Anthropologists may say, “It’s too bad you don’t get to use your anthropology anymore” when I talk about working at a big box retailer. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Business anthropology has taken software development in-house to build less costly technology solutions, including “enterprise” software. In 2019, I landed in the enterprise software space of a major US retailer. I had nearly given up on applying through job seeker websites, but the hiring manager favored ethnography—based on his previous experience. As the first ethnographer hired within the organization, I was a bit of an oddity. I had already spent years outside the academy talking about how ethnography solved business problems.

In my five years in-house, I have used both my ethnographic training and my educator background. I find the enterprise software space professionally rewarding.

Working in-house means “studying in.” Understanding the tacit culture of the organization is a critical skill. It helps you deliver your research findings in a way that your business partners find compelling and motivate them to incorporate your recommendations.

1. The problems we seek to understand are more diverse than “how can we sell more x?” or “help us understand our customer base.” Enterprise ethnographers tend to focus on employee pain points, “frustrations or errors in the software or overall experience.” In a research study on call center employees, I learned how negative customer service arises from an inability to resolve issues on the first call. Employees need to resolve queries without long hold times. Sitting with call center employees, I observed various approaches in the way they collect information, relate to customers, and rely on hold to gather information. Employees lean into a wide array of tactics to balance customer needs and business imperatives. Incorporating flexibility into individual approaches to respond to customers could improve customer reviews. (That survey at the end of a customer service call, easy to skip, is a large factor in employee evaluations). While these insights linked to the new software our team built, associate/customer success aligned with site directors’ associate training and helped win executive buy-in.

   

2. The “ethnographic gaze” has proven to be an excellent match for some of the most “wicked” problems—meaning “wicked” as tricky, not harmful. Retailers have a range of financial tools to run the business, which need to communicate with the merchandising tools used in store. Financial tools, in turn, communicate with inventory tools because the in-store customer service associate may not be the same person stocking shelves. Tools need to communicate with folks across the supply chain—foreign and domestic, transit and distribution sites. Employees using the technology are situated within a physical environment where direct communications with each other may or may not exist. Few have direct interactions with customers.

In early 2020, retailers were figuring out the physical and technical logistics of buy online, pick up at store. Notifying everyone in a store meant that associates not directly involved muted their mobile devices, missing other relevant notifications.

To understand the context around notifications I conducted a time allocation study. We took an “ordinary” (not peak seasonal) week and documented both spot observations of employees (e.g., location, activity, customer present or not) and time-based documentation of every general notification (i.e., not individual/targeted texts, chats, or walkie-talkie) to help portray the store environment. We discovered that generic notifications peak when employees must focus on customer service and that customer activity stays high much later than designated “power hours.” This research influenced creating a new approach to targeting messages based on employee role, location in the store, and customer need.

As an ethnographer, my ability to spin data into a story that centers around human experiences has been key to sharing out “hard truths”. While numbers still dominate the business world, experience design is largely about emotions and attitudes. When the metrics our business leaders track (e.g., customer satisfaction, sales) are unsatisfactory, and even when they are, understanding why they are as they are is not always easy.

The ethnographer can take unstructured observations to create defined categories describing key behaviors. These behaviors can tie directly to business objectives or create quantitative data from observations that measure intangible factors to resolve problems and drive fundamental changes.

Unlike an external consultant—gone after the final report—I remain. I have heard reference to some of my findings as “obvious,” but have also observed a shift in how the problems are talked about months after a project. I have seen my partners, unexposed to research before working with me, stand up to last minute, “urgent” requests from business partners using findings from my research. During meetings, I have also reminded my partners who are struggling with a problem that “we already have an answer to that question” by bringing up a relevant study. Part of the fundamental change we create as enterprise ethnographers is simply being there every day. Eventually, those hard truths become established wisdom.

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