My notes on the talk at the DMWF conference By Claudia Ciciliano, Director, Customer Engagement

  • We looked at our competitors in category but also out of category, we looked at Babycenter and others
  • Then plotted the services along a 2 x 2 looking at support services and transactional services
  • They found an opportunity / differentiator to bring one to one experience to the table
  • Developed the Dotti Service which is a text-based nutrition / sleep service, not a bot, manned by a team of 40 specialists
  • Dotti is available for no fee and you don’t have to use Gerber formula to use the service
  • The users volunteer their data in order to use the service
  • Dotti knows the full history of the user when she texts in, so Dotti remembers her child’s name and asks how it’s going on starting solids
  • Mastered the redirect, a user asked about getting a tattoo and Dotti told her to check with her ob but how is the feeding going?
  • Can set up a 30 minute lactation consultant appointment
  • They found that My Gerber members spend 13% more by partnering with Nielsen
  • Highly engaged members spend 84% more than the average user
  • That helps to build the business case with finance partners and the CFO, they believe in the program
  • Created a service with empathy, user said “My pediatrician wasn’t helpful” and Dotti replied with ugh language and mirrored the user then said come back to us anytime
  • They helped a competitive formula user and also a 3 am text that said, “U up?” where the mother followed up on a feeding issue
  • The call center is manned with 40 feeding specialists, they have automated tools for them on the backend, automated the conversation for simple questions
  • The agent can accept the answer but it doesn’t override the human interaction
  • They considered creating a content hub, but realize that Babycenter was doing such a great job that it would be better to partner with them instead of creating their own
  • Progressively profile from users coming in from banners or their website
  • Launched in beta for a year, found that Dotti users at 5 times more engaged than regular users
  • 98% customer satisfaction
  • Building an Alexa skill by the end of the year, and FB messenger as well as web chat
  • Service is Marketing