How customer focus and dedication helped the team in China excell during COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis started just before the Chinese New Year holiday period. It soon became clear that this would have an impact on our business. ”We drew up an action plan to handle the crisis. How can we make sure we deliver essential nutrition with the restrictions?

I’m very proud of how our team adjusted to a ‘new normal’ way of working these last few months.

It even resulted in over-delivering on our results for infant nutrition!”, Grace Chen, Managing Director of FrieslandCampina China, shares with us.

Note: within FrieslandCampina we are considering HongKong and China as separate markets. This article is written about the market in China.

A well-structured approach

“In the beginning, the uncertain situation made everyone nervous. However, our core team, consisting of the management team, stayed calm and drew up a clear strategy and action plan. This was shared with the teams and they were given clear responsibilities. HR checks employees, Supply Chain keeps the delivery of our products going, Procurement sources safety materials, etc. Our approach was very well-structured and this helped us keep the business going.”

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Customer focus

“Our marketing and sales team immediately focused on new consumer insights. All of a sudden, consumers were asked to stay home, which meant a big change in consumer behaviour, media preference and relevant touch points. Based on these insights the team changed the promotion scheme, focusing more strongly on digitisation and adjusting content accordingly. This also applied to our team of consumer educators, who inform parents about infant nutrition. One week later, they had learned how to produce good live video streaming with the right content in order to reach parents at home. Our quick adaption to keep serving our consumers helped us make our Friso market share grow during the crisis.”

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Dedication

“I am so inspired by our employees and promotors. They showed a true owners’ mindset and were very dedicated to delivering nutrition to consumers. Some promotors even made deliveries by bike or by foot to get nutrition to consumers. Another example is that our marketing team received a message from a mother in Wuhan who had ran out of infant nutrition and couldn’t get the product because of the restrictions. The team found a way to deliver the product to this mother and so made her a very happy customer. The team didn’t do this to achieve targets, they were really committed to delivering our purpose and making sure that customers have nutrition for their children.”

Safety

“The safety of our employees and business partners comes first. We make sure they have the appropriate protection, such as face masks, and a safe working environment. I’m happy to say that all of our employees stayed healthy.”