Customer Experiences
Delivered as Fresh Produce

Do you run a canteen and experience that you only receive feedback from your guests sporadically, or not at all? Coor has implemented Foodback, a new data-driven tool to collect qualitative data about their guests’ customer experiences.

Guest: – The soup is too salty

Think about it, what is the biggest annoyance you as a guest can experience in a canteen? Maybe they are out of salt, as usual. Or you might come to the canteen hungry and in a hurry, only to be greeted by the sight of a long queue. Not being able to give feedback due to lack of a user-friendly channel to do so, can send you in an even more foul mood. If the situation persists it can develop into an annoying problem for the guests, and the quality of the canteen experience will decrease.

On the other hand, seeing that the canteen receives and responds to the feedback you provide will result in a much more positive customer experience.

Manager: Why don’t they tell me that the soup is too salty?

Coor delivers canteen services to thousands of people every day.

However, there are some challenges:

• No standard feedback system
  Guests have no easy and standard channel for providing feedback on food, service, surroundings and environmental aspects.
• Missing internal follow-up
  The canteen does not have a system for oranizing, sharing and prioritizing feedback.
• Sporadic feedback from many sources
  Some feedback come directly to the chef, some in sales and contract meetings, or in an annual but sometimes poorly updated survey.

This means that the canteen staff, the management and the F&B specialists have limited insight into how guests experience the service. As a major supplier of canteens, Coor is committed to further develop its own canteen concept while at the same time providing a good experience for our hungry guests. To find our missing “intermediary”, they have implemented the Norwegian feedback solution Foodback, tailored for Food & Beverage.

– We started with a pilot as a local initiative between Coor’s F&B, Coor’s innovation community and Foodback. A canteen in Fornebu also joined the pilot project, for better comparability. And of course we have to thank all who ate the food in the canteens at Lysaker and Fornebu every day, who have provided us with a wide range of different feedback by testing the product, says Christian Dahl, Business Developer for Innovation at Coor.

How Does it Work?

Foodback has developed a simple web application for the guests where they scan a QR code at the table, are asked 5 questions, randomly picked from a catalogue of around 30 questions. These are ranked on a bad-to-good-scale from 1 to 6.

This data is then made directly available in a powerful analytical tool where top management can get the overall picture and each canteen look into the details. This makes it easier for the canteen to get a quick response to things they want to test:

• Do they get better feedback with a more vegetarian menu?
• What do the guests think about the flow in the buffet area or the waste sorting station?
• How is the level of service the canteen staff provide, experienced?

What Did They Learn?

During the pilot project theyhad numerous hypothesis that they wanted to confirm or disprove. It turned out to be a straightforward tool that guests could use intuitively, without introduction or training. The frequency of the feedback decreased according to the tool’s newsworthiness, as expected, but it did not disappear. It switched to a lower but consistent use.

In 10 days the canteen received 974 responses, of which 25% also left a written comment voluntarily. Coor’s Food & Beverage specialist, Espen Henriksen, says that they have already used the tool to make changes and adjustments based on guests’ feedback and experiences.

– It’s a great tool for the canteen as they receive quick and honest feedback on all the meals they serve each day. It will be used for improvement work going forward. With Foodback we get to know what the guests means right away, and not from, for example, an annual canteen survey. We can take action in a short period of time, or confirm that the guests are satisfied, says Espen Henriksen, Food & Beverage Specialist at Coor.

Why Does Coor Want Data Driven Canteens?

Numerous business analysis shows that you as a company, have a higher chance of retaining your customers and guests if you communicate with them across multiple channels and build your offerings based on a data-driven insight into what your customers are demanding. According to the consultancy firm Deloitte, companies that utilize their own digital insights are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t.

Qualitative and quantitative feedback, numbers and statistics can all help improve a canteen concept that previously leaned on guessing and testing what people want to eat and what a great canteen should contain. Without data, decisions are based on experience and gut feeling – which may produce good results, but will also have more elements of luck and/or bad luck. With data and insights based on responses from canteen guests, you can be more confident in the choices you make.

In the long run, collecting feedback on customer experiences will constitute a valuable transfer of knowledge and experience, both for the individual canteen, the expert communities and the canteen supplier behind.