Consumer Care

• We hear you wherever you are, in your home or in cyberspace @StraussGroup #consumer care

You, our consumers, deserve our attention. You expect us to listen to your needs, and even anticipate them. You want us to be responsive to any question you ask and also deal responsibly and effectively with any complaint you have. More importantly, you look to us to take a responsible approach to business, and this means delivering products which, in your view, offer value for money for the benefit they provide. You want us to be good employers, fair and decent in all our dealings, and do no harm to the environment. Although, in most cases, we do not sell our products directly to you, your needs are at the center of all we do.

Your expectations and your choices: In our engagement with consumers, we aim to do two things: first, understand your expectations, in the broadest sense, of us as a food company and the role we play in your lives and in society and second, help raise your awareness of different food and lifestyle opportunities to improve your wellbeing and overall health, by providing informative and educational information which can guide you in making smart consumer choices which are right for you. In doing so, and in selecting the ways in which we will adapt to your expectations, we must be even more agile, innovative, efficient and strategically focused so that we can turn these new expectations into long-term profitable growth opportunities for our business.  This in turn, will help us improve our social impact even further.

We hear you where you are:  Today is not only a physical world but also a virtual one, and whether you are in your living room at home or at an IP address in cyberspace, we want to connect. We invest significant resources in almost every way possible, from person-to-person contact through to web-based and mobile applications.

• Over 50,000 consumers and other stakeholders connect with @StraussGroup each month via our digital platforms

Here are the main ways we hear and connect with our consumers:

• Consumer Service Center: In Israel, we maintain 45 extensively trained representatives that follow through with answers to every query, and in cases where consumers complain about our products, arrange due compensation or a home visit. Our Center is accessible to all populations, including consumers with special needs, offering multiple channels of interaction including a call center in three languages, and emailing and direct chat options via our website and social media.  In 2012, you called us 138,000 times, by telephone, through our digital platforms or via email.  That’s over 500 conversations each day. We also conduct monthly surveys sampling 100 consumers who contacted the center to measure their satisfaction with our response.  We also conduct a bi-annual nation-wide survey reaching a total of 1,000 consumers to measure satisfaction with the knowledge and service demonstrated by our representatives. In 2012, general satisfaction of consumers with our Consumer Service Center responses at the level of “very good” or “excellent” was 81%.  In other countries, we maintain similar service and call centers, to provide local consumers with the answers they seek.

• My Strauss website [http://mystrauss.strauss-group.com] is a website we created especially for our consumers in Israel, a sort of crowdsourcing platform, which allows you to be part of the innovation process, providing feedback, offering suggestions and trying out products as they are in the development phase. Since the site’s launch in 2011, 17,000 of you have become members, you have sent us over 32,000 ideas, 22 products were launched as a direct result of your suggestions and requests and over 52 new product ideas are in the initial assessment development phase.  Interestingly, most of your suggestions, over 7,000, have something to do with chocolate.

• Our Social Media Platforms: We maintain Facebook pages, a Twitter account, a YouTube Channel, and an Instagram account and we engage in other social media platforms because we know that this is where many of you are. Over 50,000 of our stakeholders connect with us via social media every month. You are using social media to get updated, react and interact, share and support. We make a point of updating these channels with relevant information, encouraging you to provide us with feedback, and ensuring we respond effectively. We estimate that through our corporate social media channels, we reach millions of consumers every day. In 2012, we also ran an innovative marketing campaign, using social media tools, in which we involved our consumers and deepened our engagement with them. This campaign invited 1,000 real-life, randomly selected consumers to be models in billboard posters featuring our market-leading instant Elite coffee. The campaign maintained a dedicated website laying out the billboard locations and inviting consumers to compete to appear at the location of their choice. The site received over 100,000 visitors within its first two weeks, and individuals included in the campaign were able to see their poster and share it with their social media network.

• Our Blogs: We blog regularly about matters related to Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, to keep you updated, and to hear your thoughts. Our main Corporate Responsibility blog [http://blog.strauss-group.com] is written by a range of contributors from within our organization, including senior management who personally write about developments in their areas of responsibility, and includes external contributions from international and local experts in different fields such as food and nutrition, healthy eating, product development and corporate responsibility. In addition, our Sabra operation in the U.S. maintains a blog all about hummus [sabrachef.blogspot.com].    

Visiting your homes

• We visited 840 consumers in their homes in 2012 to resolve their concerns @StraussGroup #home-visits

Home visits are a privilege our consumers afford us.  In cases where consumers have had a less positive experience with our products, in Israel, we offer to visit you in your homes and listen and provide an honest response,  in order to regain your trust. During our visits, after hearing your concerns, we explain how we operate, the quality assurance mechanisms we have, and possible reasons for the problem you experienced.  Fuaz Swalha, our home-visit representative, has performed Strauss home visits for the past ten years, and considers this direct connection with consumers as an opportunity to listen, share and bring them into the Strauss world. In 2012, Fuaz visited around 840 homes and rebuilt trust with valued consumers.

Encouraging small customers

• Driven by a responsibility to support small retailers @StraussGroup #smallretailers

Ethics, transparency and trust are the building blocks of all of our relationships with customers. Since 2010, we have invited customers to take part in an annual customer survey. We were pleased to note that compared to other food companies, we were seen as leaders in customer satisfaction in the areas of market leadership and innovation. We also are driven by a responsibility to support small retailers who provide a personal service to local consumers and are an important element in our economy. While we work collaboratively with major retailers, and aim to meet their needs, we feel our economy will thrive with diversity and opportunities for the smaller players in the market. In 2013, we initiated a new customer engagement program with meetings with small retailers to hear them, and create an environment of partnership and dialog. The first meeting took place in early 2013 involving over 20 small retailers.