🚦 My guest is my colleague, Chris Drury, Director of Customer Care at Blount Fine Foods. Chris has quickly made his mark & his contributions to the Consumer Care Industry and currently serves as President of the SOCAP Board of Directors…
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We both share an interest in – to quote Chris – “leveraging data to build continuous improvement in product design” and we’ll be digging in (you know I love the details…!) how this comes to life via a “Traffic Light Report” Chris developed.Â
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Come back here on Tuesday 5/14/24 to take a listen to the FULL episode:Â
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-curious-colleague/id1565590157
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#consumerrelations #cpgcx #caringdeeplyforyourconsumers #consumercarereporting #socap
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Denise Venneri (00:01):
Welcome to the My Curious Colleague podcast
with your host, me, DeniseFenary. We'll be talking all
things consumer relations with afocus on consumer product goods
organizations and the brandspecialist and analyst roles and
responsibilities. So if you likeCPGs, like I like CPGs,
(00:21):
marketing, insights, and caringdeeply for your consumers, Well,
take a
Chris Drury (00:31):
listen.
Denise Venneri (00:32):
Welcome, my curious colleagues. In this
episode, my guest is mycolleague, Chris Drury, director
of customer care at Blanc FineFoods. Chris and I share an
interest, and to quote Chris,leveraging data to build
continuous improvement inproduct design. And we'll be
(00:53):
specifically chatting about howthis has evolved via a scorecard
that Chris developed. And Ithink what the fun part of this
is that even if you're one of mycolleagues maybe with, a smaller
group of analysts or maybeyou're just the analysts, and
perhaps you don't even have any,you know, highfangled reporting
(01:15):
tools, this can be done inExcel.
So listen up, everybody. Let mefirst introduce Chris a little
bit further. He joined BluntFine Foods back in 2013 and has
been relentless in growing andelevating consumer, customer
care and the consumer's voiceinto the company. Chris joined
(01:37):
Blunt Fine Foods in 2013 and hasbeen relentless in growing and
elevating customer care and theconsumer's voice into the
company. He has 20 yearsexperience in a variety of roles
in marketing business processimprovement and customer
service.
(01:57):
He's also very active in ourindustry group, which is called
SOCAP, which stands for theSociety of Consumer Affairs
Professionals. He is currently amember of the board of directors
at the national level. I believethis is his 2nd year and was
active at chapter level on thatboard leadership. He's a
graduate of Providence College,and I only mentioned that
(02:20):
because a few people havenoticed that, yes, Chris is the
3rd guest from the big east thatI've had on. And it's really
just purely coincidental.
With that, let's get into it.Hi, Chris. So happy you're here
on the podcast today.
Chris Drury (02:40):
Hi, Denise. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for
having me.
Denise Venneri (02:44):
My pleasure. You know, what's, well, there's a
lot of things that's interestingabout you, but what's
interesting to me, the mostprobably is that your model for
care is, you know, a bitdifferent from the ones I've
been familiar with in my, in myexperience in CPG. And it's one
like a couple of my colleaguessupport as well. So you support
(03:10):
both the CPG or I'll call thatthe retail side plus the food
service side of Blonde. So kindalet's start there, level set
everybody, on BlondeFind FoodProducts, where they can be
found, and, just kinda who theyare.
Please.
Chris Drury (03:26):
Sure. So I I guess the easiest starting point is
that Blount Fine Foodsmanufactures about 80% of the
refrigerated soup in America.It's not a household name. It's
a name that's behind most otherbrands. Some of those brands,
for instance, are all the Panerasoups that you can buy outside
(03:49):
of the cafes.
Legal Seafoods here in thenortheast and along the east
coast is very popular. And thenvery, very large numbers in the
private label sector. So mostgrocery chains, private label
soups that you'd find would beproduced by Wow. We can find the
(04:09):
products, in Target, Walmart,Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's, and
then grocery stores. Now, thefood service side, we work with
a lot of national chains as wellas regional, right down to the
mom and pops that are sourcingthrough folks like Cisco and
(04:30):
Reinhardt and Gordon asdistribution.
So we really do have 2 distinctpieces to our business.
Denise Venneri (04:38):
Okay. And where do you spend most of your time?
On the food service care or theretail care?
Chris Drury (04:46):
Mostly the retail. Because for instance, Panera is
the largest brand, in terms ofdistribution for us, and the 800
number that is on every singlecontainer comes into my team.
Denise Venneri (04:57):
Yeah. Alright. So let's talk about this I call
it the traffic light scorecard.Is that what you call it? What
do you call this thing?
Chris Drury (05:07):
A stop stoplight.
Denise Venneri (05:08):
A stoplight.
Chris Drury (05:09):
A stoplight report. Yep.
Denise Venneri (05:11):
Stoplight scorecard of yours. And let's
kinda start at the beginning.What at a high level, what was
the the initial intent of thescorecard, and then in what
situations are you using it? Isit, you know, just everyday
monitoring of products on a, ona timely you know, on a monthly
(05:31):
basis, quarterly? Or can youalso use it to assess new
products or a reformulatedproduct that's out there?
So the, the intent andsituations.
Chris Drury (05:42):
Sure. So it initially started focused
primarily on just one brand, andthe reason for it was that
although, you know, yourcomplaints when something big
happens, the normal reaction isto look at root cause analysis,
identify what created the issueto begin with, and put in place
(06:05):
corrective action. So that'sjust normal quality type of
procedures that many of us inCPG would do should we have
something that just bubbles upas a major problem in the
product. But what's more subtleand what really drove this is we
wanted to be able to take allthe consumer contact points that
we have through the contactcenter and look at those things
(06:29):
that don't just jump out at youas a major problem. So for
instance, for us, chicken noodlesoup, was one of the ones that
glared at us because we wereseeing a lot of feedback points
around the distribution of thesalads in that product.
The salads being the pastanoodle, the carrots, the celery,
(06:51):
the chicken. We would have cupsof soup that were mostly broth,
and then you wind up on theother end of the spectrum with a
lot of cups of soup that had aton of stuff in it and less
broth. So unless you're trackingthat and and aggregating all of
those that seem like one offcomplaints, you would never
(07:13):
really pick up that there is abigger problem. So we have that
stoplight report set up in a waythat we're taking all of those
data points from consumers. Webounce them against how many
cups do we ship.
So to normalize complaint rate.Yep. We normalize and we end up
(07:34):
with a complaint rate.
Denise Venneri (07:35):
Mhmm.
Chris Drury (07:36):
And we use thresholds, to turn a little
bubble that's next to the numbergreen, yellow, or red. So
anything with a rate under 1becomes green.
Denise Venneri (07:48):
Anything with a red Anything with a what? A rate
of 1? To 1 Mhmm.
Chris Drury (07:54):
Is green. Mhmm. Any rate between 15 Mhmm. Is yellow.
And then anything 5 or above isred.
So it makes it very easy whenyou're looking at large sets of
data across different complaintcodes. Your eyes gravitate to
(08:15):
the red. Yeah. And if you see alot of that over time, you know
it's been a problem that's beenpersisting. So, and when I say
over time, we have it set up bycomplaint codes so that we're
able to see where, what'sspecific.
Is it the viscosity of theproduct? Is it the solids of the
(08:36):
product? Could it be some flavorprofile? In other words, it's
too salty or it's too sweet. Sowe let the data now drive where
we focus our continuousimprovement, because it's not
like we we have a a recallsituation or a situation where
(08:56):
we had a major misstep inmanufacturing that prompted, you
know, a high call volume arounda specific batch of soup.
These are all onesie twosiefeedbacks that come over time.
Denise Venneri (09:08):
Right.
Chris Drury (09:09):
So that really is what started it, was to to make
those little changes to bigproducts because they have a
much larger positive impact forconsumers and the experience
they're they're getting with thesoup when they interact with it
at the dinner table.
Denise Venneri (09:23):
Yeah. And that's that continuous improvement,
goal that I know is a big mantrafor you. So that was the intent,
and the situations are everyday, and, could you use it for
new product tracking too?
Chris Drury (09:42):
Yeah. So we we use it in a monthly meeting. Mhmm.
We have a team specific tolooking at the CX data that we
do have by brands. It's acontinuous improvement team.
We get together monthly and wereview these, and we're always
looking for where's the red.Yeah. You know, and focus is
(10:04):
this red just a single month?Was it a one off or maybe there
was a problem with 1 batch? Oris this red persisting over
time?
So we're now at the point wherewe start looking at the the the
yellows with the higher ratesbecause we've driven a lot of
the red out of the products.Yeah. Right? So now it's that's
just a continuous improvementprocess where, you know, you you
(10:25):
let the data drive you towardsthe most problematic pieces in
the process and the formulation.So we do use it in that sense of
constant monitoring on a monthlybasis.
Denise Venneri (10:35):
Got
Chris Drury (10:36):
it. We definitely use it for new product launches.
Mhmm. It takes time to build thedata, so we have to be really
careful that if we see a redblip, we can't necessarily react
right away because you may nothave enough distribution behind
it.
Denise Venneri (10:51):
Right.
Chris Drury (10:51):
You know, you could have the volume could be so low
on it that it doesn't take manycomplaints to to turn that red.
So we have to be sensitive tothat. But once we make a change,
we put a line in the sand and welook at pre reformulation or
change against post change. Sowe actually have a line in that
(11:14):
stoplight report at the givenmonth where the change was
implemented in our manufacturingprocess so that we can look at,
are these reds going away? Arethe complaint rates in those
areas where we were focusingstarting to drive down and turn
yellow to green.
Denise Venneri (11:30):
Mhmm. Mhmm. You know, I I we had spoken before,
and I remember trying tovisualize it, and I was, like,
sketching it out of my copybook. And, then you were kind
enough to send me sort of a mockup of it. And I think if
anyone's gotten this far in thepodcast, let's let them know
that if they DM me, that we'd behappy to send them a PDF of a
(11:57):
mock
Chris Drury (11:57):
up version
Denise Venneri (11:57):
for themselves. But, until then, let's let's
kinda break it down for thecolleagues listening right now.
But, you know, because youtalked about all you know,
looking at all the reds, and so,really, like, help me visualize
it here, audio. What are all thedata points that are on it? Is
it just the rates?
Is it time periods in thecolumns? What's in the rows?
Chris Drury (12:20):
So think of just a tabular form, and across the
top, we have every month. Soit's monthly.
Denise Venneri (12:28):
Okay.
Chris Drury (12:30):
And we look at, just tracking that over time.
And the rows, the very top rowis the number of cups shipped
for the month.
Denise Venneri (12:41):
Okay.
Chris Drury (12:42):
So that's simply taken right out of the invoicing
history, the number of cups. Andfor me, it's not, for instance,
at a club store if we have apackage that's 4 10 ounce cups.
Denise Venneri (12:56):
Mhmm.
Chris Drury (12:57):
For me, it's 4 cups. It's not a single cell
unit. It's down because everyone of those 10 ounce cups, even
though it's in one cell packageat a club store, every 10 ounce
cup is gonna deliver a uniqueexperience to the consumer even
though they bought it as a 4pack. So it's really important.
It sounds like it's it'sintuitive and it's a it's you
(13:17):
know, people will pick up on it.
But I know, typically, we'relooking at our sales volume in
what we ship and what we wereshipping our club packs. I break
it down deeper into how manyunits are actually in the club
packs. That's an importantsubtlety with your shipment
data. Under shipments, we havethe overall complaint rate for
the product. That's taken intoconsideration everything.
(13:39):
It's all complaints against theshipment amount.
Denise Venneri (13:43):
And that's, like, the And then That's the
row.
Chris Drury (13:46):
That's that's a row right below the shipment row.
Yep. And then then we look atour high level complaint
categories. For us, it'sviscosity, salads, taste, those
sorts of things, and that's justthe next row. So I I and then
(14:06):
later, we have the top tenspecific codes.
So this is all tabular. They'reall rows beneath each other, but
it starts at the high level withthe overall. It goes to the next
level in our hierarchy lookingat, more categorizing of
complaints, and then we look atthe top 10 specific complaint
codes below
Denise Venneri (14:25):
that. They're
Chris Drury (14:26):
all rows, and the columns are all months.
Denise Venneri (14:29):
So is that the full are you tracking this for,
the beginning of the calendaryear? Are you on a calendar
basis, your fiscal year?
Chris Drury (14:36):
We no. We're on a a fiscal year that starts October
1st.
Denise Venneri (14:40):
Okay. So you're just in the start of this next
year here. Okay.
Chris Drury (14:45):
We just, yeah, we just had New Year's Eve not too
long ago.
Denise Venneri (14:48):
Yeah. Fun. Fun. So you're tracking it for, like,
that fiscal year or the the pastCorrect. You can you could
probably change the number ofmonths too.
Chris Drury (14:59):
Yeah. You can. And we summarize in quarters also so
you can look at it in quarterlyslices. And we also look at,
year over year. So we look atthis year against prior year.
Denise Venneri (15:13):
I'm crushing on the scorecard. I really am. I
really am, and I hope people canfeel it. And, you know, like,
take a look at it. Notnecessarily that they have to
adopt it, but take a look at itand then compare it to what
they're using and see where theycould maybe borrow and
benchmark.
Chris Drury (15:31):
You know, we I think one of the real important
pieces behind this is to reallyunderstand that that you have to
have a cross functionalimprovement team looking at that
data. It can't just be customercare. So the the team members
bring value to thoseconversations. So Yeah. That
team that's using that stoplightreport, we have it one of our,
(15:56):
chefs is on that team.
We have head of QC on that team.
Denise Venneri (16:00):
Mhmm.
Chris Drury (16:01):
We have the head of our food safety quality
assurance as part of the team.Mhmm. We have a sales analyst,
and we have a product manager onthe team. So and and then
myself, of course.
Denise Venneri (16:15):
So Yeah. Okay. So this team of cross functional
folks, are they looking at it,so they're on the distribution
list. Are they looking at it atthe same time, like, in a Zoom
meeting these days, or do theylook at it sort of on their own
and then
Chris Drury (16:35):
No. We we look at it together. I do send out, of
course, an agenda and some, if Ipick up on anything that I
really wanna, you know, makenotable, that goes out with the
agenda. So we kind of focus onthat. That meeting really is to
look also at if we had areformulation, are we still
(17:00):
seeing the improvements fromthat?
So it's it's got pieces to thatmeeting. It's looking at what's
been done and and how is thatgoing. And then it's also
looking at what is the nextthing. You know, we we look to
try and pick out what is thatnext thing that we can focus on
as a team, and then we use, andleverage everybody in that
group. Because sometimes, youknow, it's it's just a chef
(17:23):
making subtle changes to arecipe to change flow the flavor
profile.
Sometimes it's ops and QC folksmaking a change in the
processing of it. You know, andthen monitoring the process.
Thing. So that's why it's reallyimportant to make sure it's a
cross functional team. It's notjust customer care.
It's not just marketing. It'snot just product management. You
(17:45):
need operations. You needquality. And in our case,
because we're food, we need ourchefs as part of that
conversation.
Denise Venneri (17:53):
I'm in full support of that cross functional
team. And, I talk a little bit,if I can, just talk a little bit
about, the cross functional teamthat we kicked off when I was at
Campbell Soup, with the episodefrom yesterday that I recorded
with Chris Graziano. So if youtune in to Chris Graziano
(18:15):
episode 2022 was he 22? Yeah. Wetalk a little bit of how we
approached it.
I think the say it's the sameintent, which is to let's get
all the people who's got a stakein this product and the consumer
together and go through thisdata that's so important, at the
same time because, that's justthe best way to do it. So there.
(18:40):
Period. So you had mentionedabout the ranges. I think what's
important is, like, sort ofbehind the scorecard and what
and what drives the, thestoplight colors are these
ranges that I think you hadsaid, like, hey.
If it you didn't say hey. Butyou said if the rate is 1, it's
green, and 1 to 5, yellow, andso on. And so how did you can
(19:01):
you just take us back to this?And it's kinda granular, but I
think it's important. How didyou determine those ranges in in
the first place?
And can you take us throughthis? Because I think that's
what really informs the beautyof the scorecard.
Chris Drury (19:18):
Sure. So, it does draw upon statistical process
control some degree in the sensethat, you know, you're looking
at what is your distribution ofthose complaints under a curve.
Denise Venneri (19:30):
Right.
Chris Drury (19:31):
And the idea is that, you know, the green think
of the green as gonna be theextreme to one side and the reds
the extreme to the other side.Mhmm. So roughly the bulk of
your product will be yellow orbulk of your issues will show up
as yellow. So if you think ofjust a normal distribution
curve, we we looked at, youknow, if we're setting
(19:51):
thresholds, where where do allthese fall? And we we want the
bulk of those 80% to be yellowbecause they're not always going
to be bad, and let's be realabout it.
Consumers have personalpreferences, and that that will
come through in the data. So,and they'll influence the data
to some degree. So admittedly,it's, even though that sounds
(20:14):
all scientific, there's some artto it. It's not going to be
perfect, but you have to, youknow, go into it knowing that
the idea is to to just try andtake that big rough cut at it.
And then, you know, if you'reseeing those reds show up, use
some common sense.
Does the red make sense? Doesthe yellow make sense? Does the
(20:35):
green make sense? So we kind ofplayed with the rates initially.
We started this a couple ofyears ago with one specific
product line.
So we played with those rates.We looked at normal
distribution, or I should say, Ilooked at the normal
distribution to make sure thatthe rates we were using were
giving us something thatactually seemed to make sense.
Denise Venneri (20:56):
Okay. Perfect. Thank you for taking us through
that. Appreciate it. Let let'stalk about, like, your live
example of a topic that, youwere looking at with the
scorecard.
How was the scorecard used? Youknow, what may have been some of
the wins there? What challengescame up, if any?
Chris Drury (21:13):
Sure. So I think one of the great examples that
we use even internally is we hadchicken noodle soup. And I guess
I should also note here, we'rebubbling everything up. So we
have chicken noodle soup in 7for this brand in 7 different
packages. Right?
Sure. When I talk about thestoplight report, we are
(21:35):
actually rolling up the skews toa flavor level. So when we
looked at chicken noodle, wewere getting a lot of complaints
where people said, I don't haveenough chicken. It's all
noodles. It's it's, all broth.
We just had a lot of variabilitycoming across in a lot of
(21:55):
different ways. We had a lot ofred. So for us, we actually went
back and completely reformulatedthe product. We went from a wide
flat noodle to a curly noodle.We changed the chicken that was
being used.
So it brought a little moreflavor to the product because we
(22:16):
work hard on clean label andtrying to, you know, sodium is
something that people that arehealth conscious, we don't want
sodium, but we also want foodthat tastes good and a lot of
times sodium brings that. So wewe try and balance that and that
we went to one extreme andmaking it too bland at the same
time. So we brought a littleflavor back. So when you start
looking at the reformulation, weoverhaul that chicken noodle
(22:40):
product altogether because therewere just a lot of issues all
the way around with it. But wereally knew that intuitively
until we put it into thestoplight report.
And then that stoplight reportwas showing us exactly which
specific codes were problematic.So ironically, changing simply
(23:00):
from a flat noodle to a morecurly noodle actually
drastically improved the abilityof us when we make this to
distribute the noodles evenlythroughout the batch. We make
these in 3 to 4000 poundbatches.
Denise Venneri (23:13):
Yeah. Probably fill up the noodles or actually,
I don't know the process. Wedon't have to get into that.
Yeah.
Chris Drury (23:18):
It just it just suspending them in the liquid a
lot better than the flat noodleswould stick together and stack
up and kinda sink to the bottom.
Denise Venneri (23:25):
Got it. So it ended up, with a better better
user experience, better consumerexperience. And thank you so
much for taking time out of yourSunday to chat with me on the
podcast. Really appreciate it.
Chris Drury (23:37):
Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for having me,
Denise.
Denise Venneri (23:42):
If you've learned even a kernel of an idea
or was inspired by this episode,please consider rating and
reviewing the podcast on ApplePodcasts. Be sure to share out
the hashtag CPGCX because CPGCXreally and truly rocks.
Doug Venneri (24:01):
You have been listening to the My Curious
Colleague podcast with DeniseVineri. Thank you for your time.
Welcome to the My Curious Colleague podcast
with your host, me, DeniseFenary. We'll be talking all
things consumer relations with afocus on consumer product goods
organizations and the brandspecialist and analyst roles and
responsibilities. So if you likeCPGs, like I like CPGs,
(00:21):
marketing, insights, and caringdeeply for your consumers, Well,
take a
Chris Drury (00:31):
listen.
Denise Venneri (00:32):
Welcome, my curious colleagues. In this
episode, my guest is mycolleague, Chris Drury, director
of customer care at Blanc FineFoods. Chris and I share an
interest, and to quote Chris,leveraging data to build
continuous improvement inproduct design. And we'll be
(00:53):
specifically chatting about howthis has evolved via a scorecard
that Chris developed. And Ithink what the fun part of this
is that even if you're one of mycolleagues maybe with, a smaller
group of analysts or maybeyou're just the analysts, and
perhaps you don't even have any,you know, highfangled reporting
(01:15):
tools, this can be done inExcel.
So listen up, everybody. Let mefirst introduce Chris a little
bit further. He joined BluntFine Foods back in 2013 and has
been relentless in growing andelevating consumer, customer
care and the consumer's voiceinto the company. Chris joined
(01:37):
Blunt Fine Foods in 2013 and hasbeen relentless in growing and
elevating customer care and theconsumer's voice into the
company. He has 20 yearsexperience in a variety of roles
in marketing business processimprovement and customer
service.
(01:57):
He's also very active in ourindustry group, which is called
SOCAP, which stands for theSociety of Consumer Affairs
Professionals. He is currently amember of the board of directors
at the national level. I believethis is his 2nd year and was
active at chapter level on thatboard leadership. He's a
graduate of Providence College,and I only mentioned that
(02:20):
because a few people havenoticed that, yes, Chris is the
3rd guest from the big east thatI've had on. And it's really
just purely coincidental.
With that, let's get into it.Hi, Chris. So happy you're here
on the podcast today.
Chris Drury (02:40):
Hi, Denise. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for
having me.
Denise Venneri (02:44):
My pleasure. You know, what's, well, there's a
lot of things that's interestingabout you, but what's
interesting to me, the mostprobably is that your model for
care is, you know, a bitdifferent from the ones I've
been familiar with in my, in myexperience in CPG. And it's one
like a couple of my colleaguessupport as well. So you support
(03:10):
both the CPG or I'll call thatthe retail side plus the food
service side of Blonde. So kindalet's start there, level set
everybody, on BlondeFind FoodProducts, where they can be
found, and, just kinda who theyare.
Please.
Chris Drury (03:26):
Sure. So I I guess the easiest starting point is
that Blount Fine Foodsmanufactures about 80% of the
refrigerated soup in America.It's not a household name. It's
a name that's behind most otherbrands. Some of those brands,
for instance, are all the Panerasoups that you can buy outside
(03:49):
of the cafes.
Legal Seafoods here in thenortheast and along the east
coast is very popular. And thenvery, very large numbers in the
private label sector. So mostgrocery chains, private label
soups that you'd find would beproduced by Wow. We can find the
(04:09):
products, in Target, Walmart,Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's, and
then grocery stores. Now, thefood service side, we work with
a lot of national chains as wellas regional, right down to the
mom and pops that are sourcingthrough folks like Cisco and
(04:30):
Reinhardt and Gordon asdistribution.
So we really do have 2 distinctpieces to our business.
Denise Venneri (04:38):
Okay. And where do you spend most of your time?
On the food service care or theretail care?
Chris Drury (04:46):
Mostly the retail. Because for instance, Panera is
the largest brand, in terms ofdistribution for us, and the 800
number that is on every singlecontainer comes into my team.
Denise Venneri (04:57):
Yeah. Alright. So let's talk about this I call
it the traffic light scorecard.Is that what you call it? What
do you call this thing?
Chris Drury (05:07):
A stop stoplight.
Denise Venneri (05:08):
A stoplight.
Chris Drury (05:09):
A stoplight report. Yep.
Denise Venneri (05:11):
Stoplight scorecard of yours. And let's
kinda start at the beginning.What at a high level, what was
the the initial intent of thescorecard, and then in what
situations are you using it? Isit, you know, just everyday
monitoring of products on a, ona timely you know, on a monthly
(05:31):
basis, quarterly? Or can youalso use it to assess new
products or a reformulatedproduct that's out there?
So the, the intent andsituations.
Chris Drury (05:42):
Sure. So it initially started focused
primarily on just one brand, andthe reason for it was that
although, you know, yourcomplaints when something big
happens, the normal reaction isto look at root cause analysis,
identify what created the issueto begin with, and put in place
(06:05):
corrective action. So that'sjust normal quality type of
procedures that many of us inCPG would do should we have
something that just bubbles upas a major problem in the
product. But what's more subtleand what really drove this is we
wanted to be able to take allthe consumer contact points that
we have through the contactcenter and look at those things
(06:29):
that don't just jump out at youas a major problem. So for
instance, for us, chicken noodlesoup, was one of the ones that
glared at us because we wereseeing a lot of feedback points
around the distribution of thesalads in that product.
The salads being the pastanoodle, the carrots, the celery,
(06:51):
the chicken. We would have cupsof soup that were mostly broth,
and then you wind up on theother end of the spectrum with a
lot of cups of soup that had aton of stuff in it and less
broth. So unless you're trackingthat and and aggregating all of
those that seem like one offcomplaints, you would never
(07:13):
really pick up that there is abigger problem. So we have that
stoplight report set up in a waythat we're taking all of those
data points from consumers. Webounce them against how many
cups do we ship.
So to normalize complaint rate.Yep. We normalize and we end up
(07:34):
with a complaint rate.
Denise Venneri (07:35):
Mhmm.
Chris Drury (07:36):
And we use thresholds, to turn a little
bubble that's next to the numbergreen, yellow, or red. So
anything with a rate under 1becomes green.
Denise Venneri (07:48):
Anything with a red Anything with a what? A rate
of 1? To 1 Mhmm.
Chris Drury (07:54):
Is green. Mhmm. Any rate between 15 Mhmm. Is yellow.
And then anything 5 or above isred.
So it makes it very easy whenyou're looking at large sets of
data across different complaintcodes. Your eyes gravitate to
(08:15):
the red. Yeah. And if you see alot of that over time, you know
it's been a problem that's beenpersisting. So, and when I say
over time, we have it set up bycomplaint codes so that we're
able to see where, what'sspecific.
Is it the viscosity of theproduct? Is it the solids of the
(08:36):
product? Could it be some flavorprofile? In other words, it's
too salty or it's too sweet. Sowe let the data now drive where
we focus our continuousimprovement, because it's not
like we we have a a recallsituation or a situation where
(08:56):
we had a major misstep inmanufacturing that prompted, you
know, a high call volume arounda specific batch of soup.
These are all onesie twosiefeedbacks that come over time.
Denise Venneri (09:08):
Right.
Chris Drury (09:09):
So that really is what started it, was to to make
those little changes to bigproducts because they have a
much larger positive impact forconsumers and the experience
they're they're getting with thesoup when they interact with it
at the dinner table.
Denise Venneri (09:23):
Yeah. And that's that continuous improvement,
goal that I know is a big mantrafor you. So that was the intent,
and the situations are everyday, and, could you use it for
new product tracking too?
Chris Drury (09:42):
Yeah. So we we use it in a monthly meeting. Mhmm.
We have a team specific tolooking at the CX data that we
do have by brands. It's acontinuous improvement team.
We get together monthly and wereview these, and we're always
looking for where's the red.Yeah. You know, and focus is
(10:04):
this red just a single month?Was it a one off or maybe there
was a problem with 1 batch? Oris this red persisting over
time?
So we're now at the point wherewe start looking at the the the
yellows with the higher ratesbecause we've driven a lot of
the red out of the products.Yeah. Right? So now it's that's
just a continuous improvementprocess where, you know, you you
(10:25):
let the data drive you towardsthe most problematic pieces in
the process and the formulation.So we do use it in that sense of
constant monitoring on a monthlybasis.
Denise Venneri (10:35):
Got
Chris Drury (10:36):
it. We definitely use it for new product launches.
Mhmm. It takes time to build thedata, so we have to be really
careful that if we see a redblip, we can't necessarily react
right away because you may nothave enough distribution behind
it.
Denise Venneri (10:51):
Right.
Chris Drury (10:51):
You know, you could have the volume could be so low
on it that it doesn't take manycomplaints to to turn that red.
So we have to be sensitive tothat. But once we make a change,
we put a line in the sand and welook at pre reformulation or
change against post change. Sowe actually have a line in that
(11:14):
stoplight report at the givenmonth where the change was
implemented in our manufacturingprocess so that we can look at,
are these reds going away? Arethe complaint rates in those
areas where we were focusingstarting to drive down and turn
yellow to green.
Denise Venneri (11:30):
Mhmm. Mhmm. You know, I I we had spoken before,
and I remember trying tovisualize it, and I was, like,
sketching it out of my copybook. And, then you were kind
enough to send me sort of a mockup of it. And I think if
anyone's gotten this far in thepodcast, let's let them know
that if they DM me, that we'd behappy to send them a PDF of a
(11:57):
mock
Chris Drury (11:57):
up version
Denise Venneri (11:57):
for themselves. But, until then, let's let's
kinda break it down for thecolleagues listening right now.
But, you know, because youtalked about all you know,
looking at all the reds, and so,really, like, help me visualize
it here, audio. What are all thedata points that are on it? Is
it just the rates?
Is it time periods in thecolumns? What's in the rows?
Chris Drury (12:20):
So think of just a tabular form, and across the
top, we have every month. Soit's monthly.
Denise Venneri (12:28):
Okay.
Chris Drury (12:30):
And we look at, just tracking that over time.
And the rows, the very top rowis the number of cups shipped
for the month.
Denise Venneri (12:41):
Okay.
Chris Drury (12:42):
So that's simply taken right out of the invoicing
history, the number of cups. Andfor me, it's not, for instance,
at a club store if we have apackage that's 4 10 ounce cups.
Denise Venneri (12:56):
Mhmm.
Chris Drury (12:57):
For me, it's 4 cups. It's not a single cell
unit. It's down because everyone of those 10 ounce cups, even
though it's in one cell packageat a club store, every 10 ounce
cup is gonna deliver a uniqueexperience to the consumer even
though they bought it as a 4pack. So it's really important.
It sounds like it's it'sintuitive and it's a it's you
(13:17):
know, people will pick up on it.
But I know, typically, we'relooking at our sales volume in
what we ship and what we wereshipping our club packs. I break
it down deeper into how manyunits are actually in the club
packs. That's an importantsubtlety with your shipment
data. Under shipments, we havethe overall complaint rate for
the product. That's taken intoconsideration everything.
(13:39):
It's all complaints against theshipment amount.
Denise Venneri (13:43):
And that's, like, the And then That's the
row.
Chris Drury (13:46):
That's that's a row right below the shipment row.
Yep. And then then we look atour high level complaint
categories. For us, it'sviscosity, salads, taste, those
sorts of things, and that's justthe next row. So I I and then
(14:06):
later, we have the top tenspecific codes.
So this is all tabular. They'reall rows beneath each other, but
it starts at the high level withthe overall. It goes to the next
level in our hierarchy lookingat, more categorizing of
complaints, and then we look atthe top 10 specific complaint
codes below
Denise Venneri (14:25):
that. They're
Chris Drury (14:26):
all rows, and the columns are all months.
Denise Venneri (14:29):
So is that the full are you tracking this for,
the beginning of the calendaryear? Are you on a calendar
basis, your fiscal year?
Chris Drury (14:36):
We no. We're on a a fiscal year that starts October
1st.
Denise Venneri (14:40):
Okay. So you're just in the start of this next
year here. Okay.
Chris Drury (14:45):
We just, yeah, we just had New Year's Eve not too
long ago.
Denise Venneri (14:48):
Yeah. Fun. Fun. So you're tracking it for, like,
that fiscal year or the the pastCorrect. You can you could
probably change the number ofmonths too.
Chris Drury (14:59):
Yeah. You can. And we summarize in quarters also so
you can look at it in quarterlyslices. And we also look at,
year over year. So we look atthis year against prior year.
Denise Venneri (15:13):
I'm crushing on the scorecard. I really am. I
really am, and I hope people canfeel it. And, you know, like,
take a look at it. Notnecessarily that they have to
adopt it, but take a look at itand then compare it to what
they're using and see where theycould maybe borrow and
benchmark.
Chris Drury (15:31):
You know, we I think one of the real important
pieces behind this is to reallyunderstand that that you have to
have a cross functionalimprovement team looking at that
data. It can't just be customercare. So the the team members
bring value to thoseconversations. So Yeah. That
team that's using that stoplightreport, we have it one of our,
(15:56):
chefs is on that team.
We have head of QC on that team.
Denise Venneri (16:00):
Mhmm.
Chris Drury (16:01):
We have the head of our food safety quality
assurance as part of the team.Mhmm. We have a sales analyst,
and we have a product manager onthe team. So and and then
myself, of course.
Denise Venneri (16:15):
So Yeah. Okay. So this team of cross functional
folks, are they looking at it,so they're on the distribution
list. Are they looking at it atthe same time, like, in a Zoom
meeting these days, or do theylook at it sort of on their own
and then
Chris Drury (16:35):
No. We we look at it together. I do send out, of
course, an agenda and some, if Ipick up on anything that I
really wanna, you know, makenotable, that goes out with the
agenda. So we kind of focus onthat. That meeting really is to
look also at if we had areformulation, are we still
(17:00):
seeing the improvements fromthat?
So it's it's got pieces to thatmeeting. It's looking at what's
been done and and how is thatgoing. And then it's also
looking at what is the nextthing. You know, we we look to
try and pick out what is thatnext thing that we can focus on
as a team, and then we use, andleverage everybody in that
group. Because sometimes, youknow, it's it's just a chef
(17:23):
making subtle changes to arecipe to change flow the flavor
profile.
Sometimes it's ops and QC folksmaking a change in the
processing of it. You know, andthen monitoring the process.
Thing. So that's why it's reallyimportant to make sure it's a
cross functional team. It's notjust customer care.
It's not just marketing. It'snot just product management. You
(17:45):
need operations. You needquality. And in our case,
because we're food, we need ourchefs as part of that
conversation.
Denise Venneri (17:53):
I'm in full support of that cross functional
team. And, I talk a little bit,if I can, just talk a little bit
about, the cross functional teamthat we kicked off when I was at
Campbell Soup, with the episodefrom yesterday that I recorded
with Chris Graziano. So if youtune in to Chris Graziano
(18:15):
episode 2022 was he 22? Yeah. Wetalk a little bit of how we
approached it.
I think the say it's the sameintent, which is to let's get
all the people who's got a stakein this product and the consumer
together and go through thisdata that's so important, at the
same time because, that's justthe best way to do it. So there.
(18:40):
Period. So you had mentionedabout the ranges. I think what's
important is, like, sort ofbehind the scorecard and what
and what drives the, thestoplight colors are these
ranges that I think you hadsaid, like, hey.
If it you didn't say hey. Butyou said if the rate is 1, it's
green, and 1 to 5, yellow, andso on. And so how did you can
(19:01):
you just take us back to this?And it's kinda granular, but I
think it's important. How didyou determine those ranges in in
the first place?
And can you take us throughthis? Because I think that's
what really informs the beautyof the scorecard.
Chris Drury (19:18):
Sure. So, it does draw upon statistical process
control some degree in the sensethat, you know, you're looking
at what is your distribution ofthose complaints under a curve.
Denise Venneri (19:30):
Right.
Chris Drury (19:31):
And the idea is that, you know, the green think
of the green as gonna be theextreme to one side and the reds
the extreme to the other side.Mhmm. So roughly the bulk of
your product will be yellow orbulk of your issues will show up
as yellow. So if you think ofjust a normal distribution
curve, we we looked at, youknow, if we're setting
(19:51):
thresholds, where where do allthese fall? And we we want the
bulk of those 80% to be yellowbecause they're not always going
to be bad, and let's be realabout it.
Consumers have personalpreferences, and that that will
come through in the data. So,and they'll influence the data
to some degree. So admittedly,it's, even though that sounds
(20:14):
all scientific, there's some artto it. It's not going to be
perfect, but you have to, youknow, go into it knowing that
the idea is to to just try andtake that big rough cut at it.
And then, you know, if you'reseeing those reds show up, use
some common sense.
Does the red make sense? Doesthe yellow make sense? Does the
(20:35):
green make sense? So we kind ofplayed with the rates initially.
We started this a couple ofyears ago with one specific
product line.
So we played with those rates.We looked at normal
distribution, or I should say, Ilooked at the normal
distribution to make sure thatthe rates we were using were
giving us something thatactually seemed to make sense.
Denise Venneri (20:56):
Okay. Perfect. Thank you for taking us through
that. Appreciate it. Let let'stalk about, like, your live
example of a topic that, youwere looking at with the
scorecard.
How was the scorecard used? Youknow, what may have been some of
the wins there? What challengescame up, if any?
Chris Drury (21:13):
Sure. So I think one of the great examples that
we use even internally is we hadchicken noodle soup. And I guess
I should also note here, we'rebubbling everything up. So we
have chicken noodle soup in 7for this brand in 7 different
packages. Right?
Sure. When I talk about thestoplight report, we are
(21:35):
actually rolling up the skews toa flavor level. So when we
looked at chicken noodle, wewere getting a lot of complaints
where people said, I don't haveenough chicken. It's all
noodles. It's it's, all broth.
We just had a lot of variabilitycoming across in a lot of
(21:55):
different ways. We had a lot ofred. So for us, we actually went
back and completely reformulatedthe product. We went from a wide
flat noodle to a curly noodle.We changed the chicken that was
being used.
So it brought a little moreflavor to the product because we
(22:16):
work hard on clean label andtrying to, you know, sodium is
something that people that arehealth conscious, we don't want
sodium, but we also want foodthat tastes good and a lot of
times sodium brings that. So wewe try and balance that and that
we went to one extreme andmaking it too bland at the same
time. So we brought a littleflavor back. So when you start
looking at the reformulation, weoverhaul that chicken noodle
(22:40):
product altogether because therewere just a lot of issues all
the way around with it. But wereally knew that intuitively
until we put it into thestoplight report.
And then that stoplight reportwas showing us exactly which
specific codes were problematic.So ironically, changing simply
(23:00):
from a flat noodle to a morecurly noodle actually
drastically improved the abilityof us when we make this to
distribute the noodles evenlythroughout the batch. We make
these in 3 to 4000 poundbatches.
Denise Venneri (23:13):
Yeah. Probably fill up the noodles or actually,
I don't know the process. Wedon't have to get into that.
Yeah.
Chris Drury (23:18):
It just it just suspending them in the liquid a
lot better than the flat noodleswould stick together and stack
up and kinda sink to the bottom.
Denise Venneri (23:25):
Got it. So it ended up, with a better better
user experience, better consumerexperience. And thank you so
much for taking time out of yourSunday to chat with me on the
podcast. Really appreciate it.
Chris Drury (23:37):
Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for having me,
Denise.
Denise Venneri (23:42):
If you've learned even a kernel of an idea
or was inspired by this episode,please consider rating and
reviewing the podcast on ApplePodcasts. Be sure to share out
the hashtag CPGCX because CPGCXreally and truly rocks.
Doug Venneri (24:01):
You have been listening to the My Curious
Colleague podcast with DeniseVineri. Thank you for your time.
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