In June 2012, Cheshire family brewers Robinsons launched a mystery customer programme aimed at improving retail standards in their pubs and using customers as ‘agents’. Now, the programme – called Perfect Pubs – is set to be rolled out further following a flying start.
Robinsons has a pub estate of 340 in the North West, and has found that their innovative approach has brought many benefits. Director of Marketing David Bremner explains:
“We looked at the market and how others do things and saw there was a way to do things differently. We have had an estate segmented into 7 trading types for a few years now, and we wanted to make sure we were measuring the things most important to each. So using our partner ‘bemyeyes’ we worked from a bank of 150 questions to pick the 50 most appropriate to each segment and then weighted them accordingly. These are, in turn, split into 10 areas of the pub visit such as Roadside Appeal, Initial Impressions, Bar Service, Toilets, and External Areas.”
Using real customers for real feedback
The family brewer then decided they would use real customers to do the measuring for them:
“The take up has been fantastic. Using POS in pubs and our web, site we have quickly grown to 650 agents, each of whom tells us how far they will travel, what sort of pubs they like, and how often they’d like to help us out. What we get at the end is real feedback from target customers with the website weighting the positive and negative feedback so that we can address areas of excellence or concern with our licensees.”
Tools for BDMs
Their BDMs have found this gives them the tools to address things sometimes missed, and in the worst cases action can be taken quickly for low scores.
The agents are allocated a mission based upon their profile and fill in the responses on-line. “We have new customers going into our pubs from this and some who take friends and family and spend far more than the £15 the agent receives- so it has ended up being a promotion in some cases. CAMRA members have been a great help, we have our pensioners on board, and we now also have staff from the brewery going out and seeing the sharp end of our business – it’s been a great success.”
From evaluation…to training
The brewery hopes to complete 3 missions per year for each pub so they can track how individual pubs compare over time, and where they sit in relation to their peers within a segment. The next phase is to provide the tools to improve things using the brewery’s new £3m training centre.
“Some licensees aren’t natural trainers,” David continued “so working with drinks suppliers is the next phase to develop short, sharp services and standards courses which can be delivered in the training centre or in the pub. The Perfect Pubs report gives us a great agenda tailored to the pub! Delivering great service and retail standards is essential to driving up sales and competing with the best managed, tenanted or free houses in any given area- it’s an area we all have to focus on in tough times. But when you combine a motivated entrepreneur with great results we all see growth.”
Robinsons have used this tool to help new licensees, keep an eye on pub investments and future plans may include inclusion in awards programmes. Over 25% of Robinsons’ pubs have scored over 90%+ which is outstanding, and they have also had five scores of 100% so far – Perfect Pubs!