The innovative drinks-maker owes its life to
email, but the electronic option is just part of its communications
mix, says co-founder Richard Reed.
‘Email played a key part in the start of the innocent
business. Adam Balon, Jonathan Wright and I decided that we wanted
to quit our jobs and set up a smoothie business – our only problem
was getting the financial backing that we needed.
When the tenth bank manager turned us away, we really began to
think that our new business wasn’t going to happen. We went home
and sent an email to all our friends with the question ‘Do you know
anyone rich?’ on the subject line.
One of our friends wrote back to us to say that he’d recently
been working with an American venture capitalist and suggested that
we drop him a line. Luckily this guy, Maurice Pinto, really bought
into the idea and here we are today.
From the word go, we have focused on making delicious drinks
that taste good and do you good, and we have always asked our
drinkers for feedback. They are our number one priority and we
wouldn’t be here without them. Now we do that in a few different
ways. Most of our consumers choose to contact us by email as it’s
fast, hassle-free and you can do it at work easily.
Each week we send an email newsletter to the 50,000 members of
our innocent family, telling them what we’ve been up to, what new
drinks we’re launching and generally engaging with them.
At the end of last year we decided to make this communication
even more frequent and started writing a daily blog. We have an
open and honest tone that hopefully makes them feel part of what
we’re doing.
We crave their input – it’s a no-brainer: they buy our drinks, they
make the business possible, so what they think is the most
important thing in our world. We like hearing from them. When we
post stuff, we usually get a good response from people. There are
folks out there who care about the way we run our business and who
want us to make it even better.
But we will always encourage people to call us as well. This
isn’t just for people who don’t have access to email, but because
it’s good to have a real conversation. Sometimes email just
doesn’t cut it if you want to speak to someone straight away (for
whatever reason). The ‘banana phone’ (the main customer service
number) rings round the whole office, so a customer that calls in
could end up speaking to anyone in any team about pretty much
anything. And if a customer calls the banana phone outside of
office hours we’ll call them back the next morning.
From day one, we have made sure that the lines of communication
between ourselves and our drinkers are totally open – there’s even
a line on our labels inviting people to come by and visit us at
Fruit Towers, our head office. Our open-door policy means that
customers can drop in, have a nosey round, play some table football
and ask us any questions they might have. And they do.
At Fruit Towers, communication between colleagues happens at all
levels – on the phone, by email, but better still face to face. We
actively encourage people to go and talk to each other in person.
Keeping it natural and personal is really important to us. A
conversation at someone’s desk or over the phone is what it’s all
about – it’s an opportunity to share ideas and thoughts.’
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