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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... !
Welcome to the My Curious Colleague podcast with your host, me, Denise Venneri. We'll be talking all things consumer relations with a focus on consumer product goods organizations and the brand specialist and analyst roles and responsibilities. So if you like CPGs, like I like CPGs, marketing, insights, and caring deeply for your consumers, Well, take a listen. Hello, my curious colleagues. This week, I'm curious about tracking reformulated products in the CPG contact center.
Denise:I love this opportunity that the contact center has, and that's to be this early read on assessing consumer acceptance when a CPG formulates a product. Let me level set y'all first. In this episode, we're gonna be talking largely about product changes versus, say, packaging changes. So I'm thinking of reformulation, you know, for example, to the taste or the texture or maybe even an addition or removal of ingredient, for example, of of fragrance. Now some of these may have burst on the front of pack, you know, something like now with 30% more of such and such or something like now with spicy tastes you love.
Denise:And some of these do not call out the reformulation. In both scenarios, it's business prudent to expect comments, questions, and even praise, especially for the ones with the burst. So the consumers expected to see the burst, which should encourage purchase and product excitement as it should, and, hence, they may be a little more engaged with the product after they open it or prepare it. So there's this opportunity then for a little more engagement and a little more judging, one might say. And even if there's no burst on the front of the pack, you should expect comments and questions, especially from your most loyal consumers who may contact you as if, you know, they were a friend, which I love, such as something like, my husband and I use this product daily for the past 10 years, and we wanted you to know.
Denise:We just wanted you to know that now the carrots are cut differently and a bit more harder to chew chew. Excuse me. Pro tip. As I mentioned, I love these comments because while there is a complaint on paper in there, there is this partnership that's very special. And now is the time to encourage and create a good experience as well as funnel that information into your tracking for the feedback, for the early feedback.
Denise:Now in my humble opinion, reformulated product tracking is a little bit more trickier than tracking, say, new products or tracking advertising comments, which I've done episodes on both, and I'll have links in the show note. So do check those out. Although, you know, some of the same rules apply, such as partnering with your marketer or brand to understand the aspects of the launch. Really get your head around it. For example, what is the, you know, like, the distribution strategy?
Denise:Regional, store specific, or national. Ask for the prelaunch market research to get closer to the development of the product. Any pain points identified, that maybe were tweaked, and then, ultimately, were there any risks assessed on the different formulations that were tested? This will help you anticipate some common questions that may come up. For example, around maybe that special preparation as a result of the reformulation.
Denise:And pro tip, you could work with your marketer to ensure that FAQs spell this new prep and the tips and the tricks out. Spell it out for your agents to leverage to help the consumer. Now in my experience, there may be times when the contact center data may be an early read, as I was mentioning, And other times, it may be a lagging indicator. Either way, I love taking the holistic approach, and that's to collaborate with mark your brand to understand how the brand is tracking reformulation. Like, what are they looking at from their vantage point and dataset?
Denise:So for them, that might include sales, you know, scanner data like sales, velocities, trial and repeat data. Maybe it's even, super heavy and, super heavy analysis, buying patterns, and the like. And I always like to have a peek at the manufacturing data too. You know, how are the specs standing up, and are they pulling any product off of the line that maybe is interesting that they want to share for learning? So not every one of these pieces is gonna be, you know, the perfect piece, but, collectively, it will give you a richer, deeper view of the acceptance of this reformulation.
Denise:Now, of course, you're going into the, launch with the understanding that this is going to be accepted by consumers. But as we know, sometimes, different pieces of information can arise that can be useful. Alright. So let's talk about approaches to looking at CPG contact center data. And let me preface this, of course, that when I think about the data that comes out of a contact center, you know, the very first step is this understanding purpose.
Denise:Right? You just wanna understand what's the consumer saying, what's the big picture. It it's really none of this is a mandate for the brand to go and change, you know, the product or not change the product. You know, it often also isn't standing alone as a metric, right? That's part of the reason.
Denise:So just keep that in mind. You could work as a first approach with the brand and align to benchmarks of a like reformulation initiative and compare that like initiative in month 1, month 2, for example, assuming a light consumer reaction to your current reformulation. So that's one approach. The second is you could compare the reform initiative to itself in the same months year ago. So let's say June this year would be your month 1 of the reformulation, for example, and you could compare June of this year then with June year ago or June last year, for example, and so on.
Denise:Visually, this could be tracked in a side by side bar chart or perhaps in a line chart with one line representing the year ago data points and another line representing your current reform initiatives as it's kind of flowing into market.
Denise:This episode is sponsored by the launch of my very first website, aptly named my curious colleague dot com. There, you'll find links to episodes of all my podcasts, YouTube videos, downloadables, and links to the podcast accolades and rankings. There's even a store feature for future products. Right now, my official sticker is available with the CPG CX hashtag on it, and it is available for free.
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Denise:So a third approach is another line chart, pitting performance of the reform initiative versus itself 12 months before. We'll call this, you know, a pre versus post approach. This one could be, say, over 24 months in total continuum.
Denise:You know, so it's essentially 12 months before the reformulation. Like, there's a line there on that date. I would call that, like, sort of a line in the sand, that we all can agree on that we're gonna call that month the 1st month of reformulation. And then, of course, it's the 12 months after the reformulation, so pre and post. These are just couple approaches, so don't feel constrained to just these.
Denise:I'd love to hear, what you all are using. Drop me a DM in LinkedIn for sure. Now overall, you can do a couple things coming out of, you know, deciding and aligning on an approach. You could partner up with your statistical analysis expert, whoever that may be. Maybe it's somebody in quality or right there on your team and start looking at standard deviation.
Denise:So you could have sort of those data points in there as well to help deepen the insights. Essentially, once you lean into an approach again, like I had mentioned and the brand feels good about it, you can begin to track over time several reformulations and and to begin to build this expected trajectory of the consumer response over time. And that's really interesting to be able to offer up to your business. Again, just realizing these are just top line of my thoughts on this topic. Hopefully, you kinda like this format.
Denise:It's quick and, breezy, I trust. And if, again, if you have a reformulated product that you're tracking or you've tracked and want to share on a future episode or just talk to me, do reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Denise:If you've learned even a kernel of an idea or was inspired by this episode, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Denise:Be sure to share out the hashtag CPGCX because CPGCX really and truly rocks.
Doug:You have been listening to the My Curious Colleague podcast with Denise McNeely. Thank you for your time.