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12. CONSUMER SERVICES
What Our Consumers Tell Us At Ben & Jerry’s, social and environmental values are integral to our business, so we encourage our fans to share their thoughts with us on just about any topic, not just about our ice cream. Many do. The opportunity that this gives the consumer services team for personal interaction with our customers and for capturing both qualitative and quantitative data is invaluable; we learn how to be careful listeners, we find out whether people think we’ve fallen short or gotten things right, and we always make an honest effort to explain where we’re coming from.
Messages from 2008 We heard from a lot of people in 2008. In all, nearly 13,000 people took the time to contact us about our Company’s products, practices, and social mission activities last year in the United States. (Consumer data from other countries was not available at the time of this report’s publication.) This number was down significantly from 2007, when we had 20,000 contacts. E-mail continues to lead the way as the most popular method of communication, followed by letters and phone calls. Praise Though the amount of product praise communication was down for the year (as was communication virtually across the board), we noticed an increase in generally positive “I love it!” comments about the product line. A considerable number of positive comments focused on Ben & Jerry’s ongoing social and environmental missions, too, most notably concerning:
Complaints The five most common complaints we heard from consumers were in the areas below: Product Texture. It’s always a challenge to keep ice cream frozen and at the right temperature from our factory all the way to our fans; and we always get some complaints of what we call ‘temperature abuse’. Overall, however, texture complaints were down 4 percent from 2007. Ingredient Ratio. Sometimes our ice cream ends up with too many cherries and not enough Garcia. It’s hard to please everyone in this regard, but complaints in this category increased by less than one percent over the 2007 level. Complaints about too few add-ins increased slightly; complaints about too many add-ins were up by more than a third! Which probably proves that you can’t please all the people all the time. Product Flavor. Complaints in this category increased across many categories, with “under-flavored” as the top complaint (up 2 percent). Other product flavor complaints that rose in 2008 included “not good” “sour/off” and “stale/old.” Franchise. Complaints in this category increased by 6 percent, with franchise/scoop shop service complaints as the most numerous (though down 31 percent from last year). We also saw a notable increase in the number of pricing complaints and those pertaining to gift certificates/coupons. Add-In Ingredients. We heard more complaints about the quality, taste, color, freshness, and formulation of the add-ins in our ice cream in 2008 which has prompted us to take a closer look at procedures we use to handle and process them. As a brand that’s known for the chunks and swirls in our ice cream, it’s an issue we take very seriously. |
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