Canadian Tire keeps the wheels of commerce turning safely, triples online sales with the help of Microsoft Teams

It’s as Canadian as the maple leaf in its logo, an unpretentious retailer that owes its longstanding success to putting the customer first. Begun by two Toronto brothers who pooled their $1,800 savings to start a tire store in 1922, Canadian Tire has shattered the boundaries of its original specialized market to become a retail powerhouse. With slightly more than 500 Canadian Tire stores across Canada and a number of other franchise and non-franchise businesses, the company is a major employer and philanthropic source. It’s little wonder that the COVID-19 crisis sparked anxiety at a retailer that prides itself on looking after both customers and employees. Thanks in part to the Microsoft Teams–based curbside pickup solution it created with SYNQ, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network specializing in retail solutions, Canadian Tire again has adapted to a new age in retail. And it isn’t merely surviving; it’s thriving.

Keeping timeless values, aligning with emerging needs

For Paul Medeiros, Associate Dealer-Owner of the Niagara Falls store in the Ontario town of the same name, unwavering customer focus upholds everything his frontline workers do. “I always say ‘TLC’—think like customer,” he says. “We want our staff to treat them as they would want to be treated themselves.” That consideration ripples throughout his franchise. “This is my family,” adds Medeiros. “My main concern is safety for my staff and our customers.”

Canadian Tire kept up with the times when bricks and mortar retailers with a strong online presence began to take business away from those that did not. Well served by its multipronged strategy of offering of the goods Canadians need and want, including its own exclusive brands and a forward-oriented technology approach, the company had an increasingly strong online presence. Yet online sales were still a fraction of the total sales. The need for social distancing and widespread store closures due to COVID-19 shifted sales dramatically to online almost overnight, and curbside pickup became the main channel for customers.

The first three weeks of the pandemic aren’t fondly remembered by Medeiros and his team. Customers descended on the store in masse to pick-up their orders. In the absence of an automated solution that could scale to support the team, those days passed in a blur of blinking phone lines on hold, angry customers jockeying for position in the pickup line, and stressed frontline workers. With a new store that had been due to open to fanfare and online orders skyrocketing, a solution was needed—and quickly.

Adapting to an unforgiving timeline with Microsoft Teams

For Angela Oude Vashaar, eCommerce Manager at Canadian Tire Niagara Falls, the onset of the pandemic heralded a new era, with online sales increasing peaking almost overnight by a factor of 20. Often, most of those orders were slated for curbside pickup, and it was soon apparent that a reimagined model for when customers arrived at store to pick-up their item was crucial to translating Canadian Tire’s traditional customer service standards to a safe, socially distanced model.

Clearly, customers needed to know their place in the pickup queue, and Canadian Tire workers needed the ability to let customers know where to wait for larger items, if an order was running late, and all the other details that could cause stress on both sides as pickup item volumes swelled.

That’s why Medeiros turned to SYNQ, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network that specializes in retail solutions. His team had a strong relationship with the company, which was assisting with in-store solutions for the new store he had just built. Nolan Wheeler, Chief Executive Officer at SYNQ, found the curbside challenge to be especially compelling. As a retail solution provider, Wheeler understood both the urgency of the curbside situation and the focus on protecting customer data. “We needed to provide a solution that was safe and scalable for the retailer while also protecting customer privacy,” he says. “Microsoft Teams was a critical platform for a small to medium-sized technology vendor like SYNQ as we worked to quickly develop the solution our partner retailer needed. And the support we got from Microsoft and our Microsoft account executive greatly accelerated the success of the curbside pickup app rollout.”

Playing well together: Microsoft technologies and third parties

The SYNQ team worked with Canadian Tire Corporate team to draw on the value of their existing relationship with Twilio, a cloud communications platform. Twilio conveys chats with customers to Teams. Using Twilio to facilitate the back-and-forth communication between customer and store, Teams was used as the backbone of the solution, creating and managing workflows, and providing an escalation mechanism when frontline workers needed a manager’s help. “Twilio was an existing partner of Canadian Tire and SYNQ,” explains Wheeler. “It was natural—and easy—to marry the specialized functionality within Twilio with Microsoft Teams to deliver an easy-to-use solution that Canadian Tire could deliver overnight.”

The result: a sophisticated texting solution that took the stress out of multiple customers converging on a store during times of peak activity. No matter how busy the Canadian Tire team is, each customer has a place in line, clear communication about the status of the order, and precise instructions about where to wait. The solution is deployed on Zebra electronic fiscal devices—ruggedized Android devices easily carried by frontline workers.

Canadian Tire used the full advantage of interoperable Microsoft solutions—chiefly Azure Active Directory and the mobile device management capabilities within Windows 10—to support the Teams-based app on the Zebra devices and secure user identities without compromising accessibility and efficiency.

Ken Roberts, Eastern Market Manager at SYNQ, notes that Microsoft Teams offered capabilities lacking in competing solutions. “We thoroughly assessed competing solutions in our quest for the best-in-breed technology to use for our application,” he says. “We chose Microsoft Teams as the path to increased sophistication and all-important customer privacy.”

For Medeiros, who was managing the physical safety measures such as see-through panels at cash registers, developing in-store processes, and navigating severely impacted supply chains, the overnight deployment was welcome relief. Within 24 hours, all 150 employees were expertly using the system.

Gearing up for a new age in brick-and-mortar retail

As a General Manager at Canadian Tire, Niagara Falls, Brendan Burns no longer has to worry about fielding anxious calls from customers who’ve waited in line on the store telephone system. “The difference in how we can provide service to our customers from April, 2020 to less than a year later is night and day,” he insists. “Thanks to the curbside pickup experience enabled by Microsoft Teams, we not only get customers into an organized queue without being on hold; we take care of everyone in a timely manner.” Oude Vashaar agrees. “With Microsoft Teams, every stage of the order and pickup process is now faster.”

Online order volumes at Canadian Tire have continued to trend at two to three times of their pre-pandemic levels.

Even as Canadian Tire moves into a new era, it remains true to Medeiros’s TLC mantra for customer care. He foresees further innovations, like curbside returns. “We’ve had rave reviews from our customers about the great experience using our curbside pick-up at the store,” says Medeiros. “They’re blown away by the communication and the level of service they’re getting via Teams, and the resulting trust means more overall shopping with Canadian Tire.”