Feature
MOLSON COORS RAISING A
GLASS TO ALL CUSTOMERS
In an exclusive interview with Engage Customer, Laura Lee, UK customer experience
director at global brewing giant Molson Coors talks about its ambition to be ‘first choice for
our customers’
I’ve worked in a number of sales and marketing roles,
predominantly in the drinks business, over the last 15 years. I’ve
been with Molson Coors for just over seven years and moved into
my current role just over 18 months ago. Previously I ran the
Southern based sales teams so I’ve seen first-hand the actions we
take that can both delight and frustrate our customers so I’m
relishing the opportunity to address the areas I know need fixing!
My role keeps me close to customers and allows me to work right
across our business – with over 70,000 Carling stockists
nationwide I get to support customers across a number of different
channels ranging from independent pubs, clubs, hotels and stadia
through to large managed pub chains, major events and festivals,
the multiple grocers and thousands of independent retail outlets.
The number of touch-points each customer group has with us can
vary significantly but the need to create consistency in our service
is a constant theme.
What have Molson Coors been doing recently to add value
to the customer experience?
We’ve been working on customer experience since 2012 and I like
to think we’re at the forefront when it comes to our competitor set.
Our ambition as a business is to be ‘First Choice for our
Customers’ so everything we do is centred around this. We joined
the Institute of Customer Service last year as a Council member,
the first brewer to do so, to really demonstrate our commitment to
service – both to customers and importantly to our employees –
and we’re actively working towards Servicemark accreditation.
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We’ve focused on getting the basics right every time for our
customers, and you can only do that effectively if you actively listen
and seek to understand what they really want from you. We have
comprehensive insight programmes across the business – using
phone interviews, email surveys and in the moment SMS surveys and speak to around 4,000 customers per year. That insight informs
all of our continuous improvement plans and it also means that when
it comes to change, we're not working on our hunches anymore.
We’ve also focused on playing back to customers the feedback
they’ve given us as we’re big believers in telling them how we
intend acting on their suggestions. Not enough organisations do it
but for me as a consumer, if you ask me what I think, I want to
know that’ve you’ve heard me – there’s nothing worse than being
consulted and then ignored. It’s important to me that our
customers really feel they’re helping to shape our progress.
It’s clear to us that what matters most to our customers is not
whistles and bells – it’s as simple as beer being delivered on time,
their order arriving in full and that they feel supported by a friendly
and efficient team. So we’ve taken our service back to the
fundamentals and are delivering against the promise of a
consistent and efficient service offer. Our customers all run busy
businesses and we need to make things as effortless as possible
for them.
We use a number of measures to help us track progress. Net
Promoter Scores (NPS), which we’ve doubled in 24 months, are
firmly embedded in our business, but I am conscious of
complimenting NPS with both Customer Satisfaction and
importantly Customer Effort scores – for me the danger of NPS
alone is ‘heroes’ save the day and customers just recall the end
M
First off Laura tell us a bit about your background and how
you came to the role of UK customer experience director
at Molson.
ISSUE SEVENTEEN • NOVEMBER 2014