Customers create a tempest in social media over a new twist on a classic blend

Perhaps Twinings Tea Company Ltd should have heeded this advice before tweaking their classic 1831 Earl Grey blend.

In a move dating back to April of this year, the company, generally acknowledged to have been the first to sell Earl Grey, decided to replace its original recipe with a new version intended to be more refreshing and lemon-infused.

However, as with New Coke and the new Superman attire, Twinings’ decision has been met with hundreds of complaints on the company’s website, a Facebook protest, and customers rushing to stores that still carry the old brand.

Now that this story has crossed the pond, will Americans embrace the new taste, or add to the bubbling brew of complaints comparing the revamped recipe to ‘dishwater?’

Using Attensity’s social analytics solution to analyze the terms: “Earl Grey,” “Twinings,” “tea,” “recipe,” “flavor,” “new,” “taste” – we looked at the top trends over the last two weeks of August in social media around news of the Twinings backlash. The highest chatter on social media sites occurred on August 28th, in conjunction with stories appearing in British national press such as The Telegraph and The Daily Mail, which in turn were picked up by NPR and print media in the U.S.

Attensity also pulled out the most commonly used words across social media in regard to Twinings during the same period. The results showed the words “New Earl Grey,” “Hate,” “Lemony,” “Really Changing” and “Ouch” as the most frequently appearing.

What’s interesting is that, when we looked at the sentiment in social media associated with the same terms (“Earl Grey,” “Twinings,” “tea,” “recipe,” “flavor,” “new,” “taste”), we  found that there was still a considerable degree of positive emotion expressed. Why is that?

As you can see from some sample tweets, many people get the warm fuzzies on the subject of Earl Grey:

Twinings clearly had an opportunity to stop the hemorrhage of customer loyalty. They have 200 years of amassed goodwill. With such a common objection being voiced  among  such passionate customers, it was in the company’s best interest to address the issue quickly. Why not bring back the original recipe? Since there are already numerous types of Twinings teas, from peppermint, to chai, to the Earl Grey variation called “Lady Grey,” it seems logical to have the new recipe as just another option, as Coca-Cola did for a while with Classic Coke and New Coke. Their arch-competitor Fortnum’s already offers a “Smoky Earl Grey.”

Well, Twinings did hear the voice of their customers. The company posted an announcement to its web site on August 31 that it would bring back the blend it will now call “Earl Grey: The Classic Edition.” However, this will only be available through its online store, and not on supermarket shelves.

Let’s see if this half-hearted move gets Twinings out of hot water!

Photo credit: gwenstella via Flickr

I was sitting at the Giants game last night when my cell phone  beeped with a news alert.  “Steve Jobs resigns from Apple.” While it’s not a surprise (my brother is a Liver Doc and always said the issues he has are very serious), I felt immediate sadness for Apple and like most others had some questions about their future.   Sadly when you look at the pictures of Steve Jobs over the last 10 years (see  below -photos courtesy of Reuters)  you see the MAJOR health-related change.  Him leaving is the end of an amazing era of innovation that in large part came from the genius of this very creative man.

And the market agrees – after a quick look at over 50,000 online/social discussions using Attensity on the topic, the sentiment was overwhelming sad about this change. (Red = negative/sad/regretful; Green = positive/happy)

Most of the conversation in the last 12 hours took place in Twitter and the tweets looked a lot like this:

I do know this, Attensity runs on Apple products (the OS & devices) and I am a HUGE fan of all Apple products (you should see our house – between the Apple TV, multiple iMacs and everything in between we are surely an Apple house!) And we are all rooting for Apple’s continued success and an improvement in health for Mr. Jobs. 

Join Attensity and ThinkJar founder and customer experience expert Esteban Kolsky for this informative webinar to hear the results of the latest research into Voice of the Customer initiatives for Customer Experience Management.

Click here to register.

Wednesday, August 24^th, 2011

11:00 am PST

All webinar registrants will be provided with complimentary access to the full report: Voice of the Customer: Data-Based Analysis of Adoption and Optimization of VoC Initiatives.

Get a comprehensive look at the key factors determining the success of enterprise VoC deployments, based on ThinkJar’s survey of nearly 400 respondents in marketing, customer service and other organizations across a variety of industries, including finance, insurance, retail, technology and travel.

Learn the key drivers behind today’s successful VoC initiatives, including:

• Why having a clear VoC strategy is more important in justifying VoC initiatives than showing measurable ROI.
• Why many organizations either fail to recognize the value of the VoC information they have collected, or fail to understand what it says.
• The top reasons behind today’s enterprise VoC initiatives .
• Why following common published advice is not the path to a successful VoC outcome.

I am on vacation in Costa Rica!  But I can’t get away from thinking about one of my passions – the amazingly rapid and widespread adoption of social media as both a communication source and marketing tool.  For one thing, in this heavily toured country – Facebook “likes” and positive reviews on sites like TripAdvisor are golden – and hotels and restaurants here are not afraid to ask for both.  We even ate at a restaurant in seemingly the “middle of nowhere” and on the back of the only-in-Spanish menu was a “follow us on Facebook” request!

It happens that I have a lot of family down in Costa Rica (my father is a Tico.) So the insights I got came from both my travels across the country, and from real business men and women in this country.  Many of my relatives work for larger companies (e.g., IBM, Convergys) and small companies – they own their own stores, run export/import businesses, are doctors, lawyers, etc. 

When I was a kid everything in Costa Rica seemed about 10-20 years behind. When we had touch dial phones, they were still using rotary, we had a decently large color TV, they had small black and white.  No one had a mailbox (they still don’t!) – people go to a PO box to get mail, etc.  Then the cell phone hit Latin America in the early 2000′s and things changed. With limited telephone infrastructure, the cell phone became a huge opportunity to provide easy and relatively inexpensive communication options, without extensive infrastructure. Everyone got one.

Shortly after I would get the occasional email from a cousin, not much changed in terms of our communication.  But now – I am connected to all of them via Facebook! They are my most active friends by FAR, posting pictures, sharing community activities, connecting with family and friends around the world.  Groupon isn’t here yet – BUT – the Groupon copy is – they call it Yuplon! So like most other places around the world, the personal community side of social media took off fast! (Read more about Groupon copy-cats around the world here.)

The question for me, then, was were local businesses using social for marketing purposes? I took a survey.  First, I asked the marketing manager (and cousin!) of the largest furniture store chain in the country if they use social. The answer? A resounding yes. She proceeded to tell me all about their integrated marketing campaigns that make full use of social. She rattled off the number of followers they have on Twitter and the things they were doing to increase their followers.  They have a site inside of Facebook that includes their catalog, their promotions, their new collections, videos about the products, etc.  They are starting to measure how social is working for them and have even started an in-store and online survey asking how customers learned about certain promotions and tracking actions based on social.  It’s just the beginning.

Next I asked a small business owner -the owner of some local stores including a specialty store that sells bathing suits, exercise cloths and high-end dance shoes – they too use social to market the business. They have a “fake” person on Twitter (in this case not the store name but more like a virtual sales associate) who tweets specials, new merchandise, etc. They also specifically market special promotions via Facebook – in hopes to get more followers and to both share information about and to learn about different events (e.g., local dance recitals) where they can sell their wares.

Larger companies are also using Linked-in and local meet-ups and using Facebook, Twitter and other local social sites to recruit local employees. Costa Rica, like many other countries, has become an excellent source for educated (English speaking, highly trained) labor.  I spoke to both the outsourcing manager at IBM who provides near-shore shared services to P&G and the manager for Convergys who provides services to Comcast employees – both from large call centers in Costa Rica.  They also both confirmed the use of social media to recruit new employees for both their Costa Rica offices as well as for offices across Latin America.  As with recruiting, many also confirmed use of social for promotional marketing, customer service activities and more.  Another great example of the rapid uptake of social media in Latin America, our recently announced partner, Cap Gemini had us train their Guatemalan call center to use Attensity Respond and Attensity Analyze to service their global customers. The best part, their users tweeted about the training session – so for them, learning to use our products that both analyze and route/respond to social was a breeze!

So, in conclusion!  For social, like around the world, adoption has been FAST in Latin America.  Also, like the rest of the world, it is only the beginning!  #PURAVIDA

More good news for Attensity, August has turned out to be an uncharacteristically busy month!

We are excited to be honored with a CRM Rising Star award from the editors of CRM Magazine. We are especially proud to be designated a “Forward Thinker” in the article featured in the August issue of the magazine, and to be featured in such impressive company alongside other CRM Rising Stars including ConstantContact, Crowd Factor, Groupon, LinkedIn and Yammer.

The awards are published in the August issue of CRM Magazine and announced at this week’s CRM Evolution 2011 conference in New York City.

We think the award is more than recognition of Attensity’s innovative solutions, it is a strong testament to the visionary way our customer are using the voice of the customer to drive their business processes. As an example, Bonny Simi, JetBlue’s director of customer experience and analysis, will be presenting a session at the conference titled “Improve Customer Service Experiences.” She will discuss how the airline employs Attensity’s text analytics solutions to understand passenger sentiment, improve services and head off issues.

Attensity will also be at the conference to demonstrate its new Voice of the Customer Command Center in booth 400. If you are attending the conference, be sure to stop by and visit us there!