Go and a 17% increase in home delivery NPS, fueling a 21% lift in digital sales (Q3 FY25 vs. FY26).

He credited Medallia’s video responses with surfacing the customer drivers behind the shift and helping him tell a more complete story in his executive summary to business unit leaders. By integrating video feedback directly into executive reporting, Albertsons is turning raw customer voices into credible, actionable insights that guide decision-making at the highest levels.

With these results, the program is gaining momentum across the business. Albertsons plans to explore video feedback into new channels like home delivery, UX, and pharmacy, while further embedding it into Voice of Customer initiatives. The vision is clear: make customer voices easy to capture, powerful to analyze, and impossible to ignore.