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At Burda we have great teams working together, developing new ideas and driving projects forward. In our “Team of the Month” series, we profile teams from across the Burda Group. Today, Rachel Hartley, one of the founders of Nutracheck, introduces the Nutracheck Customer Care team based in Nottingham and gives an insight into the pivotal role of the team at the heart and soul of the UK´s leading app and website-based weight management service.
The Nutracheck Customer Care team is headed up by Samantha Shaw who has been with Nutracheck for eight years. We have five Customer Care Advisors and two in-house nutritionists for expert guidance. The team has a mix of qualifications in Sports Science, Nutrition and Psychology, which equips them well in supporting the broad range of queries we receive from Nutracheck members. Our core role and priority are to support our members via email, telephone, and live chat. In addition, each team member has additional responsibilities to help with the day-to-day running of the business.
The first thing that springs to mind is the impact of Covid on our business. When we went into lockdown, people were initially distracted and not necessarily thinking about their diet. It was a challenge to navigate ourselves through this period, to work out how best to support our members, what to say and how to say it. Then as everyone adapted to life in lockdown, we saw a massive spike in new members, as people wanted to keep healthy. As time progressed, more people were keen to lose lockdown weight gain. Early 2021 we hit our record number of members and the volume of customer care emails hit a record high. And the intensity continued! Maintaining our high service levels during this sustained period of intense workload was a huge success for the team.
One word to describe the team is dedicated. We truly care. Our mission statement is to go the extra mile. We want to differentiate our business through our customer service. We ensure our responses are personal and we always aim to be creative with our solutions. We also provide support seven days a week, including bank holidays (even Christmas Day!).
Our interaction has the power to influence how the customer views our brand – it is an emotional connection that influences how someone feels about us. There’s a saying – people may not remember what you said, but they remember how you made them feel. It´s about winning hearts and minds. This leads to long-term retention payback and word-of-mouth referrals.
Deliver excellent quality and do it consistently. Our goal was to make Nutracheck the best in class for calorie and nutrient tracking. We have done this by keeping the customer front and centre. Seeking feedback from customers, listening and acting on it.
We strive to keep giving customers what they want and we focus on making food tracking faster, easier, and more engaging than our competitors. When someone is using an app multiple times a day, it is important to make the user interface experience intuitive.
Not all apps have a support team. Because of the nature of our service, customer care is not just about resolving payments or membership queries. We receive a broad range of queries, from ‘how do I do something’ to technical issues and nutrition questions. People may need guidance on what they are eating, or extra encouragement to keep them going on their weight loss journey. Supporting our app with a dedicated Customer Care team is something we believe has helped contribute to our success.
We work extremely closely together. We find that collaboration is key when dealing with written communication, which accounts for 95% of our customer interactions. The written word can be very easily misinterpreted – sending an unhelpful response can cause frustration at best, offence at worst. Getting a second opinion on a customer email or a drafted response is invaluable in ensuring we don’t miss the mark in our reply.
We support each other and share great feedback from members – it really helps to maintain our positivity.
And we keep in mind that the Customer Care Team is the ‘oil’ in the company engine that keeps things running smoothly – specifically helping to influence app store reviews and word-of-mouth referrals.
Our role means we interact with customers from all walks of life and backgrounds. We embrace the opportunity to speak directly to our members – it is our duty, not a chore.
Entrepreneurship encourages creativity. We are constantly reviewing the way we work to try and improve our efficiency and the member experience. Having the freedom to take the initiative to do what we believe is best for our customers is how we have achieved such an excellent happiness score (average 95/100).
To deliver consistently as our membership base continues to grow plus embrace AI. It is here to stay and is set to change the way many of us work. But we don’t see it as a threat. As impressive as the technology is, it doesn’t have a heart and compassion! Marketing is about dealing with human beings and ensuring that these authentic emotions come through in all our customer interactions will be our competitive advantage.
Rachel Hartley: Co-founder and Marketing & Communications Director
Daisy Ford: Customer Care plus Brand Ambassador Lead
Harriet Nichols & Patrycja Weselak: Customer Care plus Forum Moderators
Samantha Shaw: Customer Care Team Manager plus Social Media Channels Manager (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter)
Emma White: Customer Care plus Senior Nutritionist and fitness expert
Sidney Lale: Customer Care plus monitors in-app feedback
Nutracheck is the UK's leading nutrition platform, helping its 400,000 premium subscribers improve their wellbeing through online weight management services and nutritional information. Nutracheck is one of the largest digital subscription apps in the UK, with more UK digital members than WW (Weight Watchers). Nutracheck became part of Immediate Media Co, Burda's UK media company, in November 2022.
