113. Curious About... My "5 Musings" on Consumer Relations Past and Look Ahead w/Denise Venneri, Host & Creator | My Curious Colleague

I'm thrilled to share the latest episode (#113) of the @My Curious Colleague podcast…. Join me for my (5) “Musings” where I look back and reflect forward on consumer engagement..!

• The Importance of a Seat at the Table: Why consumer focus is now non-negotiable for brands.
• The Rise of New Channels: Exploring the impact of ratings and reviews as the new frontier in consumer engagement.
• Trends Tracking: Being aware of the macro and micro trends that could affect your operations in the contact center.
• Evolving Reporting Structures: How the reporting landscape has shifted towards a more consumer-centric model.
• Consumer Insights: What the future may look like ie more holistic.

Tune in for thoughts IMHO may give you something to chew on as you plan your approach to consumer care in 2025! 🌟

in the news...! I'm honored that My Curious Colleague podcast has been featured in FeedSpot Top 70 CPG Podcasts (#16). Check it out:  Top 70 CPG Podcasts   Thank YOU!

#mycuriouscolleague #podcast #consumerengagement #cx #cpg #cpgcx

What is My Curious Colleague ~ CPG CX?

My intent is to Educate, Celebrate and Elevate the Consumer Relations function in CPG (Consumer Product Goods) companies, especially for Brand Specialist and Analysts roles and responsibilities... !

Denise Venneri: 00:00

Welcome to the My Curious Colleague podcast with me, Denise Venneri. I am a 20+ year practitioner in the consumer engagement space having worked for 2 large CPG organizations. My intent here is really to share best practices practices with particular focus around the specialist and analyst roles and to give back to this great community because CPG CX rocks.

Denise Venneri: 00:33

Hello, my curious colleagues. Today, I'm curious about what my musings might be on the consumer care industry now that I've been doing this, as you know, for 20 plus years as a "worker bee". And, also, as you know, I'm pretty much focused on and around the consumer. I may have , you know, a thought or two in this regard, I'm hoping. So here are 5 of my musings as I reflect back and look forward.

Denise Venneri: 01:07

The first one is that proverbial seat at the table. Right? You know, today, given the environment and shifts in consumer behavior, brands cannot afford Not to be Consumer focused and provide CX professionals a seat at that proverbial table. But in the past, it really kind of went the way, in my observations, of the CEO, whether they could afford to be consumer focused or perhaps they were brought in to tackle something else.

Denise Venneri: 01:40

The second thing is what I'll call sexy new channels, and some of you may remember when social media monitoring came to be and, ultimately, social media, you know, responding consumers known as social media care. And leadership glommed onto this channel, rightfully so, because of the ability for a comment, that's one comment, to go viral and have a little more heft than, say, incoming consumer care comments from more traditional channels. Today, I believe it's the ratings and review channel. That's the sexy new shiny channel. And standing up this channel is really the one to watch and the one to focus on.

Denise Venneri: 02:25

3rd musing is trends tracking. Yes. That's so cool to see trends and understand where they're going, but some of us may think, oh, well, you know, that doesn't impact the contact center organization if, for example, consumers are interested in healthy trends or not. But hey. Hey.

Denise Venneri: 02:45

Wait up. Just a minute there because understanding micro and macro trends, such as those headwinds and tailwinds, inflation, supply chain constraints, and price fluctuations, all of these, you know, I guess, things going on and around the contact center could have an impact to your operations and to your consumer. So take that example I was mentioning. The the trend to eat healthier might have an impact on labeling, and, hence, you need to arm your consumer care team with that sort of language to hold consumers' hands when they have questions about it. So you just can't sit around with your head down, you know, keeping your nose clean.

Denise Venneri: 03:29

As they say, you've got to look up and around you because this contributes also to your end to end understanding of what's going on in your organization. The 4th musing is called reporting structure. Yeah. I I know this is even something you might have considered. You know, Denise, there's really not much here, but but even something as simple as reporting structure for the consumer care team has evolved.

Denise Venneri: 04:00

Perhaps you reported in the past to the legal team, or maybe it was the customer service center for retail organizations due to some perceived synergies in the work and perhaps some of the telephony systems are maybe reported to the quality organization, which definitely makes sense. But, you know, I've seen groups recently in the past maybe 5 years move closer to things like reporting through marketing insights, the marketing team or the CMO, and or other burgeoning digital type teams. And it felt like this approach made, sense because you were, you know, following the money. That's that's typically where some of the budget sat. But now today, it seems like the reporting shifts facilitate more about following the consumer, a much more nobler path.

Denise Venneri: 05:00

And my 5th and final musing is around consumer feedback or insights. You know, at 1 point 20 years ago, a colleague maybe not 20 years, 10 years, we'll say, a colleague mentioned to me that they were giving permission to access consumer affairs data to internal clients, including marketing. And I remember my jaw just dropped. Fast forward today, the landscape software, access to the software, and which channels are supported have morphed into, like, you know, a wild spider's web, you know, versus definite silos back in the day. So channels like social media, of course, we mentioned that, about owning monitoring and listening tools along with reporting capabilities for social media.

Denise Venneri: 05:51

Maybe perhaps your Community. Management team or consumer managers also have access to these tools in the reporting area and, of course, maybe a shared responsibility in responding. And now it's that ratings and reviews. I have seen channel specific insights from the software. You know I was gonna come back to ratings and reviews.

Denise Venneri: 06:15

And, of course, CRM software like Salesforce has its own reporting pieces. And then there's a tool like Power BI, which really is more self serving reporting capabilities that folks and experts on your team can set up for you to access data versus, say, going to an off the shelf type of software for reporting. And if internal clients can easily access this data, it begs the question then, who is the owner of these insights at the end of the day? You know, largely stemming from consumer affairs, it's been consumer affairs. Right?

Denise Venneri: 06:59

But what about marketing? Is it, you know, more of a quality organization ownership or something more along the lines of the Insights Group owns it? Or or let me offer up just the future have more of a holistic approach. I love that word. I've used it for years, and, it's always served me well, the the concept of blending, the integration of the tools, and, ultimately, the insights and groups that own.

Denise Venneri: 07:31

You wanna be on the ground floor of any governance as it pertains to the sort of integration of people and software and responsibilities, and AI capabilities will surely contribute to the insight space and increasing the breadth and depth of understanding consumer insights. So make sure that as a consumer affairs team, like I said, you're there in on the ground floor sort of building this out and offering your perspective as a subject matter expert. And thank you so much again for your time. I really appreciate it.

Denise Venneri: 08:16

You have been listening to the My Curious Colleague podcast with Denise Venneri. Thank you for your time.