120 Curious About...Implementing an Interactive Website "Bot" Contact Us w/John Calhoun | Consumer Services Mgr | McKee Foods Corp.
Welcome to the My Curious Colleague podcast with me, Denise Venneri. I am a twenty year practitioner in the consumer engagement space having worked for two large CPG organizations. My intent here is really to share best practices with particular focus around the specialist and analyst roles and to give back to this great community because CPGCX rocks.
Denise Venneri:This week, I'm curious about implementing an interactive bot form on your website. So I'm talking about instead of a static contact us web form just for a little clarity. And to help me understand just that is my colleague, John Calhoun, consumer services manager at McKee Foods Corporation. Welcome to the podcast, John.
John Calhoun:Hey, Denise. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Denise Venneri:Start with how did you get to hear in your career at a top line?
John Calhoun:Yeah. So, I mean, I've had my my foot in customer service in various roles at a couple of different companies over the years. And, yeah, one thing led to another, and this opening came available. And I I stepped into it and have been doing this role for just over two years and and really enjoying, the things that I'm learning and the people that I'm engaged you with both internally and outside the company.
Denise Venneri:Yeah. Externally outside of the company, I agree with you. It's a great industry for sure. Yeah. So hey.
Denise Venneri:Now let's get into what the rationale may have been or maybe the pain point you were trying to solve, when you decided to implement this interactive platform.
John Calhoun:Yeah. It actually kinda came out of nowhere. We were, we use Amplify as our CRM and our static web form that was hosted by a local vendor, had an issue. They they did an upgrade, but with the upgrade, it lost some functionality and therefore broke our connection with Amplify. I worked hand in hand with Amplify and the local vendor, and we're unable to get that solved.
John Calhoun:That wasn't a Amplify issue. That was a local vendor issue. So it kinda put me in a spot where I needed to figure out a solution. And so in talking with Amplify, they brought up this as an option, and so we ended up, you know, vetting that out and ended up implementing that. And so that's kinda where we are today.
Denise Venneri:Got it. Got it. You know, I love that you were just so transparent then because I you know, when there's an upgrade to your system invariably, every one of us has experienced another area of the system kind of undoing itself, so to speak. So it it happens. It it happens.
Denise Venneri:So thanks for, like, kind of bringing that out into the open. What what was that functionality that was lost, to the contact center CRM that you were trying to solve for? Yeah.
John Calhoun:Yeah. So what would happen, you know, before is a consumer would go to the website, they would fill out the form, they would hit submit, and that would, generate an email that would automatically hit our Amplify CRM and put it into a queue. And when the agent would pull that email, into into their work with the the item they were gonna work on, it would populate a lot of the information into the case. Well, that population of data was broken. So all of the tags that we built with the formatting of the email, they broke.
John Calhoun:And Amplify was fantastic to help figure out ways to work around the issue with the local vendor. But, unfortunately, there were some limitations because of the the local vendor. So Yeah. So it really it really caused my agents to have a lot more work. They had to basically take this block of the text, and they would have to manually move it and break it apart into different fields.
John Calhoun:Where before, it will automatically do that. And so that that it was awful. We were still obviously able to work and handle consumer input and feedback, but it wasn't ideal. Definitely was not efficient.
Denise Venneri:Right. I mean, it sounds a little arduous, or, like, you know, extra work does not help the whole the whole process, because you want the agents to have a good experience as well as your your consumers. So, good call. Hey. Take us through the details.
Denise Venneri:You know we love the details here on the My Curious Colleague podcast. So if you don't mind, break it down for us. You know, take us through the experience there on the web page that a consumer would have when going to your website, you know, if that a comment of some sort that they wanna share that they wanted
Denise Venneri:to share.
Denise Venneri:Look. Take me through, you know, the drop downs, the pop ups, you know, all the all the stuff.
John Calhoun:Absolutely. So in in a previous way, it was five different web pages. And then within those, they all had different links that led them to different forms. This bot interactive form is all in one. So instead of going to five places, they come to one.
John Calhoun:And so when you get to the landing page, you see our hours of operation, you see where you can send us a letter. Consumers still do that a lot. And then you're greeted by Cookie, our customer support bot. And so he he, she, I would assume is a she by the name of Cookie, but who am I? And so Cookie, greets the person, lets them know that she's not a real person, but she is capable of addressing comments, requests, and concerns.
John Calhoun:And so, we ask for the consumer to agree to our privacy policy where that is linked. We do a age verification check, something our legal department wanted us to do. And then it drops you into options that they can select as a consumer. And we have six different options. We have consumer comments, which is where a consumer will share their feedback, whether it's something that they loved or maybe they had issue with the product.
John Calhoun:We have retail contact, which actually is a different team that I manage. And then we have distributorship opportunities, product donation requests, promotional sponsorship requests, and then last but not least, monetary contribution requests. And so based on whatever the consumer needs there, they select that and then it basically like a tree. It takes them through what information is needed to be gathered to address their concern or their request.
Denise Venneri:Let's say in this example, the consumer chooses consumer comments as the first Yeah. Button is it, I would say, or part of part of the tree.
John Calhoun:Yeah.
Denise Venneri:Then then what happens?
John Calhoun:So it was first asking them questions. Right? It will you know, I asked them what brand are they interested in. Right? Mhmm.
John Calhoun:And so what country are you from? You know, we have US or Canada. Canada actually isn't something that we do right now. We have in the past, and we are looking to potentially move back there in the future. And so we built that out just in case.
John Calhoun:But we also have consumers who go over the border and Mhmm. Buy our product and then go back home. And so we wanted to make sure we knew, you know, where they were from and whatnot. So it's just first asking the consumer basic contact information. What's your prefix?
John Calhoun:You know, are you a mister or missus Mhmm. Or whatnot. You know, to ask their first name, last name. And then after it gets all that demographic info or or contact information, it's just breaking it down to figure out, is there a specific product that they're they're they have a question about or maybe a concern with or maybe they had complaint. It gives them the ability to select the brand and then the actual specific product.
John Calhoun:And that will walk them through making sure that they can pass along the information from the carton that allows us to identify, the specific run of the product, the specific manufacturing facility that it was made at, all the way down to the the wrapper of the time, all all that information. And so we're able to gather that info. We verify that at the end, and then the bot banks them for for sharing their information and lets them know that it's gonna be passed on to an agent, and then they will be in touch with them within x period of time. And so then, like the old static form used to do, it'll be routed to Amplify where it sits in a queue and is worked first in, first out by the representatives. And so when they select that case, it auto populates that information like it did before.
John Calhoun:We added a few fields because we're able to customize it more with this by our active forms. So we're able to get a little bit more information now than we did before, and is is served to be helpful for the agents to make sure we're getting the information we needed. One of the benefits with this form that we didn't have with the interactive was we're able to mix we were able to make some fields required before, but we were able to carry that over. But we're also, we had we have certain lengths. Like, for example, the UPC code is a certain length.
John Calhoun:And so we require that full length for them to be able to submit because if someone submits a partial UPC, it's not really helpful. And, obviously, we really want to get their feedback and be able to pass that feedback along to the appropriate department so we can review it, look for trends, make changes, whatever that may be.
Denise Venneri:Yep. I I think that's the sweet spot of the of the traditional contact center, no matter how you're you're serving it up to the consumer, is that patience and encouragement to get that batch code information. That makes all the difference in a lot of fronts. So kudos on that one.
John Calhoun:Yeah. And we actually we actually have issues on the static form before. We've just some limitations with what we were doing. And oftentimes, a consumer will have great input, but because they couldn't give us the the the best buy information, it was it was hard for us to we could trend that a product and brand level, but we couldn't trend the BS scale on a line level. And so Yeah.
John Calhoun:If that product is made of multiple lines and potentially multiple manufacturing facilities, how are we supposed to isolate their concern and trend it properly? And so this has really allowed us to get better information from consumers. Maybe it's the way we ask it. Maybe it's for a required field. Whatever it is, it's working, and so we're thankful for that for sure.
Denise Venneri:I wanna get back on that front end again for the consumer. You were talking about the tree and the different inputs. And I just wanna clarify, are they are they being served up to the consumer, like, one at a time?
John Calhoun:They are.
Denise Venneri:In other words?
John Calhoun:It's really it's almost like if you were chatting with somebody online. It's a conversational form. I think that's the whole point of the of Amplify's interactive form, focused on interactive. Right? You want that experience to be like it's almost like a conversation.
John Calhoun:Right? Hey. What's your name? Hey. What's your what's your first name?
John Calhoun:What's your last name? And so on and so forth. And so, it I'll be honest with you, though. It it did it is taking some consumers who are used to our static form a little bit to get adjusted to this because you're going from seeing a web page where everything is right in front of you that they're asking to one that's a conversation. So you don't see what's gonna be asked until they ask it.
John Calhoun:And so if there's a potential that you may not have a carton with you, maybe someone's, you know, pausing, going to the kitchen, grabbing the carton, and whatnot, like, whereas the static form, they're really doing the same thing, but it's all right there in front of them. So a lot of people probably were looking that form over before they even started it. And, yeah, it's just it's just with change, people have to learn and adapt, and it's it some some people have it's taken a little bit, and some people jump right on board. And so
Denise Venneri:Yeah. Were were you surprised by that outcome that you
John Calhoun:noticed when you were surprised? It's it's hard, right, when you're you know, I was one of I was I wanted to be extremely involved in this process with it being new, and I had some of my team involved. And so I tested a lot of this bot. And, unfortunately, when you test something to that level, your your blinders are so far covering your eyes that you forget the consumer experience to some degree. And so the the the part that I enjoyed or I enjoyed, I was appreciative of is we had various departments that these forms route to besides my teams.
John Calhoun:And so I was able to get their feedback. And so some of their feedback was really different than my feedback because I probably went through the bot form hundreds of times. And so it became easy to me. But, you know, hindsight is twenty twenty at the essay. Right, Denise?
John Calhoun:And so I think if I were to do this over again or, like, hop in the DeLorean and go back to the future, I would I would probably give a different intro to to let this know. Hey. This is a new page, but here are some things that you're gonna see. And so I can't go back and do that from the beginning. I have had some talks with our corporate communications team, and we are actually gonna make an update to the bot interactive form.
John Calhoun:And what it's gonna do is where people were used to those, excuse me, six different pages before, they will now see those options at the top of the at the top of the chat so they know that it's the right place. Because the options that I shared with you earlier don't show up until you've done the privacy policy and you verify your your age. And so this will show them before that even happens, hopefully, making them feel like, hey. Yes. I am in the correct spot.
Denise Venneri:Yeah. What I'm hearing is a passion for continuous improvement. So Absolutely. That's all good. That's all good.
Denise Venneri:Hey. Did we cover all your benefits of, this or all of the things you expected to achieve? Did we cover them all?
John Calhoun:So, one thing I would say that I didn't mention is, you know, when I got in this role a few years ago, there were there were some things that I felt like needed to be on the road map for the future of our team. One of those was chat. Right? I wanna have a chat tool where consumers can literally chat with an agent. Right?
John Calhoun:But I knew there were some steps that I wanted to take prior to that so we would be ready. Well, like I said earlier, this came out of nowhere. But, you know, you you adapt and you you you solve problems and that's just a part of everyday life. But I I I think this is gonna be a really good step from us going from a static form to this bot interactive form with the next step being chat, which, I think will bring consumers along from this experience that they've had for, you know, a normal web page form experience, to this chat. And I'm looking forward to seeing how that progresses.
John Calhoun:So that that to me is a benefit. Yeah. Other people may not see it that way, but I I definitely see it that way. So
Denise Venneri:So am I hearing, I think you were what you're touching on is the road map, which is one of my questions here. So is your road map, were you just talking about swinging all the way to the chat channel as, you know, going full bot on a chat channel, or are there gonna be some steps you know, are you gonna do live chat first and then move into what people call chat?
John Calhoun:Sure. So Amplify, if I'm if I understand what me and the representative I I work with on Amplify, I think they call it CSM. But what she's told me is that the CSM yeah. They call it a CSM. Yeah.
John Calhoun:And what I believe the way that our chat works is it comes with the bot. It's, one in the same. And so one of the components that we knew was important before that happened is that we had a knowledge base built, which was on the road map. And so we're actually we're we're launching that actually tomorrow. And it's called it's called LivePro.
John Calhoun:It's not part of Amplify. We chose to do that outside of Amplify, but we're hoping in the future to leverage that. I actually just had a call with the CEO of LivePro. He wanted to check-in and thank me for my business and and meet me. And so we were talking about Amplify and our future road map, and so it was a great conversation.
John Calhoun:And and so far, even though we haven't launched yet, I've been heavily involved with experience unit and my team building it, and we've been extremely happy. I'm looking forward to seeing the impact the positive impact on the team and ultimately of the consumer. So yeah.
Denise Venneri:What what timeliness on our part. And it's funny. I literally I maybe you saw it earlier today. I reached out to my community to see if anybody on the brand side has a knowledge based story they may wanna share.
John Calhoun:Really? I didn't see that you I
Denise Venneri:just posted not too soon before we connected. And, yeah, basically, what what I'm what I'm doing is a series because you're you're spot on. Like, the old dusty knowledge base, you know, is really, like, step one of so many cool things, some of them with AI, some you know, in chat and all that good stuff. You have to have that solid step. So, I'll love to talk about that.
Denise Venneri:I'll I'll say whether you might wanna come back and talk about your, knowledge
Denise Venneri:and stand up.
Denise Venneri:Won't
Denise Venneri:put you on the spot here. I do have one more question, and then then we're gonna wrap. Is the bot interactive web form used by just your team, did you say, or just other parts of the org use this as as well?
John Calhoun:Yes. So it's used by multiple teams. Now our team does the administration of the entire interactive form, but there are multiple departments throughout the company that get the output of this bot interactive form. So yeah. So there's I mean, I I don't know how many departments, but it's it's definitely a handful.
John Calhoun:It covers some of our corporate location, and some goes out to different plants. And so, yeah, it's it's used by various. And we like I said, we went from all these different web forms to this one by interactive form and and one place to go, one place to gather information. But at the end, it disperses to the right place, which is a part of the whole administration and setup process. But it's been going good so far.
John Calhoun:We we still remain committed to improving the experience for the consumer. We've learned some things. We've talked to consumers. We've gotten some feedback. And so we have made some minor changes so far with a couple more coming in the future.
Denise Venneri:Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, sadly, as I mentioned, we are at the end of the podcast, John, and I just wanted to say thanks so much for taking time out of your day to talk and sharing sharing your story, or should I say stories. Appreciate that.
John Calhoun:Yeah. Yeah. Well, Denise, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to getting to know you over this process, and I hope this conversation is helpful to somebody. And, hopefully, I'll ski up the next SOCAP here in October.
Doug Venneri:You have been listening to the My Curious Colleague podcast with Denise Venneri. Thank you for your time.
