How Heineken Leveraged CX to Grow When Bars were Shut Down

Our VOC program is not a market research tool. It's a dialogue improvement program. And it's also not a couple of waves per year or one wave per year, but it's a continuous process. So if all goes well, then every week all the sales reps get at least one or two alerts in their mailbox to start calling back one of those clients.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Account Experience podcast. Today we welcome Stefan Visser. He's the voice of customer program lead at Heineken, Netherlands. And full disclosure, guys, Heineken is one of Customer Gauge's fantastic customers. That being said, this episode is a can't miss. Stefan tells a few great stories. How Heineken's Experience program has impacted their business, how their sales team rallies around the customer feedback, and how closing the loop is absolutely key in their strategy. We're excited about this one. So without further ado, let's dive on in. Hello, Stephan.

Hi, Ian. Nice to be here.

Yeah, great to have you. So, as we always start this podcast, we like to ask every guest, what does account experience mean to you? So give us a little flavor on that, if you don't mind.

Well, for us, account experience is, well, actually what it says, the voice of the customer. And for us, the customer is the center of what we want to work around at least. So at Heineken, we are working towards a more customer centric environment, so we start to move more and more in that direction. And it's so therefore also MPS is becoming, at least at Heidegger, Netherlands is one of our core metrics to follow. So for us, it's crucial to understand what our customers are saying to us so that we can improve our customer journey.

And Carrie, you've heard of Heineken once or twice maybe in the past.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, you laugh, you think, wow, I mean, come on, everyone knows Heineken. I mean, the experience is the. Is the beer. I mean, why a program though? I mean, what's. What's the. You shared a little bit about that being the voice and the core. But why is it so important for you guys to have that experience?

Yeah, well, we, of course, we sell our beer to consumers, but we are in our out of home business, so we sell it to actually the resellers of the bars, restaurants, and those are our customers and we have a tight relationship with them. We have our sales reps visiting them on a frequent basis. So for us to understand what makes their heart tick is really important. And also what elements of our services are they happy with. But also what can we do to improve that relationship so that they stay happy with us, so that we keep the relationship with them and that they keep selling our beers towards indeed the end consumers?

I think that's an important point. I think not a lot of people understand that, that what you do is you don't just drop stuff off at the grocery stores or to the pubs and people buy your product. There's this in between who represents the Heineken brand and makes sure the distribution gets to the right places and resells that. And I think that's a. It's kind of something that a lot of people just take for granted and they don't understand that in between piece.

I think what's also very interesting, the difference between the bar owner and the supermarket is that a supermarket just sells all types of beer and all brands of beer, but a bar owner makes a selection for the consumer. So in the supermarket you as a consumer can pick whatever you want, but at the bar there's a limited number of brands that you can pick from. So for us it's important to be available then in those bars.

It is super interesting because I think when most people think of like a Heineken experience program, they think of direct to consumer. But there is this whole value chain approach that I think you guys are taking, which is super interesting. Not talked about a lot, which is interesting as well. So yeah, I'm really excited to dive in here. So I'll kick it back over to Kerry. I'm sure you had a follow up question on that.

Well, I think what I'm hearing here is can you win the hearts of that bar owner or the bartender who's serving those drinks up or how does it become a destination for Heineken? I'm starting to hear the answer to that. Next question I wanted to hear is what are the goals of your program? How are you using this to win their hearts over? So Heineken is what they sell?

Yeah, maybe I gave it away already a little. So where we started when we started with the VOC program is when we created a customer journey. So that's been about two years now that we have a customer journey in place. So we designed a customer journey there. And then in order to be able to improve that customer journey to the full extent, we needed to understand on which of the different touch points we needed to improve. So we have a quite extensive customer journey. And then, well, in order to improve it, we first need to start measuring and that's when I came in to to start measuring also the different touch points and the level of satisfaction of those different touch points. And that's actually how the ball started rolling. And also when we got in touch with Customer Gauge on that, we talk.

About the journey all the time and how important it is. Are you comfortable sharing with us a few of your customer journey points or ones that you've realized are really important.

In your program now actually you are telling us what important elements of our customer journey are through the survey. So we identified, of course, different sectors. So we have the onboarding of the customers. And that's not something we put that much into the survey as such, because it's. Well, it's once and then you are part of our customer group. But then there's a cycle of ordering your beer, delivering beer to your doorstep, the account managers visiting you, your connection with our customer services department, the financials or the invoices that you're receiving for us. So those are all different touch points that we really would like to measure on a high, frequent basis. And that helps us then improving those touch points.

So just to back up a second, so you talked about you're trying to measure the different journey points you got brought in to help facilitate that. But how did you guys actually like roll this out? So I think there's like one piece of like, all right, identify the touch points through surveys. But how did you tactically roll this out? And I know your role is every single day you're in this. So give us a little bit of detail around your daily operations and kind of how you roll the program out.

It's nice that you ask. Cause it's quite funny way we. We did that. We just started doing it and maybe a bit of the Nike approach. So it's a nice story to tell. So we were in touch with Customer Gauge, I think it was in fall 2019. And then we just started the pilot with you guys, and we took one of our sales regions and started drawing up the survey where it's still quite the same as it was back then. We made some slight changes, but it was really short survey and started experiencing the power of a VOC program. And then also I think that's one of the moments where we started to learn where the real power of it is. And for us, that's in closing the loop. And I remember that we were with the different sales reps who were able to. We wanted to close that loop. We were in a football stadium, or you would say a soccer stadium, I think, and we were Talking. We had done the survey. We sent out the survey to I think 600 clients. Then some of them were responding already and giving us ones and zeros or twos, but also tens and nines, of course. So was quite balanced. I think our NPS score was quite balanced then. And what we ask to those sales reps is to call back those customers, especially the ones who are the detractors. And that's when some anxiety kicked in for some of them, I think, because it's quite scary at first to start calling back a client who gave you a 0 or a 1 just 48 hours ago or less than that. But all those conversations. So of course we sat down with them first and say, okay, what you need to do first is listen and take out the emotion somebody gave us. Us as Heineken A0. Not you personally, but us as Heineken A0. And then we need to take out that emotion first. So sit down, ask them, or tell them, thank you for your feedback. We really appreciate it that you took the time to answer some of our questions and then start asking them why they are dissatisfied. And then all those conversations turned out positive. So, first of all, everybody was surprised that we called back anyway, and then at least within 48 hours was an extra surprise. And then they started explaining a bit more why they were not so happy with what we were doing. And then we could really take that as the feedback that we need to improve either our processes or. Or the individual approach with that client. So most of them, they started setting up a meeting and discussing other things, and sometimes it even led to increase of revenue, which is in the end what we are doing it for. But what we're doing it for is mainly to get satisfied clients, and then satisfied clients should lead to more revenue. And it's not intended to be the first outcome of the VOC program.

I'm over here just real giddy right now because for a couple of reasons. First off, we just did it. We just launched it. It wasn't this extravagant kind of big plan, and we're going to do this staggered or anything. And watching you guys kind of be brave and go out there and do that. I did hear you use the word most a lot. So it sounded like most of the team was bought in when they saw the feedback. There was a little bit of apprehension about what do I say, or. Or some fear there, but would you say it was mostly bought in and how do you tackle some of that resistance? I know you talked about sitting down and pulling the emotion out, but Was there still resistance at that point? Or do you have a culture now where everyone's just doing it, not even thinking about it? How's that progressed?

Yeah, well, at least I'm hoping that we have that. I'm sure that not everybody is on board as much as we would like to be. So the buy in from the, from all the sales reps, but also the sales managers and customer care agents, that's something that we need to keep paying attention to. That will always be a pitfall that we need to be careful of.

Well, I guess. Let me pull it down. How do you get them interested?

It's by starting and it's by explaining, by really putting them also in the center and for them to understand that our VOC program is not a market research tool. It's a, what we tend to call it more of a dialogue improvement program. And it's also not a couple of waves per year or one wave per year, but it's a continuous process. So if all goes well, then every week all the sales reps get at least one or two alerts in their mailbox to start calling back one of those clients. It can be detractor, but in the end it's also the promoters and the passives that we are sending alerts to our sales reps about. Actually that's something they requested from us. So at first we were only sending alerts for detractors. So call back those detractors because they are unhappy with us at this point in time. But then they said, okay, we want to hear from all our clients. And of course we have it registered in our CRM system, but they just wanted to be really close on it. Also when they got a 10, they wanted to call the promoter and say, okay, thank you for your feedback. Is there anything else we can do for you? So keep that dialogue going. So that was also really surprising to us in the VOC program that that was the feedback that we got from the sales reps to begin with.

I think that's really cool that they requested the additional feedback. I mean, that's such a crazy thing to say out loud because we've talked to a lot of companies in the past that there's resistance and it's hard to get buy in for a program. And when you have the other side coming back to you and saying, no, we want more of this, like bring it on, I think that that means that you've established something that's very valuable in their minds. So bravo. I think that's hard to do and that's cool.

No, and it was, it's, it's, it's up to the, to the sales reps to do it in the end and to keep believing in, in the philosophy, but it pays out. And actually it was yesterday that I had a discussion with one of our sales reps and he had, well, we published on our, on our workplace, our Heineken workplace, we posted that one of our clients gave us a zero. And then our Horka director, or our out of home director, he was asking, okay, I'm curious why this guy is so unhappy. And it was all friendly atmosphere there. So I gave our sales rep a call and he explained to me what was going on and there was something with the finances of the guy. But the process was quite funny also there because what happened is that the sales rep talked to the customer couple of days before we send out the NPS survey. So the NPS survey goes out automatically. So he wasn't aware of that. Nobody was aware of that. But a couple of days before we send out the NPS survey, he could not fix the issue of the customer because, well, because of good reason. So there's no issue there. But the customer stayed a bit disgruntled about that. So then in the NPS survey he was like, okay, now you can have it here, right? So I'm not happy with you. So I give you a zero and I tell you in the comments why I gave you a zero. And then let's see what happens here. Expecting nothing to happen from it. But what happened? The sales rep picked up the phone, called him back within 24 hours and they already both, they knew what it was about. So the sales rep called the client because, well, because he filled out the survey. So the client said, yeah, you're calling because of the survey. And, and the sales rep said, yeah, you filled out the survey because of the financial issues that we're having. And they started the conversation and it was a. If I. He told me it was quite of a positive conversation in the end. And they also work towards a solution to the problem. And then the customer was saved also for us. And so we have another happy customer. And I think it's also where the power lies that if you have a customer that is unhappy, well, if you have a happy customer, that's great. Of course it's great. But if you have an unhappy customer and you can make him into a happy customer, then it's creating also loyalty. So that's really also what's so crucial in the, in the VOC program. That we close that loop and this is then what we. What we close the inner loop. So based on the more operational elements.

I love this because I know when you tell the story, it sounds so simple and it sounds like, oh, no big deal with that. But first off, there's a lot of companies who can't get to that point. But this speaks to culture in so many ways. Having the right people, the right form of communication, having everyone, almost like a transparency of this is our business, what we need to do, everyone moving in the same direction with the same purpose. I can't tell you how powerful that story is.

This is one of the more multiple examples that we have on this, but it's also one of the examples. So we don't know whether it's always happening, of course. So we keep sharing these kind of stories, or at least we want to keep sharing these kind of stories, that all these conversations turn out positive and that it's about the dialogue with our customers. So if you are in the gastronomy industry, it's a relationship business from bar owner to consumer, but also from supplier to bar owner. So that's where it's where we need to make the difference.

And just going back to that original kind of like test that you guys sent out of the pilot, was there any big kind of aha moments where you're like, wow, we need to change this right now. And did you change anything in the business immediately based off of that feedback?

So that you're referring to what we call the outer loop. So make structural changes in our customer journey? Well, didn't come really from the pilot. And unfortunately we did the pilot in the end of 2019. So we decided to then take a step back to set up a full program. So a lot of training material was created also for our sales reps. Then we wanted to launch in March 2020. Don't know if you remember what happened in March 2020, at least in the Netherlands, the whole gastronomy industry closed down because of COVID of course, so we needed to postpone that. But then in the second half of last year, then we were continuously sending out the survey even when the gastronomy industry was was in lockdown. Because we wanted to keep. Keep in touch with our clients. They were not doing any business, we were not doing any business with them. But in the future, we still wanted to continue the business that we did in the past, of course. So we kept surveying them. And that's also when we start finding out more of the things that we needed to improve so one, one small example, but also maybe how we did that, that may be also interesting for you to understand how we are taking that. More structural changes. So what we call the outer loop. So we dive into the feedback that we're getting. So we see, for instance, in this case, it was that we saw some negative feedback coming in towards our customer service team. So we wanted to get to the root of that. So we started calling a couple of clients who ticked that driver in the survey. And, and then we say, okay, what is it really that you need from us? And it became clear to us that there was not always clear for all our customers to who they should call with what type of questions. And so there's a lot of different desks that you can go towards within Heineken when it comes down to finances, invoicing or delivery or ordering, all those kind of things. So we wanted to. And if they come in at one point, then for us to put them to the right one, we rather have them call the right number immediately, of course. So what did we do? And it was really a small exercise, but we created a list of phone numbers with a nice infographic that we can share with our customers online. They can print it out. I think we even created stickers that they can put on the wall or on their phone or if there's still a, a fixed phone there, so that they know exactly who to call for, for what issue. So that's also how we approach it. So we see something happening in the, in the survey results and just start calling up other clients to see, okay, what do we need to do for you? And sometimes it's a, it's small things. So like, like this ones. But of course, there's also larger things that we need to improve in our processes. For instance, our, our ordering platform, that's also something that we could see improving.

I want to address the elephant in the room. I'm going to pass it off to Kerry, because I know you want to tackle this one, but Heineken's a big company. You're global, and you have a massive distribution network. You have a ton of consumers that obviously drink your products. I think going back to your original story of, like, the shock of somebody following up with them within 24 hours of a survey, that's one thing. But then addressing these types of business issues with agility, like getting the phone tree out, getting the stickers, I mean, that is, again, something that is really impressive for your size, but also just the fact, like Carrie said, it's built into your culture, you're getting the feedback to start those conversations, but you're also addressing some of the issues that may occur in that feedback that come up through drivers and things like that. So I just want to point that out that the. That's really hard to do and I think it's very impressive. So, Kerry, I know you got a bunch of things you want to unload too, so I just wanted to point that out.

Every time I hear this story, I'm just a super fan. I just keep getting excited and wanting to cheer every time you say these are the things that move forward. And listen, you hear Heineken. Heineken's been around for a while. It's not like this young, agile, small company. Ian has a really good point. You guys are a large organization and I just love hearing the stories. But I guess my question is now, now that you're here, you have a successful program, you know, it's giving you good insights. You guys have a two loop system that you're working. It really sounds like the dialogue is regular now. Where, what are the plans? Where's the plan for Heineken to take this? What does the next couple of months look like, the next year? How are you guys going to grow? Because something tells me you guys don't sit still very long.

Yeah, no, we still have a lot to do here. I think we started working on, especially on closing the different loops that we have. So that's where we keep focusing. So we start improving and to see where our NPS scores are going. But in the same time, we are only measuring a couple of our touch points, but not all the touch points are relevant for all customers. So we also want to set up a couple of more transactional based touch points. So we are expanding the surveys. But then there's also the question coming in, okay, how many surveys can you actually send to a single customer? So there's a lot of things that those kind of challenges that are occurring. So we have the transactional surveys that we want to increase and will be great if we can start increasing it towards five or maybe 10 different touch points in 2021. And in the same time we also want to start monetizing our mps, as you would call it, to start diving more deep on the analytical side. So how we are approaching it now is really pragmatic and we just, we see that something is some element has a negative impact on our NPS score. So we dive deep in it and start seeking for opportunities to fix it. But we can also start monetizing it and look more towards strategizing the. The output that we're getting. So. And that then it comes down to, okay, which clients should we pay more attention to than others? Is it in terms of visiting frequency or other thing, other elements of our sales strategies, or should we. What's the difference? Are the differences between different types of clients? So it's a difference between bars or restaurants, for instance, and those kind of analysis. That's something that we just started. Started doing. And there's a lot of. Lot more things that we can do on that.

Yeah, I love the progression because it's. I mean, the initial feedback and the reaction was it's all equally important. So we need to act on it. And now that you've got that rhythm down now it's like, let's be strategic. If we can weight that by dollars and cents or pounds or euros, wherever we're at in the globe, then we can start saying, hey, maybe there's a group approach to this, but maybe this one needs special touch or special attention. I guess my other question too, I was really curious because you talked about the different departments and having who to call. How is this impacting the whole organization? How is this starting to bleed into all the different aspects of Heineken, different departments? Because I hear you talking about that is how are you communicating it? How are they feeding into this?

Yeah, well, that's also something we. We need to start doing more and more. So we focus a lot on our sales reps because they are the point of contact for our customers. But there's also the other departments that we would like to. They would like to get more understanding of their impact on NPS and what they can do. And now we're getting some questions here and there, but we also should start pushing more and more what we can do for them. And that's also, I think, where the transactional service can come into play. So for instance, after a delivery or after customers has onboarded, so we can understand also the onboarding process a bit better. So those kind of things. That's really crucial to get more to the deeper level. And also by sharing the results that we currently have based on our approach, if we start sharing that more and more in the wide company, then they will probably come also more towards us to understand more what they can learn from our MPS program. So it's about spreading the oil stain. I don't know if that's English expression also, but it's definitely a Dutch one. So we want to expand the impact that we can make with our MPS program by keep sharing our stories.

Again, I know you're painting this beautiful picture, so I have to be the bad guy here and ask this question, see how much you're willing to share. What challenges though, have you run into? So I hear all the things that are working. Very inspirational. But what were some of the obstacles or some of the things you guys ran into that makes this a little bit of a challenge?

We really got a momentum at the start, but with the bars and restaurants closed, it's difficult to keep that momentum going. Also, we have a very large stakeholder group to keep the interaction going with, and that's really, that's our main challenge for the rest of the year to really make. We call it NPS to the max. So maximize the impact that we can make with our NPS program and the analytics is really the big challenge that we need to pick up. Also because the trend that we're currently seeing in NPS might not reflect the current market because there's so much going on in the market and we should try to link it with other kind other data points that are interesting. So of course, one of the things that pops into your mind first is that you would like to correlate your NPS to your churn rate. For instance, can you start predicting churn based on your NPS results and can you correlate that with other figures that we have available? If we can do those kind of things, then it can become even more powerful, but it's difficult to make that happen also in a company where resources are becoming more and more limited because we're not selling any beer to our bar owners. So that's definitely a challenge to keep that priority high on the list.

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So tell us a little bit, how are you using the feedback, the information, your program, how are you using it to impact the culture?

Yeah, I think it's great that you mentioned culture there because I think it's really important for our customer centric culture to get really in touch with our customers. And our VOC program really helps there. And it's the drivers that we start understanding more what's important to them. But it's definitely the comments that make everything come to life and also be more in touch with our customers. So before we are only in touch with our customers when we visit them or when we call them, or when they have a complaint towards us, but now we're also reaching out to them. Okay, what's happening with you and what can we do to help you? And that's really becoming more and more customer centric and I think that's where we as a company want to move towards and that's helping a lot.

Yeah, Ian talks about that all the time, but I love it. It's like opening up another channel and being able to listen to just one more source of that. So I love that you mentioned you.

Had a stakeholder group. I'm kind of just curious is that. And I know the program kind of sits in sales right now for the most part. You're spending a lot of time getting the sales reps up and running because they're the points of the relationship. But is that stakeholder group, is that spread across all of the different departments?

I think one of the really big stakeholders is within our customer care team also who need to do a lot of the operational work once it's pushed forward from the sales team towards them. But we need to make sure that they understand exactly what they need to do and how to close it in a loop. Because if there's an issue with one of the customers, then they also need to fix it or they need to find the right person to fix it and then close the loop back to the customer. So that's where the real value also lies. So it's not only about the sales rep closing the loop about communicating, but it's also about fixing the issue. And that's something that we can do in a. Well, not only from our MBS program but also from a larger extent. But that's very operational. But then also from a strategic level, then we start discussing with our sales teams but also with our services team. So with our invoicing teams. Okay, what, what do you, what can you do to improve and to. To keep all those stakeholders on the forefront of. Of MPS of our offer MPS program? That's quite difficult there small team that we have available to, to run the MPS program currently.

Yeah, that's kind of why I asked because I imagine the, the environment is pretty dynamic right where you have a good amount of sales reps, you have a good amount of feedback coming in. You have to liaise with the, the service teams. Lines, dotted lines going on. So yeah, I just, I wanted a little bit more detail around that. So thank you for that.

I am curious. So we have this dynamic company of a day to day operations. There's a lot of moving pieces here, a lot of data. I know that we're all data geeks and we just love looking at that because it tells a story. But I guess my question is what I would really love to know is then how are you communicating this up? Yeah, so listen, we all have a boss of some sort, whether it's an investor, a board or whoever it might be. But I think that's one of the challenges, too, is how do you then take all this that's happening and communicate that up to them so they can get a snapshot of its success and impact on the business.

I think where the power of creating Buy in lies in the raw feedback that you're getting from your customers. So that makes it really come to life. So if you start sharing also the direct comments on a live ticker or share it here and there. So we have a newsletter that's being sent out every week, so there's always there's at least one comment in there, and that makes it come to life. So it's not the word clouds that you create with what are the most common topics that are mentioned in the comments, but it's those one or two that can be really positive or that can be really critical, but that makes it come to life. And then also the management, who is already a lot in touch with our customers, but they get even more a bigger feel of what's happening within those different customer segments. So that's really powerful. So that engages them a lot. I think that's where the power lies.

I love that. I love just making it come to life with a quote or a statement, and it puts the individual back into the whole process, and I love that.

Thank you so much, Stephan, for joining us on the Account Experience podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure. I know I speak for Kerry and myself, so thank you for joining us.

Well, thank you for having me, of course.

And where can people find you?

If you want to find me, you can definitely find me on LinkedIn and hopefully soon at one of our great terraces in Amsterdam and any other region in the Netherlands.

There you go. We'll take you up on that. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you guys for listening. This has been the Account Experience podcast, and we'll talk soon.