What do you think companies can do to better utilise education in their customer contacts?

I think it comes back to defining what it is you as a company are trying to educate on, and that comes back to your values:

What is the thing that you are trying to do?

What do you want to empower your customers to be able to do or understand?

If you could give your customers one message, what is that?  

You stick to that message as an organisation, not just in communication with customers - as a whole company you should be aligned on this value.

When I then go on to speak with customers, that mindset is already at the forefront, and it just allows the conversation to flow in a way that has that education at heart.

Our mission and values are obviously around trying to save food from going in the bin, so whether a customer is going to be a long term supporter of ours or a one and done, it's not for them, that's fine. Because when we have that interaction and when we leave that interaction, we know that we have always tried to instil those values in that conversation.

So, once you've defined those values, the rest comes along.

How do you use your app to deliver educational messages to customers?

We try to make the app a sort of one stop shop of information so the customers can get as much information as possible first in the app without needing to contact us.

We created prompts within the account details page, which are very simple, they explain your profile, your payment methods, et cetera. There's also a help centre, which is broken down into really straightforward categories for common queries. Within those tabs, there's a lot of information.

The reality is most people, when they have an issue, they will jump straight to asking for help rather than going and trying to troubleshoot or solve it themselves, I'm sure anyone who works in a sort of technology related field in customer service would agree. And there is usually a simple, straightforward answer right there in the app, so it comes back to trying to get customers to self help.

When customers do go through the process of making a complaint, based on the selected nature of their complaint, there will be little popups to try and give them education that might resolve their complaint immediately without having to proceed further.

One example that I've mentioned that comes up all the time is explaining about BBE (Best Before End) dates. If they raise a issue that looks like it relates to that topic, the pop up will say something like "if your issue relates to best before end dates, your food is actually generally quite safe to eat, BBE is only an indicator of optimal quality and not safety.".

Since implementing this we've noticed that there are certainly less people writing in about BBE dates, so I'm making recommendations to the tech team all the time about little things that we can do like this to try and help.

How do you encourage your education first approach in your customer interactions and in your customer journey?

Education first really comes down to choosing your audience. You really do have to pick your battles when you are trying to educate certain users around certain concepts, so it's never easy.

You do have to really tread that fine line between offering support in solving query, and also that message that you are trying to push. So it really comes down to a careful selection of language that's direct, it's clear, and it's accessible as well.

We build that as little notes into like fighting food waste at the beginning at our introduction, you know, it's all about "Thank you for fighting food waste with us", rather than thank you for purchasing our product. At the end when we sign off, it's very much about "We hope you continue to fight food waste".

We're not saying directly "Hey, purchase a bag" or "Reengage with our platform", but by having those values in the background and building that in where we can, it's quite subtle, but it helps hopefully change the nature of the conversation and helps the customer remember what this is all about.

Depending on the nature of the complaint, my team will use a range of text expander sort of snippets that we introduce into the writing to quickly slip in little bits of education where appropriate.

Setting it up in the conversation as well might look something like "Hey, you should come to expect that when you rescue food from Too Good To Go that it is food waste, it's past its best, but should always be safe to eat - by the way, here's a tip." and then we insert the education that way.

You have to be quite delicate, and you judge from reading the customer's query which battles are generally worth fighting and which ones are not and we always try to take a really, really friendly, kind, community tone when we do communicate.

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