“Experience is the Future” CPG Industry Roundtable with Coca Cola HBC, Heineken, and Anheuser Busch

Hello and welcome to the Account Experience Podcast. Today we have a very special episode. We bring together three well known brands in the beverage business and I'm really delighted to announce our roundtable today. We have from Coca Cola hpc Stuart Ward, who is the head of sales capability. Hello, Stuart.

Hey.

Adam Hayden.

I'm great. He's joined by David Anat, who's the Senior Director of BEES and the head of US B2B for Anheuser Busch based in New York, right out of New York City. Us.

Hey Adam, how you doing? Cold here in New York today, but good to be here.

That's great. And then Roderick Rosenbaum. Hi, Roderick. Roderick's head Global director, route to consumer and sales capability of Heineken.

Adam, how are you doing?

I'm doing great and I also. We mentioned where David is. And Stuart, you're in London, the uk. And Roderick, Utrecht, Amsterdam.

Utrecht close to Amsterdam home office.

Just Utrecht out Netherlands. Yeah, I'm based in the Amsterdam office here today. So it's great to have you. What a great worldwide spread. I'm so excited about this. There is so much happening in your world and I want to dig deep into this. But I'm just delighted that we've got such a big, well, frankly a great spread of brands but also a worldwide perspective on this. I'm going to dive straight into this. I believe there's a lot of change in your business. There's always change in your business. But to me it seems like it's been accelerated faster than ever. You had the digital transformation that's going on. You've got changing consumer tastes and also how things are going in the supply chain. But. But then we were hit with COVID and I'd like to start with that and find out how Covid and how the voice of customer that came through your outlets helped you shape your response to Covid. Stuart, I'm going to start with you, if that's okay, at the top of the window. How did it affect you guys at Coca Cola hpc?

Yeah, I mean our first response was I suppose very early in that March 2020 and we really actioned our sales team straight away just to keep close to our customers, to call them regularly, ideally daily to really understand what was going on. Are the customers going to stay open? Are they going to close? What are the challenges they are facing and what support will they need and how can we help them? I suppose I think it was a time as an industry we just got shoulder to shoulder with our customers to try and work our way through this against, as you call it, you know, massive adversity. So that was really the essence. And I suppose it was about acting fast. And I think that was the thing that we started to take away is we needed to be much faster in the way we acted. And that meant that we stopped, you know, our existing approach that we took to customer satisfaction. We used to run a, you know, a kind of a once a year survey. It just didn't feel right to be doing that at this time. And it was more important that our sales teams were calling the customers, finding what was happening. We just learned a lot through that process. And then we took the time to ask the question to say, well, how do we now take that forward as a way of building our customer experience model and being more inclusive? Because also the previous approach was more of a sample. So we'd take a small range of customers and then survey across them. Whereas we found actually talking to every customer is what matters. We really wanted to look for how do we get feedback? Because every customer has the right to give us feedback from every single customer that we serve.

Not just the big retailers, but right out to the small.

So, you know, whether that is a bar, a cafe, a supermarket, you know, a wholesaler, any part that we have, we just took the view how do we have the right to get them to give us feedback? And that kind of led us to the conversations with you because we saw so much value in being closer and acting fast. We wanted to make sure that we had a process that brought that to life ongoing afterwards.

Wow, okay. That sounds like a real sea change in Covid. I'm going to come back to that if that's the case, Stuart. But I'd like to bring David in because in the, you know, David, from the US Point of view, I think you went into the lockdown perhaps a bit after we did in Europe.

How.

How was that with you with bars closing at the same rate? Can you give us some color on context, what you learned from the field?

No problem at all. So. So we, I think with, with the advent of COVID we in the United States had a pretty different experience, especially from a beer sales standpoint, than kind of the rest of the world. So overall, Anheuser Busch had had a great year, I would say in 2020, from a performance standpoint, kind of our biggest revenue growth year in a long time, primarily driven by, I think, consumer buying patterns of, hey, you know, we're going now into the off premise. We, a significant, significant part of our revenue of our volume goes through off premise, particularly off premise chains. So as you think about what the consumer was doing, going after kind of known brands, going after larger packages in the United States, there was a lot of makeshift that helped us benefit as a result of that. But as you, as you think about what that means, the listening patterns and kind of even the dynamics of go to market and route to market are different in some of those larger chains or Wal Marts or Kroger's, your, your Publixes, whatever. So as we, as we thought about how we, how we listened and how we interacted with, with, with customers in a little bit different of a way, ultimately we were trying to balance a couple of things, right? Because we don't want a route to market here in the United States where we're a three tier system. So primarily everything goes through independent distributors. Over, over 90% of our volume and revenue goes through independent distributors. So we were constantly trying to balance how do we make sure that we keep people safe, we continue to help and guide our communities, while also making sure that we were listening to, you know, to what they need changing in a little bit of a, in a little bit of a different way. Right? So, you know, let's say that the average Walmart in the past got maybe two, three, even four deliveries a week. Those touch points and kind of the quickness of beer consumption and beer delivery in the United States force kind of a lot more conversations to occur. But it pivots a little bit into, all right, what are we doing in the on premise now where. And I think in April 2020 we went into kind of almost the negative territories, right? How do you make sure that you are addressing the needs of those different people and listening in different ways. So similar to what Stuart said in the on premises, which is primarily where we use customer gauge. We, you know, we were, we were listening and hearing different things. It was an interesting conversation and they wanted new things in that space. But in the off premise we start to hear and listen in a different way. So you, you know, syndicated solutions, Advantage surveys, things like that, where we were trying to address and meet buyer needs in a slightly different way than we were maybe meeting store manager needs at a bar. So it's really kind of about being omnichannel multifaceted in your listening strategy. I'm not even going to talk about, you know, our part, our digital listening yet, but, but definitely I think omnichannel was an important part of that.

Roderick, I'd like to bring you in and get your perspective on what was different or what you shared with your colleagues here?

Yeah, so I think first of all we were hit hard by Covid. I mean Europe was globally as well. We have a large footprint in the on premise as well. So of course that was a big impact. But yeah, similar to what David was saying, the impact is a bit mixed. Of course on premise they really struggled and they had closures, big measures against them. But in the off premise, of course, demand was soaring, combined with the E commerce channel. So I think we had a really, really quick and agile response where we were looking at examples that were happening in different markets where we saw solutions that countries invented themselves because they were listening to customers, they were really close to customers at that time. So they had all sorts of solutions developed from supporting the own trade in different ways, different financial ways, of course, but also in ways to help them with guidance, what they can learn about the government measures, what it impacts, how it impacts to them, how we can help them set up from all the way range to how we can help them set up home deliveries and all that sort of stuff. I think the biggest platform that we did was also huge, almost like crowdfunding measures, launched big campaigns for the public to help fund their own trade outlets. And that was copied in many, many countries. So a huge support on the one hand in on trade and in the modern trade, in the off trade it was a similar type of support in the sense that the customers were facing problems in terms of supply and everything. And we use a lot of creativity there and to help them also secure supply and make sure that, for example, when our on trade trucks were not being used, we used that to help them supply the off trade supermarkets to help cope with supply. So there was a lot of creative solutions. And I think the nice thing about we are really about sharing quickly and learning across the globe. So we took the solutions, what were happening in Europe and then we knew the wave would hit, you know, the Americas. So we were able to kind of, you know, share the info and the knowledge with America so that they were already kind of ready to understand, hey, how can we best support customers and what can we do?

That sounds like a great example. Also sounds like you were able to reduce somewhat the food miles, you know, by dual purposing the transport. I think it's a really good example you had there. Is there anything else that came as a sort of a positive change through Covid? David Stuart, you want to chip in on this? Anything that you did during that period that you're like, okay, that's what we're going to do, do we're going to take forward.

I mean, you know, there's been a massive change across the business in many different ways. And I do think, you know, we talked about on the behavioral side of getting closer to our customers, but also acting fast in the moment whilst also recognizing that we needed to also prepare for what was going to happen, you know, at a later stage in Covid as well. So, you know, being ready for the future, ramping up our capabilities in terms of how we can serve in an omnichannel way as, as the guys have already mentioned. Because you could see the change in the way that people were shopping and the way the customers wanted to order and we had to move faster in those areas to provide solutions because it.

Seems to me like huge challenges in supply chain regulated from outside forces. Suddenly the bars are opening up again. You've got to stock them up as quickly as you can. That must have been a huge challenge. David, did you have that so much in your territories?

No, we did. And there, there are supply chain issues that are enduring into now. Right. So all of that, that variation, the variability in the can market, in the glass market, there have been different needs and different shortfalls and different things over the course of the past couple of years, which I think are well documented is something that we're not immune from. Certainly it's good. Obviously as Anheuser Busch, we have a lot of verticalized operations that we can kind of find and create efficiencies and find and really ultimately with the goal of maintaining our service levels, making sure that we're providing as much product to our consumers and our customers. But I think to answer your original question about is there anything that we saw during COVID that we've carried through now is we've been kind of moving in the direction of Digital ordering for 10 years.

Right.

And that's something that for us, while it was an initiative, it was an important initiative, wasn't one of the important initiatives. And I think that as you see that acceleration of digital ordering and the impact that that has on go to market, the impact that it has on route to market and even the impact that it has on customer listening, that's something that we recognize is going to be kind of like the biggest shift that we see, especially in the US beer market. That's a little bit further, I would say, behind than the European beer market, especially in the off premise where they're already doing bmi. We primarily do traditional ordering here in the United States. So as I think about as I think about how we can start to ascertain the difference between stated preferences and active preferences. That's kind of where our listening strategy is going to evolve a little bit. And that's how we're thinking about things in a new way.

Right.

Don't just listen to what somebody says, but observe and try to help guide new insights based on what they do. So as we think about, hey, you know, we saw that in the on premise x percent of orders are being actually ordered outside of normal business hours. Right. So there are different things that we can start to capitalize, observe upon and really understand how we can connect with our customers in a slightly different way based on this transition to the digital ordering medium.

I'm really glad you picked up on that. That was actually where I wanted to go with this. It seems to me that that's been the longest cycle in your business, isn't it? You said like for 10 years you've been in this direction. I know you've got the Bees platform in and House of Bush and Abi. Stuart, you've got Wabi and some of your other digital.

Yeah.

Customer portal.

And Roderick, you've got your customer portal within Heineken. So this is the trend that's going to. To me, it seems there's this almost like this tension in that where you've had people going, visiting and saying, hey, you should order this to giving people a screen to say, okay, it's up to you now. How do you navigate that trend and by listening to customers. Does that help you through it? I'm going to go over to you, Roderick, on this because I think it's.

Something to nuance a bit as well. Right. I think in the heart and also your question about what change really accelerated. I think we're closer to customers than ever and we always had good relationship Heineken sales reps and guys and girls always had really nice, good relationships with customers. I think it propels something also to get the people behind them close to the customer. So basically the back office, the whole company, because suddenly Covid reached this huge need of these customers that needed support and this crisis. Right. So we really, I think that's the first point, maybe just to reiterate that entrenched feeling that the whole company has. We have to really support and stand by our customers. And I think that really propels a lot. Of course, the digital agenda on top of that really accelerated. We see that everywhere, of course, but I think that is fundamental in the.

Shift in the acceleration.

If I look now in terms of the digital acceleration, I think another important thing to remember, it's always a means to an end. The digital was always a means to a better customer experience and a better. So that's also crucial. But we do find it gives great opportunity because we were always in a. Yeah, you can be in a more transactional mindset to say, okay, the sales rep is going to the outlet once a week, twice a week, because he has to go get the order. Did the customer really want the sales rep to come there twice a week to capture the order? You never really asked. Right. But so you accelerate a bit and you go into that kind of mode and then you find you really add value. And I think by tailoring, using digital, using different means, using the whole mix.

Of the whole omnichannel, by listening and understanding.

Yeah.

Then you can really tailor the service and I think that's the big value.

I can see both Stuart and David nodding in agreement.

I do want to say one thing, Rodrick. I agree fully and obviously, you know, big, big bet for us and what we're pushing. But if you find me the retailer that says, man, I want to do my own inventory, that'll be, I think that'll be the first one that I found as well. Yeah, but, but as I think about, you know, I wanted to just compliment one, one thing there, which is, you know, it's, it's the definition of service and what is service level has naturally I think to evolve. Right. Roger is 100% right. There was a rep going in, counting some cases, doing a couple of things. It is value added activity. I don't think there's a retailer that's going to say, hey, I don't want you to come in and build my order. For me, it's easier, right? Just point blank, it's easier if you build the order, you deliver it. But what we've needed to do, I think as a collective industry is start to think about how we can say that service is now just different. It's not, it's not necessarily that it was bad before, but it's different, it's improving. As we think about what are some of those value added activities that a sales rep can now do or even a merchandiser can come in and do. So there's, there's kind of like as you start thinking about what are the, what are the ways and what are the things that a customer needs from an experience standpoint, you think about, all right, hey, there's going to be needs to be some over the top selling of providing and Creating new insights, creating new categories, doing those things. But at the same time, you also do need to think about what is the merchandising support that helps to build those displays, that helps the stock shelves. Especially even as you consider a, you know, grocery stores, convenience stores, especially in the US we're experiencing the same kind of hiring, staffing, Covid kind of illness concerns that we were facing in our own businesses. So as you think about what the service mean, and obviously, I'll kind of say to the end that we, you know, obviously very much thank you to our frontline teams that were out, that were going out, putting themselves at risk throughout, throughout, kind of throughout Covid. And while we were trying to make sure that we did everything we could to keep them safe and gave them the hand sanitizer and ppe, they were providing a service to those retailers in a slightly different way.

That's a great point, Stuart. Your team were also doing that. How did you find that they were?

Yeah, I mean, let me talk on a couple of points to maybe connect that because, you know, from one side, there is obviously the acceleration of our, should we say, customer portal, you know, and we do want to connect with 100% of our customers in the next five years digitally. But the reality is we're learning as we go in this space. We're rapidly expanding. And it was fascinating. I think we're even on the call together when we saw a comment from one customer on feedback to our customer portals and actually was really challenging. It was really tough feedback to read. But ultimately it was fantastic because in that piece of feedback, it told us exactly what we can do better on and fix to improve our capability to serve our customers. So that's really that power, being open to listening to that feedback and being inclusive. Had we done a sample, we may never have got that feedback. And at the same time, through Covid, if we take it away from, should we say, you know, digital customer portal entities, the needs of customers through Covid were so different. Yeah. And again, it was so unique. I mean, here were customers that, okay, we're closing, but we're going to sell online through the online takeaways. So how do we help them sell through there and maximize revenue? How do we work with them on menus and things like that? Here were other customers, you know, challenging. How do I keep my employees and my consumers safe when we reopen? How do we help them in that area? There were other customers saying, I just need help to open up, you know, restocking my fridges, all those kind of things like that and we can help. So we started to see the needs very different and being able to sort of really provide the service to the customers they needed at a great difficult time. You know, that's where this listening to all customers comes in.

But that's fantastic. I think we sort of covered the technology transition through the pools. But let me go a bit further because I consider all three of you companies as leaders in really bringing customer feedback into the organization at speed and distributing it out to the front line. But I'm guessing that there are some cultural challenges in doing that. Right before the feedback was limited and only came to a small part of your team and it was once a year. So how have you coped with the culture change about somewhat democratizing this feedback? What are the pros and cons of that? Who'd like to take that one?

Yeah, we'll start in. No, I think the one thing and that this helps us do is to bring the discussion in. I think that's really brings the discussion on the management team table and you know, you need the management team to really solve, you know, or you need the management team, the cross functional team, this all disciplines involved to really solve, you know, some key issues. Sales reps can't solve everything, obviously. We know that. I think in the past you probably had situation where it's not that we weren't listening to customers, but it only reached a small group of people probably and that really helped. So having that being transparent and suddenly having the results of your NPS and coming in on a monthly basis or weekly, whatever, ongoing basis, having it transparent and seen throughout the entire company really, really helps. So we have examples of companies that post the MPS on their homepage, starting Internet homepage, whatever people have when they start up their computer, everybody can see what's going on. Just giving that visible to everybody just already drives hugely the way we look at it and the way we interact. So I think that's really important. And I think the other point is it is also a bit of a deliberate effort. So we really make the point when we start with markets, when they aren't working on mps and whatever we really say, okay guys, this is the change plan you need to do. You need to engage your team, you need to build this cultural change roadmap. And we actively engage with all the markets to make sure that they have that also covered.

But it can be quite confronting to get the feedback into the business. So I'm wondering David, have you got a good strategy about how you've been able to bring your team along or was it never a problem? Is it a us thing that you guys are.

No, I don't think it's necessarily a us thing. I do think that there is a. As kind of our stated principles as I'll now think about our parent company, AB InBev, we have stated principles on continuing to strive and never being satisfied with our results. We have stated principles on putting the consumer or the customer at kind of the core, the forefront of our thinking. And I think that, that the, you know, the feedback has always been there. If you think that the first time that a sales rep has gotten a challenging piece of feedback was through an NPS survey, it's not right. Like they've been getting that phone call to their boss or to their team leader saying that, you know what, like this guy didn't like, what the hell, why didn't he pick up this thing? Or why didn't he put up that display? And it was something that I think people, over time there, there is an opportunity to get and reach out to and give feedback in a way that hopefully feels constructive, hopefully feels productive. And I think that by and large, the way that we've, we've started to address that is that as you democratize the information, as you make it a little bit more constantly accessible, you want to make sure that you are kind of like creating the right behavior in the ber. As they think about themselves as the owner of that account. The owner of that account means volume, sure. But the owner of that account also means nps. The owner of that account also means service level. The owner of that account also means making sure that they're now responsible for revenue. So it means a lot of different things. So as you think about this kind of holistic sum of service and what are the measures that we're asking our PR as our sales reps to be responsible for, it expands a little bit more. And I think that as they think and as their mindset evolves to being and creating a business plan with their accounts, and in the US that's a bit of a change. As they think about this business plan, you look at a few different things as opposed to trying to be linear into, into kind of just like, hey, I'm responsible for volume or I'm responsible for my innovation, or I'm responsible for my incentives.

Good answer. Thanks a lot.

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Stuart, I know you've got some things in place for in your organization.

Yeah, and I think it depended where we, our starting point was always and it was probably driven by our previous approaches where we used to run these, survey these research and then they would sit at the center and we'd build actions from there. And we wanted to be so different going forward after Covid. And that's why we started with literally every single sales or customer focused team member has full access to all of the insights from the customer and everything. We then did all the training, all the change management was really helping them understand that the feedback is never on them. The feedback is on Coca Cola Hellenic.

Right?

And ultimately we have let our sales team down in not knowing how to respond to customers. Because like David said, I mean, there's nothing new here in the feedback. I'm sure that the sales team or the business developers getting that feedback anyway. But this gives that chance for the customer to really flag it up, the whole organization to see it. And then let's have all of those help our sales team to respond fast. And that's where we're really clear and focused on some core measures that's not necessarily nps. Nps we're not really as focused on right now. That's a lag indicator for us. We're looking at critically coverage because that's really telling us the quality of our customer experience program if every customer is giving us feedback. And then secondly, you know, close the loop because that is the culture and capability of our sales teams to respond. That tells us that ultimately everything is working behind the scenes to actually respond to customers. Because if we get those two right, then we're demonstrating, you know, the customer centric behaviors or values that we aspire to as an organization. And if we get that right, NPS will naturally look after itself, making sure that we're really focused on the right areas and that stacks up. When the business developer goes in, the first thing they see is how am I doing on close the loop, how am I doing on response? The last thing they see is nps. Everything had to be aligned up in that order.

It's interesting you're focused on the actions there. Stuart, Roderick and David, you also see that as well. It's not just a one way thing with a customer. Customer feedback coming in. How are you capitalizing on that in your business? Rodri?

Yeah, absolutely true. And I like what Stuart said is I think MPS is a great measure. It's also a dangerous one because you know, the minute you put a number and people start using it and thinking that's a target, that we need to change it. So we're really taking a concerted effort to say, okay, it's important to measure mps, but don't look at the numbers, just look at the actions to close the loop to coverage. Indeed. What you're saying, Stuart, as well So I think that's really crucial. The other thing is it's about the action plan, right? And I think that we see great examples and we try to share those examples to other markets and so that everybody sees the kind of things that have been taking place so that people feel inspired. But more critically, we also share back with our customers. What have we done? A bunch of customers. If a group of customers in a certain market says your invoices are unclear when we fix the problem. So let's say it maybe took four months, I don't know. We sent them a message and said, listen, we've heard your feedback and now see the new invoices and tell us what you think. This is continuous improvement. But really share back. Say this is. We've actually done something with your feedback. I think that was really powerful and simple example, but customers feel heard, and that is really the core of what you're trying to achieve.

I think it's a great example because fixing invoices is perhaps the less glamorous part of the business, isn't there? But it's really essential if you're a small business owner running a buy, it's really essential. You get that, right? I'm guessing.

Let's not forget that a lot of the work and a lot of the pain points are about, you know, just, you know, I don't want hassle. I want. I want, you know, good seamless transaction. Right. You know, so it's not all it has to be, you know, rocket science and shooting for the stars. Right. It's a lot of it is the practical stuff as well. Sometimes it takes a while to fix, sometimes it's a quick fix. Doesn't matter. I think that that's, of course, a really important part. And of course, after that, you fix the basic, you have to go, and you can really see how you can augment and improve the relationship. But yeah, you're right.

Stuart, you have an example as well.

Yeah, just on the other side, because, I mean, it just came from the pilot. And I remember when we first did the pilot, we had a whole load of customers. It was 20% of the ones that responded. Just wanted to say thank you to our sales teams for everything they were doing. And it was just fantastic that we were expecting, okay, we've got to follow up. What's the problem we want to fix? And the customer just wanted to say thank you when we got it right. And it was just perfect for our sales teams to hear that directly from the customer and for us to see it. So Public as well. So let's also recognize in feedback sometimes it can be really motivational because I know nothing motivates our sales teams more than actually feedback from the customer.

And that's actually, I'd like to kind of compliment. We did something similar. We were kind of very, we're very happy with the NPS result that we got here in the U.S. again, I agree with everything that was kind of said before on not using it as kind of the KPI, the primary KPI that the sales rep is using, but in aggregate, right. As we start to get, you know, into the tens and the hundreds of thousands of responses, you do start to notice patterns and you start to notice some things. And we're very happy kind of with the, the outcomes that we had, we had seen. And that's something that we've started to even use to help galvanize, you know, what the, what, what kind of how proud we are and how proud we are as a system of the service that we're providing to our retailers. So I think that even having that number, which is, you know, being able to start saying things like, hey, look, look at these other companies, the Tesla's, the Apples, these are their MPSs, this is yours. And that's something that kind of really galvanizes the team and makes them feel very, makes them feel very, very happy and as Stuart has said, motivated around what is our shared purpose to make the experience better for the customer. I will say as well, I started to, as I, as I've kind of taken over a new role here over the past couple of months. I started to do a bit of a few market visits, right. And I see different things that, you know, usually in a sales room you'll have the mission statement kind of like the thermometer that tells you where are you on your targets, you know, what are the big new innovations. But I've also started to see in a couple of these visits people saying, hey, let's improve our average service level from X to Y and we're a metrics driven company, right where that's not surprising for us, but it is good to start to see things and people integrating the measures and kind of instilling that customer service mindset and then using the tools to help them say how do we. And let's think about how we can improve this. Treat yourself as. And then something one of. And I'll end with this, but one of our distributors was talking about, hey, you know, look, you are. It's not, it's not the XYZ distribution company. It is the your name, David Inat distribution company. Right. And ultimately you're the person that is responsible for the perception that the customer has of you. And how you can then pull those different levers to improve their experience, I think is really what this unlocks.

That's great. I mean, it's really fantastic to listen to all three of you talking about how seriously you take this feedback in your business. And I think, you know, there's often this perception that customers give feedback and nothing ever happens to it. And you really, you're really demonstrating that that's not the case. But let's just go a little bit further on that. And then kind of as we draw to a close on this, how would you like to involve the customers who are not giving you feedback yet? Are you encouraging people internally to do that or are you reaching out to customers? Can you give a little color about how you're trying to increase your feedback footprint?

I mean, maybe I'll start on it. I mean, this is just, it's a constant piece. I mean, we're what, six months in and our focus is, you know, the sales team's going out, they know who we haven't pulsed to and actually then going into introducing the customer, why we want to hate their feedback and actually prove it to them through the experience of then the follow up. And so it's just largely engaged. And that's where the insight can be. Has this customer received a survey? Can we ask them to receive a survey? If so, we then got to act on it. That's the key piece because then it proves that we listen to them, we're understanding them, and then it builds into the cycle from there. So it's just a constant process. And as we bring more and more things online and now we're pulsing through our customer portal and other solutions, we will reach customers in other ways, not just through the relational survey.

Yeah, I would say from our perspective, I think if you view customer experience or customer satisfaction as the overarching variable that we're trying to accomplish here or the overarching outcome that we're trying to accomplish here, there are different things that can be measured as you think about, hey, you know, what is, what is their NPS on the platform and then what are the features that they need to improve, what is their volume trend and where are the places where we're seeing, you know, slowness or softness, what is the performance of the application or what is the performance or what was a raised ticket or what was, you know, there, there Are so many different things that you can measure that. I think where what we're trying to do is we're trying to create, basically create a scorecard. Hey, how do we make sure that we think about, you know, a support ticket is really typically somebody who's frustrated with you, but it might not be the only person who is frustrated. It might not be the only person who is experiencing an issue. So it's just trying to be a little bit more diverse with regards to the inputs that we receive. So becoming an understanding. All right, you can. There might be leading indicators that are completely unrelated to what their response to a survey was. So how do we start to look at stated preferences? A part of it reveal preferences through actions through. Through different things that they do and then start to create those triggers that, as everybody has said, this is an action that you need to take. Maybe within their mobility solution, we've noticed X, Y and Z things. Have you thought about doing this within your next account visit, stuff like that?

Right.

So it's starting to think a little bit more about what are the different triggers that we can start to do based on all of this information that we have and then give. At least it's not a, hey, Mr. Mrs. Sales Rep, Mr. And Mrs. PR. You need to do this. But here are some information that can help you make your next visit a valuable visit.

And some of this stuff is largely on ourselves. Right. I mean, it's about our ambition as well and the leadership culture. And I give that example, if I think about one of our country operations is already over 50% of all their customers, direct and indirect, now giving feedback. And okay, the scale is very different between the countries, but that came from an ambition in my country to just go do it. Just go ask that question. So a lot of things are on ourselves to go do and engage customers.

Yeah, I think that's really good. Rodriguez, from your side, you've also got it as one of your leadership initiatives to drive.

Yeah, I think it's clear. I think we don't have to completely reinvent the wheel to tell people, hey, this is important. Right. So expand your customer base in your coverage as quickly as possible. Now, I think the really nice thing and the positive thing what we've seen is we have really high response rate on our MPS surveys, which does indicate very good engagement from customers already. So it's already in itself a positive sign. And as we are rolling out, we just encourage markets to really make deliberate plans to ensure that they expand their coverage. And then they also know, yeah, it's a great thing. It's a great tool. So they're active about it. At the same time, we encourage them to focus on the most valuable customers first. Right. Because it's also, you can't do everyone at the same time. And we are also conscious of the fact that you have to be a bit careful in the sense that when you ask customers for feedback, you need to be able to action upon it. Rather not send 100,000 surveys in one go, because how are you going to cope with the feedback if you have such a high response rate, if you can't solve and close the loop in 48 hours? So we are also helping them to plan this kind of what's the ideal drum beat for them. But definitely all actions are focused on increasing that coverage. And I think that's going very well.

That's great. Gentlemen, I'd like to really thank you for coming together today. That was a fantastic insight into the beverage business. I just wrote down a few notes about what I learned. Digital transformation is real, but it's accelerated through Covid and you've had to use speed more than ever to do this. But really the technologies that are out there is forcing you to get closer to customers than ever. So I really, really appreciate that. I'm just going to go around the room for just a last word on how you feel your programs might go in the future. If you can give that away, Roderick, perhaps you can. Where are you on this? What's your ambition?

So we are, of course, in a point of no return. I think we've really managed to bring the customer in and that is. I think that just really gives a lot of excitement to embark on that, to continue on that journey in a fast pace and really have the relationship with customers so close. So I think this can be much bigger. Really used to drive also how we see also revenue targets in the future about how we drive customer centricity. And that will become such a much more important KPI than just the output targets of the revenue. I think that is now firmly established and we'll continue along that path.

Fascinating. Stuart, last word from you.

Yeah, I mean, our goals are quite simple. I mean, we're just committed to driving the customer experience of all customers across all touch points with the business. And that starts by listening, then following up and then acting on that feedback. And it's that simple. That's the commitment we have and then empowering our sales teams with the right insights and the support they need to actually close that loop with the customers.

Thanks, David.

Yeah. I think, you know, over the past 30, really 30 years, first since, since we moved to pre sell, but really over the past 150 years that Anheuser Busch has been in operation here in the US we built, at least in my opinion, my biased opinion, the best physical route to market in the United States.

Right?

So as I think about this transformation, what is the, you know, our goal is to make sure that we marry the physical route to market strength with this new digital route to market world. Right? We want to become indispensable to our customers. We want to become indispensable to our consumers in the same way on the B2C side. And this is, that's really it for us. How do we bring the really, really positive relationships and things that people have built over all this time and then start to leverage all this new technology, infrastructure and forward looking stuff to make sure that we are becoming indispensable to our customers?

That's a great way to end it. I'd like to thank you so much for joining us on the Again Experience podcast with really those insights into how to really work with the B2B the channel. Roderick, thank you so much for coming from Heineken.

Pleasure.

Stuart, Coca Cola hpc. David, representing Anheuser Busch. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Thank you very much.

Thanks Adam.

Huge transformation in the beverage business that can really only benefit the outlets. It's great to see. There's so much professionalism there. Thanks.