In this week’s episode, I'm Curious about…”Supporting the Food Service side of the business in the Contact Center .” My guest, @Victoria Cherne, is a true Pioneer in this area. Vicky is Manager of Consumer Affairs and Customer Concerns at Land O'Lakes and active on the Board of Directors of our industry group, @SOCAP (Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals) as VP, Member Services.
Links here to Episode #105:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/eg8CASq
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eqSQKJx
Here's some highlights of what we discussed:
🔄 Dual Support Dynamics: We explored the merging of retail and food service responsibilities, predicting a future where all consumer CPG colleagues handle both sides due to evolving service models.
🤝 Best Practices: Vicky emphasized the importance of building strong internal relationships and detailed how her team manages complex food service interactions, highlighting their project management approach.
📈 Future Outlook: We discussed the growing trend of combining retail and B2B business models, which can expand agent skill sets and improve quality tracking across products.
SPONSORSHIP: My new website – mycuriouscolleague.com - is sponsoring today’s episode. Do, check out my new website at www.mycuriouscolleague.com for more content, including past podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and even a free official sticker! Show your support for our function and for the My Curious Colleague Podcast. Let's keep learning together! 🙌
TRANSCRIPT: https://dashboard.transistor.fm/shows/my-curious-colleague-cpg-cx/episodes/105-curious-about-supporting-the-food-service-side-of-the-business-in-the-contact-center-w-vicky-cherne-manager-of-consumer-affairs-and-customer-concerns-at-land-olakes/transcripts
#podcast #consumerrelations #consumeraffairs #foodservice #cpg
#socapinternational
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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, DeniseVenneri. 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,
(00:22):
marketing, insights, and caringdeeply for your consumers, Well,
take a listen.
Hello, my curious colleagues.This week, I'm curious about
supporting food service in theCPG contact center.
And to help me is my colleagueand dear friend, Vicky Cherne,
(00:44):
Manager of Consumer Affairs andCustomer Concerns at Land
O'Lakes. And in addition to herleadership at our 9 to 5, Vicki
is very active in our industrygroup called SOCAP. You've heard
me mention it before. It's theSociety of Consumer Affairs
Professionals, and she iscurrently the SOCAP board of
(01:06):
directors and serves as thechair of the member service
committee. So with that, welcometo the podcast, Vicky.
Vicky Cherne (01:15):
Well, thanks for having me on today, Denise. I'm
so glad we finally made thiswork out. I'm so excited to
visit with you.
Denise Venneri (01:22):
Yeah. Same here. Same here. I'm honored. Let's
start with, if you don't mindsharing a top line of your
consumer care journey for theaudience.
Vicky Cherne (01:32):
Sure. Well, my career has always been centered
around consumer care, even as akid growing up in a family
fishing resort in NorthernMinnesota. I waitressed when I
was 12. I think I sometimeswonder about that, but it was a
family business. So Right.
But since then, I've heldconsumer affairs roles in the
life and health insuranceindustry and in the food world.
(01:54):
I've been a manager of 2 teamsat Land O'Lakes for the last 12
years, and I've been a total of18 years with Land O'Lakes. So I
oversee the consumer affairsteam, which focuses on retail
consumers that are calling us oremailing us, and the customer
concerns team, which focuses onour b to b customers, including
(02:15):
food service products for theLand O'Lakes dairy foods
division. Land O'Lakes, as youmay know, is a farmer owned
agricultural company, and we'rebased in Minnesota.
Denise Venneri (02:26):
Thank you so much for for that. Alright.
Well, I'm gonna start with aprediction, which is something I
rarely do. But here it goes. Ipredict that in the next 3 to 5
years, all of our consumers, CPGcolleagues, will have
responsibility for both theretail and the food service
(02:47):
sides, and let me tell you why.
This is based just on my gutfeeling and some observations.
My experience in this industryor in this function really is
used to be, I support consumercare for the retail side of the
business. We really don't crosspollinate in any way. But things
(03:19):
have begun shifting back,especially with the pandemic,
you know, with the consumerbehavior shifting from out of
home consumption to more in homeconsumption, and recently
swinging back the other way. NowI know that this out of home
that I'm referencing, you know,the restaurant piece is just one
(03:40):
part of the food service side ofthe business, but things are
beginning to blur.
Now as you mentioned, you'vebeen at Land O'Lakes and have
been supporting both sides ofthe house, both the retail and
the food service for quite awhile. And that's why I wanna
pick your brain, of course, andlet the audience learn from you.
(04:01):
So again, let's not again, butlet's level set. How are you
defining the food service sidethat you're supporting? Give us
a sense, please.
For sure.
Vicky Cherne (04:12):
A great question, Denise. You know, when we think
about food service as productsthat are sold to restaurants, k
twelve schools, colleges anduniversities, and hospitals, but
it's important to note that wesell most of these products to
food distributors who then sellto those end user customers. So
those food service customers areour customers as well. And what
(04:36):
you may not know is in additionto food service, our customer
concerns team at Land O'Lakesalso works with ingredient
customers like milk powders, forexample, that go into other
products like chocolate. Andthen the retailers and grocers
that sell our products are ourcustomers as well.
So we separate out consumersfrom customers and we think
(04:57):
about consumers as the peoplebuying our product at the
grocery store and our customersas the store, the distributor,
the restaurant, etcetera.
Denise Venneri (05:07):
How do you keep that all straight? We're gonna
speak to that. Right? You'reright. Well, I appreciate the
setup there, Vicky, and, youknow, I like the detail.
So let's dig into it a littlebit. What types of contacts do
you handle for fruit the foodservice products?
Vicky Cherne (05:26):
Sure. Well, we handle a variety of contacts
around product quality. Forexample, the customer's product
experience. Perhaps, somethingisn't working the way they
thought it would work, and wemight investigate that. Perhaps
there are performance questionsor concerns where a customer may
question the way something ismelting or the way it's used in
(05:47):
a recipe.
We work really closely with ourculinary staff to answer those
kinds of questions. There couldbe packaging or storage
questions and maybe a questionabout a package seal or how to
handle the product once it'sopened. So, you know, more
questions about, you know, thequality and the usage of the
(06:08):
product. And while we work withthose product quality questions,
there's another group, ourbusiness information team and
they work with some of the dayto day questions about
specifications orcertifications, product
questionnaires. So they handlethose contacts, whereas my team
is looking more at quality andusage.
(06:30):
We work really closely with thatother team as well, though,
because you know, people getconfused about where to send.
And so we just pass the contextbetween our teams as we need to.
Denise Venneri (06:40):
Alright. Let's move into now some of the key
differences between the 2 whenyou go to support food service,
you know, versus the retailside. Maybe touch on the
different martech you mightsupport, or is it based on
volume or maybe location of, youknow, where knowledge
information's housed, thingslike that.
Vicky Cherne (06:58):
Absolutely. So first, the main difference
between retail and food service,care teams is really the size of
the issue. With a consumer, youand I both know it's, you know,
it's a few packages of product.The product representative works
directly with the consumer. Weresolve the issue, we send out
some sort of reimbursement.
When we're dealing with foodservice or b to b customers,
(07:22):
there's typically more productinvolved, they buy by the case
for example and we probably havemore people involved in the
contact and, and working on thatcustomer relationship. So we
might be handling, somethingthat where we have to work with
the sales representative or thebroker representative, we might
work with our, customerlogistics team that handles the
(07:43):
order, we might work with ourplant quality team. So there's a
whole lot more people that we'reinvolved with on each individual
contact than there is with ourconsumer team. And we often say
that handling our food servicecontacts is a little bit like a
project management situationbecause there's so many pieces
that are taking place and we'recoordinating communications and
(08:05):
investigations with a muchbroader team in order to deliver
a result to that customer.
Denise Venneri (08:12):
Got it. Now what about the agents? Training them
and maybe some of the, softwarethat you use to support food
service versus that consumer.Yeah.
Vicky Cherne (08:23):
Sure. So while not the same format as our consumer
team, we use the same same CRMcompany. We just have a little
different structure to it. So,again, with a with a consumer,
it's one consumer, one address,you know, one one contact. With
a customer, we we have to add inan end user name, a sales rep
(08:43):
name, maybe the distributor ofthe product.
So there's more people that wehave to keep track of. So the
fields are set up differently inthe CRM. We also have the
ability to track requests, so ifwe send something to a plant or
we send something to sales inorder to get more information,
it allows us to stay on top ofthose pending requests. You
(09:06):
know, our team for our customercontacts is a lot smaller than
our consumer team. We have 1full time and 1 half time person
handling our customer contactsversus 6 seats in our consumer
care team.
But the customer side is, youknow, often big customers, high
dollar amounts. So really,although it's a smaller number
(09:28):
of people, it's a very criticalrole to our team.
Denise Venneri (09:32):
Oh, that's interesting. How about that?
Okay. I'm I'm wondering now somewell, you're sort of feeding us
some of these best practices aswe go along, But I'm wondering
if you could now share with ussome best practices for those
other companies who currentlysupport both or maybe thinking
(09:53):
about standing up the foodservice side for their
organization? What are whatadvice might you give them?
This episode is sponsored by thelaunch of my very first website,
aptly namedmycuriouscolleague.com. There,
you'll find links to episodes ofall my podcasts, YouTube videos,
downloadables, and links to thepodcast accolades and rankings.
(10:18):
There's even a store feature forfuture products. Right now, my
official sticker is availablewith the CPG CX hashtag on it.
And it is available for free.
So go now to order a sticker andshow your pride in our function
and share your support of mylittle podcast. That's
(10:39):
www.mycuriouscolleague, all oneword, dot com. For sure.
Vicky Cherne (10:44):
I would say one of the things that's really stood
out for us over the years isthat often your product types
between retail and food serviceare similar. They're just
different pack sizes coming outof the same facility. So having
our teams work alongside of eachother, we can track complaint
situations quite quickly and thedata we collect is valuable to
(11:05):
our production team. So whetheryou're buying something in a
large tub or in a small cup, youmight might see the same issues.
So that's been really helpfulfor us.
Another thing is that thevariety of teams we support, we
found it's important to, youknow, if I were to give advice
to somebody is to really buildyour relationships with your
internal partners. And I knowyou talk about that in your
(11:27):
podcast frequently, buildingtrust in our process and and
helping our partner teams seethe value of what we do, and
ultimately, they help us improveour products. So as new people
join our cross functional teams,we work really hard to have
onboarding meetings with thosepeople. And, again, I know
that's something I'm I'm tellingyou that's nothing nothing new
to you, Denise.
Denise Venneri (11:49):
But it's interesting how that just, you
know, makes sense for both sidesfor both sides, but, you wanna
touch on agent training andopportunities?
Vicky Cherne (11:59):
Sure. I'd be glad to. Oh, you know, over the
years, we found that thecustomer role is quite broad.
You have a lot of differentproducts to know. So moving from
retail into the customer rolecan be a way to increase your
product and your internalpartner interaction.
The customer role is also reallydetailed and it can be a little
(12:19):
higher stakes and perhaps alittle higher stress, so it's
not for everyone. It doesn'tmean we always hire from the
consumer team to the customerteam. Sometimes we might, hire
somebody who comes with somesort of background similar that
easily translates into thatcustomer role. But, and then
while handling of a complaint,you know, uses many of those
(12:41):
same skills, the reimbursementpiece is very different as I
mentioned before. With aconsumer we, we can reimburse
right away.
With a customer, we have to workclosely with our marketing and
sales and logistics teams inorder to to help with that
process. We don't control thatprocess, somebody else does. So
we, we just help guide guide thesituation.
Denise Venneri (13:03):
Got it. Have you perhaps implemented a project
recently that you might wannashare that demonstrates how your
consumer care, that demonstrateshow consumer care in general can
support the food service?
Vicky Cherne (13:17):
Sure. One change that, over the last few years
that's really been great is the,the relation to social care. So
we use Facebook and Instagram inretail, and we've been
monitoring that for a number ofyears. So when our food service
teams were looking to roll thatout, it was a very easy
opportunity for us to supportthose platforms in food service
(13:39):
and because some of my, our ourteam on the customer team, one
of one of those folks wasalready working on the retail
side and she knows the foodservice products, it was a very
easy fit for her to help monitorthose and then it also helps
with additional training forthose retail reps who haven't
maybe worked with food service.Now they get to learn something
else and, you know, we all knowevery time we learn something,
(14:01):
it makes our jobs that much moreinteresting.
So, so that's, that's been areally great opportunity for us
as we answer those questionsand, and our team just answers
the questions or the concerns insocial media. We don't do any of
the, of the other engagement. Wework with another team that
helps with the, what we call thepositive engagement.
Denise Venneri (14:23):
Is that similar to how you handle the the retail
side where it's the inquiriesand, concerns, and then someone
else handles? Okay.
Vicky Cherne (14:34):
Yep. It is. Yep. We do both. We we do this that
same the same process we use inretail, we were able to apply in
food service, which just madethe transition so seamless when
the time came to stand up thoseplatforms.
Denise Venneri (14:46):
Perfect. I went a little off script there, so
thanks for rolling with me.
Vicky Cherne (14:51):
Oh, of course.
Denise Venneri (14:54):
Oh, my gosh. We're getting close to the end,
sadly, Vicky. And I'm wondering,first, well, 2 things, kind of
like the future. Do you agreewith my prediction that I shared
at the top, and, maybe what areyour thoughts for the future of,
CPG as it relates to foodservice versus retail
Vicky Cherne (15:14):
care. Retail care. You bet. Yeah. Yeah.
Not the other r word.
Denise Venneri (15:18):
Yeah. Yeah.
Vicky Cherne (15:20):
I, you know, I think it's a great prediction,
Denise. I think service modelsare always evolving. We're
combining retail and b to bbusiness models can be a perfect
way to expand your agent skillsets and from a quality
perspective, ensure you'retracking all the product made
from a facility in one place.And while our team began
handling b to b interactions anumber of years ago, we know
(15:43):
it's an area that more companiesare starting to consider. So
your prediction is spot
Denise Venneri: on. Well, time will tell... (15:51):
undefined
but you have been a pioneer inthis sort of dual support side,
and and I really thank you foryour time today. It's been it's
been great. I really appreciateit, Vicky.
Vicky Cherne (16:02):
Absolutely, Denise. It's a pleasure to see
you today and visit with you,and, I look forward to talking
to you again soon. Thanks somuch for having me on.
Denise Venneri (16:14):
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 (16:32):
You have been listening to the My Curious
College podcast with Denise.Thank you for your
time.
Welcome to the My Curious Colleague podcast
with your host, me, DeniseVenneri. 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,
(00:22):
marketing, insights, and caringdeeply for your consumers, Well,
take a listen.
Hello, my curious colleagues.This week, I'm curious about
supporting food service in theCPG contact center.
And to help me is my colleagueand dear friend, Vicky Cherne,
(00:44):
Manager of Consumer Affairs andCustomer Concerns at Land
O'Lakes. And in addition to herleadership at our 9 to 5, Vicki
is very active in our industrygroup called SOCAP. You've heard
me mention it before. It's theSociety of Consumer Affairs
Professionals, and she iscurrently the SOCAP board of
(01:06):
directors and serves as thechair of the member service
committee. So with that, welcometo the podcast, Vicky.
Vicky Cherne (01:15):
Well, thanks for having me on today, Denise. I'm
so glad we finally made thiswork out. I'm so excited to
visit with you.
Denise Venneri (01:22):
Yeah. Same here. Same here. I'm honored. Let's
start with, if you don't mindsharing a top line of your
consumer care journey for theaudience.
Vicky Cherne (01:32):
Sure. Well, my career has always been centered
around consumer care, even as akid growing up in a family
fishing resort in NorthernMinnesota. I waitressed when I
was 12. I think I sometimeswonder about that, but it was a
family business. So Right.
But since then, I've heldconsumer affairs roles in the
life and health insuranceindustry and in the food world.
(01:54):
I've been a manager of 2 teamsat Land O'Lakes for the last 12
years, and I've been a total of18 years with Land O'Lakes. So I
oversee the consumer affairsteam, which focuses on retail
consumers that are calling us oremailing us, and the customer
concerns team, which focuses onour b to b customers, including
(02:15):
food service products for theLand O'Lakes dairy foods
division. Land O'Lakes, as youmay know, is a farmer owned
agricultural company, and we'rebased in Minnesota.
Denise Venneri (02:26):
Thank you so much for for that. Alright.
Well, I'm gonna start with aprediction, which is something I
rarely do. But here it goes. Ipredict that in the next 3 to 5
years, all of our consumers, CPGcolleagues, will have
responsibility for both theretail and the food service
(02:47):
sides, and let me tell you why.
This is based just on my gutfeeling and some observations.
My experience in this industryor in this function really is
used to be, I support consumercare for the retail side of the
business. We really don't crosspollinate in any way. But things
(03:19):
have begun shifting back,especially with the pandemic,
you know, with the consumerbehavior shifting from out of
home consumption to more in homeconsumption, and recently
swinging back the other way. NowI know that this out of home
that I'm referencing, you know,the restaurant piece is just one
(03:40):
part of the food service side ofthe business, but things are
beginning to blur.
Now as you mentioned, you'vebeen at Land O'Lakes and have
been supporting both sides ofthe house, both the retail and
the food service for quite awhile. And that's why I wanna
pick your brain, of course, andlet the audience learn from you.
(04:01):
So again, let's not again, butlet's level set. How are you
defining the food service sidethat you're supporting? Give us
a sense, please.
For sure.
Vicky Cherne (04:12):
A great question, Denise. You know, when we think
about food service as productsthat are sold to restaurants, k
twelve schools, colleges anduniversities, and hospitals, but
it's important to note that wesell most of these products to
food distributors who then sellto those end user customers. So
those food service customers areour customers as well. And what
(04:36):
you may not know is in additionto food service, our customer
concerns team at Land O'Lakesalso works with ingredient
customers like milk powders, forexample, that go into other
products like chocolate. Andthen the retailers and grocers
that sell our products are ourcustomers as well.
So we separate out consumersfrom customers and we think
(04:57):
about consumers as the peoplebuying our product at the
grocery store and our customersas the store, the distributor,
the restaurant, etcetera.
Denise Venneri (05:07):
How do you keep that all straight? We're gonna
speak to that. Right? You'reright. Well, I appreciate the
setup there, Vicky, and, youknow, I like the detail.
So let's dig into it a littlebit. What types of contacts do
you handle for fruit the foodservice products?
Vicky Cherne (05:26):
Sure. Well, we handle a variety of contacts
around product quality. Forexample, the customer's product
experience. Perhaps, somethingisn't working the way they
thought it would work, and wemight investigate that. Perhaps
there are performance questionsor concerns where a customer may
question the way something ismelting or the way it's used in
(05:47):
a recipe.
We work really closely with ourculinary staff to answer those
kinds of questions. There couldbe packaging or storage
questions and maybe a questionabout a package seal or how to
handle the product once it'sopened. So, you know, more
questions about, you know, thequality and the usage of the
(06:08):
product. And while we work withthose product quality questions,
there's another group, ourbusiness information team and
they work with some of the dayto day questions about
specifications orcertifications, product
questionnaires. So they handlethose contacts, whereas my team
is looking more at quality andusage.
(06:30):
We work really closely with thatother team as well, though,
because you know, people getconfused about where to send.
And so we just pass the contextbetween our teams as we need to.
Denise Venneri (06:40):
Alright. Let's move into now some of the key
differences between the 2 whenyou go to support food service,
you know, versus the retailside. Maybe touch on the
different martech you mightsupport, or is it based on
volume or maybe location of, youknow, where knowledge
information's housed, thingslike that.
Vicky Cherne (06:58):
Absolutely. So first, the main difference
between retail and food service,care teams is really the size of
the issue. With a consumer, youand I both know it's, you know,
it's a few packages of product.The product representative works
directly with the consumer. Weresolve the issue, we send out
some sort of reimbursement.
When we're dealing with foodservice or b to b customers,
(07:22):
there's typically more productinvolved, they buy by the case
for example and we probably havemore people involved in the
contact and, and working on thatcustomer relationship. So we
might be handling, somethingthat where we have to work with
the sales representative or thebroker representative, we might
work with our, customerlogistics team that handles the
(07:43):
order, we might work with ourplant quality team. So there's a
whole lot more people that we'reinvolved with on each individual
contact than there is with ourconsumer team. And we often say
that handling our food servicecontacts is a little bit like a
project management situationbecause there's so many pieces
that are taking place and we'recoordinating communications and
(08:05):
investigations with a muchbroader team in order to deliver
a result to that customer.
Denise Venneri (08:12):
Got it. Now what about the agents? Training them
and maybe some of the, softwarethat you use to support food
service versus that consumer.Yeah.
Vicky Cherne (08:23):
Sure. So while not the same format as our consumer
team, we use the same same CRMcompany. We just have a little
different structure to it. So,again, with a with a consumer,
it's one consumer, one address,you know, one one contact. With
a customer, we we have to add inan end user name, a sales rep
(08:43):
name, maybe the distributor ofthe product.
So there's more people that wehave to keep track of. So the
fields are set up differently inthe CRM. We also have the
ability to track requests, so ifwe send something to a plant or
we send something to sales inorder to get more information,
it allows us to stay on top ofthose pending requests. You
(09:06):
know, our team for our customercontacts is a lot smaller than
our consumer team. We have 1full time and 1 half time person
handling our customer contactsversus 6 seats in our consumer
care team.
But the customer side is, youknow, often big customers, high
dollar amounts. So really,although it's a smaller number
(09:28):
of people, it's a very criticalrole to our team.
Denise Venneri (09:32):
Oh, that's interesting. How about that?
Okay. I'm I'm wondering now somewell, you're sort of feeding us
some of these best practices aswe go along, But I'm wondering
if you could now share with ussome best practices for those
other companies who currentlysupport both or maybe thinking
(09:53):
about standing up the foodservice side for their
organization? What are whatadvice might you give them?
This episode is sponsored by thelaunch of my very first website,
aptly namedmycuriouscolleague.com. There,
you'll find links to episodes ofall my podcasts, YouTube videos,
downloadables, and links to thepodcast accolades and rankings.
(10:18):
There's even a store feature forfuture products. Right now, my
official sticker is availablewith the CPG CX hashtag on it.
And it is available for free.
So go now to order a sticker andshow your pride in our function
and share your support of mylittle podcast. That's
(10:39):
www.mycuriouscolleague, all oneword, dot com. For sure.
Vicky Cherne (10:44):
I would say one of the things that's really stood
out for us over the years isthat often your product types
between retail and food serviceare similar. They're just
different pack sizes coming outof the same facility. So having
our teams work alongside of eachother, we can track complaint
situations quite quickly and thedata we collect is valuable to
(11:05):
our production team. So whetheryou're buying something in a
large tub or in a small cup, youmight might see the same issues.
So that's been really helpfulfor us.
Another thing is that thevariety of teams we support, we
found it's important to, youknow, if I were to give advice
to somebody is to really buildyour relationships with your
internal partners. And I knowyou talk about that in your
(11:27):
podcast frequently, buildingtrust in our process and and
helping our partner teams seethe value of what we do, and
ultimately, they help us improveour products. So as new people
join our cross functional teams,we work really hard to have
onboarding meetings with thosepeople. And, again, I know
that's something I'm I'm tellingyou that's nothing nothing new
to you, Denise.
Denise Venneri (11:49):
But it's interesting how that just, you
know, makes sense for both sidesfor both sides, but, you wanna
touch on agent training andopportunities?
Vicky Cherne (11:59):
Sure. I'd be glad to. Oh, you know, over the
years, we found that thecustomer role is quite broad.
You have a lot of differentproducts to know. So moving from
retail into the customer rolecan be a way to increase your
product and your internalpartner interaction.
The customer role is also reallydetailed and it can be a little
(12:19):
higher stakes and perhaps alittle higher stress, so it's
not for everyone. It doesn'tmean we always hire from the
consumer team to the customerteam. Sometimes we might, hire
somebody who comes with somesort of background similar that
easily translates into thatcustomer role. But, and then
while handling of a complaint,you know, uses many of those
(12:41):
same skills, the reimbursementpiece is very different as I
mentioned before. With aconsumer we, we can reimburse
right away.
With a customer, we have to workclosely with our marketing and
sales and logistics teams inorder to to help with that
process. We don't control thatprocess, somebody else does. So
we, we just help guide guide thesituation.
Denise Venneri (13:03):
Got it. Have you perhaps implemented a project
recently that you might wannashare that demonstrates how your
consumer care, that demonstrateshow consumer care in general can
support the food service?
Vicky Cherne (13:17):
Sure. One change that, over the last few years
that's really been great is the,the relation to social care. So
we use Facebook and Instagram inretail, and we've been
monitoring that for a number ofyears. So when our food service
teams were looking to roll thatout, it was a very easy
opportunity for us to supportthose platforms in food service
(13:39):
and because some of my, our ourteam on the customer team, one
of one of those folks wasalready working on the retail
side and she knows the foodservice products, it was a very
easy fit for her to help monitorthose and then it also helps
with additional training forthose retail reps who haven't
maybe worked with food service.Now they get to learn something
else and, you know, we all knowevery time we learn something,
(14:01):
it makes our jobs that much moreinteresting.
So, so that's, that's been areally great opportunity for us
as we answer those questionsand, and our team just answers
the questions or the concerns insocial media. We don't do any of
the, of the other engagement. Wework with another team that
helps with the, what we call thepositive engagement.
Denise Venneri (14:23):
Is that similar to how you handle the the retail
side where it's the inquiriesand, concerns, and then someone
else handles? Okay.
Vicky Cherne (14:34):
Yep. It is. Yep. We do both. We we do this that
same the same process we use inretail, we were able to apply in
food service, which just madethe transition so seamless when
the time came to stand up thoseplatforms.
Denise Venneri (14:46):
Perfect. I went a little off script there, so
thanks for rolling with me.
Vicky Cherne (14:51):
Oh, of course.
Denise Venneri (14:54):
Oh, my gosh. We're getting close to the end,
sadly, Vicky. And I'm wondering,first, well, 2 things, kind of
like the future. Do you agreewith my prediction that I shared
at the top, and, maybe what areyour thoughts for the future of,
CPG as it relates to foodservice versus retail
Vicky Cherne (15:14):
care. Retail care. You bet. Yeah. Yeah.
Not the other r word.
Denise Venneri (15:18):
Yeah. Yeah.
Vicky Cherne (15:20):
I, you know, I think it's a great prediction,
Denise. I think service modelsare always evolving. We're
combining retail and b to bbusiness models can be a perfect
way to expand your agent skillsets and from a quality
perspective, ensure you'retracking all the product made
from a facility in one place.And while our team began
handling b to b interactions anumber of years ago, we know
(15:43):
it's an area that more companiesare starting to consider. So
your prediction is spot
Denise Venneri: on. Well, time will tell... (15:51):
undefined
but you have been a pioneer inthis sort of dual support side,
and and I really thank you foryour time today. It's been it's
been great. I really appreciateit, Vicky.
Vicky Cherne (16:02):
Absolutely, Denise. It's a pleasure to see
you today and visit with you,and, I look forward to talking
to you again soon. Thanks somuch for having me on.
Denise Venneri (16:14):
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 (16:32):
You have been listening to the My Curious
College podcast with Denise.Thank you for your
time.
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