Driver Experience Transformation — Cara A. Brown
Kroger · Enterprise Transportation & Logistics · 2022–2025

I turned a CEO complaint into a permanent enterprise health metric

Role Senior Service Designer
Scope 30+ Distribution Centers, Enterprise-wide
Duration 6 months design + enterprise rollout
Confidentiality Abstracted
Karl Neimann presents at Qualtrics Conference

VP of HR, presents the Carrier Experience Survey at the annual Qualtrics Conference — without me in the room. My research partner was there. The program had become institutional enough to speak for itself.

By The Numbers
+100pts NPS Swing

From –36 to +49. The first measurable indicator of driver experience at enterprise scale — and the metric that changed everything.

74% Driver Satisfaction

Up from 36%. The result of a system built to listen, measure, and act — consistently, across every site.

30+ Distribution Centers

Every site enrolled. A gamified engagement program drove adoption across a workforce that had never seen a designer before.

Still runs Program Permanence

The NPS metric is now a permanent weekly KPI tracked by the EVP of Supply Chain. The architecture outlasted my involvement — by design.

. C-Suite Recognition

"This is Fantastic and Creative!! Well Done and exciting to see. Will be interesting to see how we can scale in other areas and the results over time."

Rodney McMullen — Chairman & CEO

"Way to go Cara and Paul and team. Very cool uplift to incorporate and share in our All Hands HR meeting today."

Tim Massa — SVP & Chief People Officer

"We are fortunate to have the opportunity to affect people's lives. I am very grateful to Cara, Paul and the team for giving us the opportunity to do so."

Gabriel Arreaga — SVP of Supply Chain

When solid service design skills demonstrate themselves, enterprise-wide impact is the natural result.

The Work

The Problem

Angry drivers were emailing the CEO. They hated delivering to Kroger's distribution centers — and when drivers opt out, shelves go empty. I was assigned to fix it on day two of my job.

The Solution

I designed a new enterprise sentiment metric, a gamified DC engagement program, and a change implementation playbook — turning an invisible complaint into a permanently funded, measurable service domain.

How It Was Done
Diagnosis

Visited distribution centers, interviewed drivers and frontline staff, and mapped root causes across people, process, policy, and technology across the DC network.

Root causes exposed
Measurement Design

Created the Carrier Experience Survey — a new NPS-based driver sentiment metric — paired with The Race to 100, a gamified participation program that drove adoption across 30+ DCs with weekly EVP reporting.

New metric established
Pilot → Rollout

Tested with one region, built a change implementation playbook, then expanded enterprise-wide: 3-month pilot to 3-month full rollout, 6-month total program execution.

Enterprise adoption
Governance & Scale

EVP of Supply Chain institutionalized NPS as a permanent performance metric. A dedicated role was funded — that person traveled the entire United States implementing DC-level improvements.

Permanent infrastructure

Field visits to distribution centers grounded every design decision in operational reality. Meeting drivers where they worked — not in a conference room — was the first move.

Service Architecture — Clarity

Transportation & Logistics had never had a designer. This is a Clarity architecture — building visibility into a system that had none, so leadership could finally see what was actually happening on the ground and why.

How I Work →
Skills Demonstrated
Enterprise Service Design Systems Diagnosis KPI Design Executive Advisory Change Enablement Cross-functional Alignment Influence Without Authority Gamification Design

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