Liz Wells

We caught up with Liz Wells, Insights & Customer First Director, to chat about all things customer and how important it is to think Customer First in B&B…

Hi Liz! Can we kick off with asking how long have you been at Greene King?

I joined Greene King in March 2017, so just over seven years now.

Your role sounds so interesting, what does it involve on a day-to-day basis?

Thanks so much – I think it is! Day to day I have the pleasure of leading the Insight Team, a fabulous group dedicated to supporting and driving the business to further understand our customers, the markets in which we operate, what our customers are telling us about their experiences with us, how we can shape our brands and offers to be as appealing as possible to customers, now and in the future. I also look after the Guest Relations team, and support them in their essential work looking after the enquiries, complaints and compliments that customers have for us. And finally, I am working on how we evolve our business to really put our customers at the heart of everything we do – working with colleagues across the business to understand how we do this in a real and sustainable way.

What I love about my role, aside from the real variety of work I get the pleasure of being involved in, is just how much we can do to learn about our customers, our business, and our markets, and seeing how this can be used by our team members across the business to really affect change and drive improvement. A great example might be how we have evolved our process in food development – in the last 18 months we have changed our process to test a wide range of new ideas well before the menu development begins and have used feedback from nearly 8500 customers to help us get to a bank of ‘customer-approved dishes’ to feed into our menu development. When we get into the specific menus for our brands and formats, we then taste test the dishes with our target customers to make sure our new dish launches can be as exciting and compelling for our customers as possible. We have had nearly 1500 customers in our offices and kitchen, testing these potential new dishes, giving feedback, and seen some great results such as:

• Flaming Grill Sticky Toffee Pudding Cheesecake – 3rd best-selling dessert since the new menu launched last month

• Chef & Brewer Honey & Ale Crispy Chicken – top selling starter since it launched on the new menu in April

• Pub & Social Cheese & Bacon Smash Burger is 2nd top selling main ytd

• Pub & Carvery Chocolate Lava Cookie is 2nd top selling dessert ytd

It’s so important to always weave the customer perspective into our thinking, how do you think we could do this more in Brewing & Brands given many of our team members are in operational roles?

I think everyone in our business either directly, or indirectly, serves our customers. All our roles make an impact, whether you are working directly with customers in our pubs serving our drinks, creating brilliant new beers for our customers, brewing our beers to perfection, or making sure the pubs have beers when they need them, we all contribute to delivering outstanding customer experiences and really delighting our customers. The power of everyone in our organisation seeing themselves as contributing to creating these outstanding customer experiences is immense – so having this mindset, no matter what role you have, can make a big difference.

In B&B you do have some impressive proof points to show you are putting that customer first. Being the number one cask ale brewer and now the number three craft brewer is amazing - customers are choosing us over the rest! I think there is real power in everyone recognising they have a part to play in these results.

What are some of the consumer trends we are expecting to see in the second half of this year?

Aside from the great interest around the Euros, we are expecting to see a bit of a calming in the market, but still seeing consumers really think about where and when they spend their money, with experiences which are easy and convenient and those which really deliver on experience being popular. Expecting to see a continued theme of the experiences people do have in hospitality really meaning more to them, and so the need for great execution in pubs being more important then ever.

Finally, why is it so important that we build internal advocacy within Brewing & Brands? And how does this directly affect the customer experience?

Everything we do in our Breweries and Depots touches our customers. We create and brew beer to be drunk and enjoyed by customers. So, if we make and create real advocacy around this, and the importance of this, we can be confident that we will be able to serve more customers and delight them every time!