Walmart: Inside the Movement to Make Gig Work More Human

I recently had the chance to sit down with Rafi Barragan, Walmart’s Director of Driver Experience & Strategy, for the April 2025 issue of CX Insight magazine, the go-to resource for more than 85,000 corporate CX leaders.

There’s a quiet revolution happening in the world of last-mile delivery and it’s not just about faster drops or sharper logistics. It’s about empathy. It’s about experience. It’s about rethinking the journey from the gig driver’s perspective.

In a space defined by speed and volume, Barragan and his team are taking a radically human approach to platform design, blending real-time data, upstream automation, and a philosophy he calls “ecosystem empathy.”

Beyond Transactions: Designing for the Whole Journey

At first glance, the Spark Driver platform might seem like just another logistics engine. But for Barragan, it’s a living system, one that needs nurturing, not just optimizing.

“Our team’s core mission is to deliver a defect-free and intuitive experience across our last-mile delivery ecosystem,” he explained. “We’ve embraced what we call an ecosystem empathy mindset: a design and operating principle that centers the full lifecycle of the user journey.”

What does that mean in practice? It’s about designing with interdependence in mind. Platform performance isn’t just about fixing bugs or launching features. It’s about understanding how each tweak affects the broader experience. “We move from reactive issue detection to more proactive capabilities, enabling us to identify and triage defects earlier in the lifecycle,” Barragan added.

The results? Faster resolutions, fewer disruptions, and a more resilient logistics network that honors the people behind the wheel.

The Support You Never Need

In a world where contact centers often serve as the last line of defense, Walmart is flipping the script. “I believe that the best support is one a user never needs,” Barragan said. “And when they do, it should resolve their issue the first time, without friction.”

That belief is the foundation for Walmart’s “One-Call Resolution” strategy, an ambitious effort to eliminate the need for repeat contacts while driving down friction across the platform. Using machine learning to detect real-time defects and generative AI to surface personalized guidance, Barragan’s team has reduced contact rates while increasing user satisfaction.

The key, he says, is not replacing the human touch but enhancing it. “What’s powerful is that these solutions aren’t just efficient but deeply human when done right.”

Building Trust at Scale

In the gig economy, trust is everything, and fleeting. Drivers have options. Churn is high. And loyalty is earned one experience at a time.

Barragan sees trust not as a feature, but as an outcome. “Trust at scale isn’t built through one-off interactions that go well. It’s more about how your platform behaves over time.”

That means reducing surprise, surfacing just enough context, and giving users the tools to stay in control. “Whether that’s in-app feedback, clear escalation paths, or journey-aware guidance, teams should work to reduce the ambiguity that erodes trust,” he explained. “When a user knows why something happened and what to do next, it builds confidence. And confidence is what scales trust.”

Understanding the Gig Worker Mindset

One of the most impactful moments in our conversation was when Barragan broke down the three core gig-earner mindsets, goal-driven earners, income bridgers, and flexibility seekers, and how each requires a different approach.

“Even great personalization won’t succeed without a stable foundation,” he warned. “Find the issues that impede your experience before they affect users at scale… you create a platform gig-earners trust, return to, and recommend.”

It’s not about building one perfect feature; it’s about building a flexible ecosystem where drivers feel seen, respected, and empowered.

Where Empathy Meets Engineering

Having scaled support across global markets, Barragan knows this isn’t about theory; it’s about execution. And that means balancing automation with a human heartbeat. “When automation is orchestrated by humans and guided by ecosystem-level insights, we move beyond scripted flows into meaningful engagement.”

That philosophy runs deep. Barragan actively delivers on multiple gig platforms himself, using firsthand experience to uncover blind spots. “Empathy isn’t a leadership buzzword... it’s survival.”

His advice to CX leaders? “Lead with empathy. Design for clarity. Measure by trust and churn. The rest will take care of itself.”

Want to go deeper? Read the full interview with Rafi Barragan in the April 2025 issue of CX Insight.