Customer Opinion + Social Media = Child’s Play?

1st February, 2012

Many of you are probably familiar with the letter Lily (age 3 1/2) sent to Sainsbury’s to ask why Tiger Bread is called Tiger Bread and the response from Chris King (age 27 & 1/3) at Sainsbury’s. (I bet you, you went ‘ahhh’ when you read them.) Both letters are lovely and we know about it because Lily’s mum put the letter onto her blog and it went viral from there. According to a BBC article Sainsbury’s has now agreed to rename Tiger Bread to Giraffe Bread due to popular demand. (And we all go ‘ahhh’ again, don’t we.)

But what is the renaming of the bread down to?  Is it due to Social Media that customers have been able to influence change. Or did it all begin with the use of more traditional communications? Or is it as simple as someone taking the time to listen to the customer (even if the customer is only 3 1/2.) So as some celebrate the social media for the success for having Giraffe Bread and others might think that the mother is to thank for ‘helping’ Lily to write the letter, or even Chris King who wrote such a lovely response – fact is they all listened. Lily listened enough to question the response she was given, Lily’s mum listened enough to ‘help’ writing the letter and Chris listened enough to respond to the letter. And at the end of it Sainsbury’s listened to everyone enough to change the name of Tiger Bread.

So when was the last time you really listened to your customer – or does the old adage ‘no news is good news’ suffice? I guess Sainsbury’s didn’t see the bread discussion coming (who would) but none-the less they listened and – more importantly – acted upon the opportunity.

If you would like us to listen to you, to help you to listen to your customers better, give us a call.  Who knows where the next Tiger Bread discussion starts…