Customer Service Excellence
Leading through service, reliability and creating a customer-centric culture.
Highlights
- Greif delivers legendary customer-centric service through a cross-functional and solutions-based approach delivered by a global network of operations and customer centric resources.
- In 2023, our Net Promoter Score (NPS) was 68, a 5 percent improvement from last year’s score, highlighting consistent progress in enhancing customer satisfaction and recommendation likelihood. 4,833 customers across the world provided feedback on our performance – 15 percent more than our 2022 NPS survey.
Why Customer Service Excellence Matters
At Greif, we have high standards regarding our customer service strategy, as our customers are one of our most valued stakeholder groups. For over 145 years, we have consistently partnered with customers to provide exceptional packaging services and solutions. Our ability to understand our customers’ priorities, needs and impacts along the value chain is fundamental to reaching our enhanced standards of providing legendary customer service, supporting our vision to be the best-performing customer service company in the world.
Governance
The Global Marketing team oversees our annual customer NPS survey. We monitor complaints, delivery times and customer response times for each plant through our Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI). Managers review the CSI during monthly performance evaluations, and our annual performance reviews incorporate an analysis of NPS. The feedback gathered from our NPS survey serves as an opportunity to address customer concerns and rectify any issues that might arise. Following each NPS survey, we actively engage with the respondents, particularly focusing on dissatisfied customers who rate Greif poorly to better understand their concerns and develop customer-specific improvement strategies. We use the feedback from these engagements, along with proactive engagement, to improve our customer communication and become a more effective partner.
We actively employ various tools to streamline our response to customer needs and enhance their overall experience. In 2023, we continued to utilize our global system to generate customer offers, resulting in improved pricing consistency and faster response times. Utilization of a cloud-based sales enablement platform continued to aid our sales and marketing teams in creating more uniform messaging and facilitating efficient information sharing.
In February 2023, we implemented a new process for customer complaints and claims submissions. The changes captured additional data that we were previously not able to capture in our Quality System (QS) Complaint system. Moving forward, we will be able to better categorize submitted complaints and claims. This allows us to connect the correct teams to develop corrective actions as well as justification for system or process changes.
This year, we also introduced an online Customer Digital Platform (CDP) pilot in the U.S. to further streamline and improve our customer communication approach and processes by aligning operations, simplifying online ordering, enabling order tracking and providing product data. The platform is live at several plants, and customer response has been positive. We plan to expand this platform to other sites in the U.S in 2024. Please see the Business Continuity, Automation & Digitization section for more information on the CDP.
At Greif, we prioritize customer service excellence (CSE) and provide comprehensive training to all our professional colleagues. We deliver CSE training in 19 languages through a blend of facilitated sessions and online modules, arming our colleagues with the tools necessary to offer exemplary service to both internal and external customers. New hires undergo our nine-module Greif University CSE program, ensuring a solid foundation in customer service principles. As colleagues progress through the CSE program, they receive peer feedback, reinforcing their learning and contributing to the establishment of our strong customer service culture.
In addition to our customer service-focused training, Greif continues to educate our customer service teams on our product lines—and even expanded the scope of this type of training in 2023. With improved product knowledge, colleagues can better address client concerns and become an educational resource on our product lines. For example, in 2023, we improved communication with customers around the availability of in-demand waste management services through our Recovered Fiber Group as well as other product recycling services.
Starting in 2021, we conducted comprehensive market research to identify avenues for business growth and to better serve our customers. This research has allowed us to pinpoint rapidly expanding industries and engage with customers to understand evolving packaging needs. This has informed how we adapt our products and sales strategies to align with prevailing market trends. We also regularly convene Greif’s subject matter experts from across the globe to discuss challenges, solutions and opportunities and share general industry knowledge with our colleagues to encourage growth.
Furthermore, we equip our colleagues to support our customers’ sustainability objectives. The Greif Green Tool aids customers in making informed decisions when selecting industrial packaging options to align with their sustainability goals. Notably, over the past year, requests for the Greif Green Tool have continued to surge, indicating a growing interest in sustainable solutions. In addition, many of our key customer accounts now include sustainability-related clauses in our working contracts that require Greif to provide sustainability disclosures related to key topics such as carbon emissions reductions. As a result, Greif has an opportunity to educate customers on how our products can help them achieve their sustainability goals.
Greif Latin America Recognized for Customer Service Excellence
In 2023, Greif's Latin America (LATAM) team proudly received recognition from our customers Bayer and Akzo Nobel. Greif was recognized for our performance as a strong supply chain partner. Bayer honored Greif with an Innovation Award for presenting an anti-counterfeiting concept at Bayer’s LATAM innovation event in October 2023. Additionally, Greif's outstanding performance in supplier collaboration earned us a top 5 ranking among all suppliers in Akzo Nobel's Supplier Collaboration Awards. Greif's SKU reduction initiative significantly contributed to this recognition, driving cost savings and optimizing plant operations. These awards underscore Greif's commitment to innovation, partnership excellence and delivering value to our partners.
Goals, Progress & Performance
Our cumulative CSI calculation allows Greif to assess our ability to deliver excellent customer service. To calculate this metric, we utilize the following data: total number of customer complaints, number of complaints open longer than 30 days, number of customer credits, number of late deliveries and number of total deliveries.
At the end of 2023, our CSI score was 94.1, an increase compared to our 2022 ending score of 93.2. Our score demonstrates our success in achieving a high rate of customer satisfaction and places us in a position to soon accomplish our long-term objective for each business segment to achieve a CSI score of 95 or greater.
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION INDEX
NET PROMOTER SCORE¹
[1] In 2020 Greif transitioned to conducting our NPS survey once annually.
CorrChoice Paper Coatings
CorrChoice GreenGuard provides customers a recyclable, repulpable and FDA compliant coated paper solution. A key customer was purchasing a triple wall corrugated container to maintain food quality. Greif worked with the customer to replace the plastic liner with our GreenGuard 200 paper coating. This change eliminated the need for the plastic liner – saving the customer time and labor costs – and made the shipping container 100 percent recyclable and repulpable.
PerforMAXXI
In LATAM, we introduced PerforMAXXI, a web solution used for tracking deliveries to customers and monitoring real-time performance. PerforMAXXI is a mobile app on the delivery driver’s phone that provides customers updates on where their package is in the delivery process. The app utilizes Waze or Google Maps to assist the driver and will be updated to include digital road toll payments in the second phase. The app also enables communication with the driver throughout the trip, accurate measurement of on time delivery, and electronic proof of delivery via photo of the invoice signed by the customer. The app significantly streamlines the communication and delivery process.
