Beth Thomas-Kim, director of consumer services at Nestle, was rifling through call logs to Nestle’s toll-free customer comment line and found only 20% of the calls represented complaints. She dug a little deeper and discovered a trove of marketing ideas and product suggestions from customers who were passionate and motivated enough to phone their ideas in.
Ms. Thomas-Kim spends millions of dollars a year on research for Nestle but came to realize the potential of tapping into “free” customer insights collected from the call center. (Previously, Nestle mainly used its customer comment line to answer questions and resolve customer complains.)
Working with the Nestle marketing team responsible for the Coffee-mate brand, Ms. Thomas-Kim started a pilot program where she had marketers call back several hundred customers who had phoned in their ideas. Pat Chambers, Nestle marketing manager, called many of those customers and commented, “When you speak to someone one-on-one, they’re more open about what they like and don’t. In a focus group, they might not want to seem like some weirdo obsessed with the brand.”
Some of the customer ideas have already hit the marketplace. For example, customers said they thought Nestle’s eight-ounce Coffee-mate jar was too small. Nestle responded by increasing the size of the Coffee-mate jar to 15-ounces and sales jumped.
Customers also told Nestle the pastel-colored packaging of new Coffee-mate products was too difficult to distinguish on the shelf. Nestle listened and brightened the colors.
To protect Nestle from customers claiming ownership of the ideas and requesting royalties, they send callers a standard letter outlining that Nestle has exclusive rights to any submitted ideas. And when Nestle marketing managers talk to customers, they are careful not to tell them which ideas Nestle may implement.
But that's not all, Nestle marketing managers now spend time at the customer call center training phone representatives about products and giving them samples to try.
Gotta give Nestle credit … not only is this a great way to engage in conversation with customers. It’s also an effective way for a big company (and in Nestle’s case, a monolithically big company) to act like a small company.
All this makes me wonder … what if the next marketing manager hired at your company was a customer and not a marketer? Hmm…
[Hey there marketing gadflies … I’m not advocating you should actually hire a customer as your next marketing manager. However, I am advocating that you get out of your cubicle and talk to customers and gain the “real” customer perspective to add to your company perspective. Dig?]
Further Reading:
Great write-up. I am following your blog for a while now, and yeah, there are many points that I agree with. May be you will hear more from me soon :)
Posted by: Andreas | September 15, 2004 at 08:17 PM
Andreas ... thanks for hanging out at the Brand Autopsy blog. Please pardon all the marketing cadavers lying around here - this place is a marketing mess.
Seriously ... let's chat about those points you may not agree with. I welcome the invitation to debate all things marketing.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | September 15, 2004 at 09:23 PM
Nestle is one of the smarter companies though. I worked in the call center of a catalog company that sells inexpensively priced items and the higher-ups didn't seem to care what the customers requested or suggested. Our top two requests 1) a toll free number and 2) African-American dolls.
We didn't have a toll free number because our customer base was the kind that would call before they had looked through the catalog. They didn't know what they wanted, they just wanted to order something.
It was once "explained" why we didn't sell African-American dolls: they were researching the possibilities but product development could take several years. Ummm, if you say so.
Too many companies I have worked for don't care. The only "good ideas" are those that come from management. Not the customers or the lowly peons who work with the customers.
Posted by: justin g mitchell | September 16, 2004 at 08:12 AM