Interview with Hannah Squirrell

Hannah joined Greggs as Customer Director in February 2017.  She is a member of the Greggs Operating Board and is responsible for placing the brand and the customer firmly at the heart of the business.

Hannah has over 20 years' experience in Customer and Marketing roles and over the course of her career has enjoyed contributing to brands including Tesco, Capital One, Avon Cosmetics, Bennetts, Haven Holidays, 3M and Thorntons.

Hannah is joining us as a speaker at the Trends in Food Marketing Industry Insights event on 22 February.

You've worked with some well-known brands during your career. What have been your favourite (campaigns to work on/companies to work with) and why?

Probably Bennetts and the Bike Social activity.  We built a social network just for bikers to bring the motorcycle community together and to be the first to break big industry news stories.  No-one expected that from an insurer. It was brilliant to work on something that not only step changed our sales and customer satisfaction, but that was great fun and highly informative along the way.  I also really enjoyed my agency days working on travel, chocolate and hotel brands.  As I have grown in my career, I have learnt that it is important (where possible) to work in an industry/brand that is aligned with your own likes and preferences.  I like chocolate, travel and steak bakes!  Perfect!

You joined Greggs almost one year ago. What have you learned about the brand? Has anything surprised you?

The scale of the business never fails to amaze me.  Having joined from Financial Services where customers purchase your products at a maximum of once a year, it is a real eye opener to start learning the desires and behaviours of the 6 million customers who step into Greggs shops every week!  I am also pleasantly surprised by the fabulous culture and teams here - it is easy for businesses to lose some of their cultural essence as they grow to a significant scale, but this isn't the case at Greggs.

Greggs has a very loyal customer base. What's the key to keeping them happy?

We make sure that we know what our customers want.  We are constantly analysing customer touchpoints and have an award-winning customer segmentation strategy which makes sure that everything we do for our customers is timely, relevant and valuable.  It if isn't we shouldn't be doing it.   We also have Greggs Rewards, our loyalty app which enables us to reward our customers immediately with a variety of our products, and also to surprise them on special occasions such as birthdays/seasonal opportunities.  The app also let's our customers rate our products and services within 30 minutes of their visit.  We can therefore pick up on any issues and fix them straight away to keep our customers happy. 

What are Greggs main priorities when it comes to marketing strategy?

Clearly our No 1 marketing priority is ensuring that we deliver the commercial objectives of the business and utilise our marketing strategy to maximise growth and customer satisfaction.  It is also vital that we continue to keep "punching above our weight" in terms of driving awareness and customer engagement.  We are a value brand, committed to providing our customers with great tasting, freshly prepared food at affordable prices, so we are not in the brand space of spending millions of pounds on advertising or high profile sponsorships.  Our recent Valentines PR activity attracted more coverage than a TV campaign would and was great fun for everyone involved.  I certainly didn't expect to be talking about candelabra and cellists in my first year working at Greggs! 

Greggs are incredibly active and have great chat with customers on Twitter. Why is this approach a good brand match for Greggs.

Our customers know what they're going to get from us whether they visit us in shops or speak to us on social media. We're a down to earth brand and we really enjoy talking to our customers in any situation. We try to keep it real on social media and share content that's true to Greggs. Our customers appreciate this, which results in the fun conversations we can have with them every day.

What kind of content/platforms gets the best reaction for Greggs?

The best performing content for us are our reactive posts. We look out for conversations that we can naturally get involved with, not bandwagons to jump on. These tend to be people making comments about our food or us as a brand. The majority of these are found on Twitter and therefore have the most success on their original channel however content like quizzes tend to work better on Facebook. We're starting to look more closely at our Instagram account so it'll be good to see how our content and personality translates in a new environment. 

What other food brands are you impressed with at the moment?

I would say Leon and Pret.  The simplicity of their customer propositions and tone of voice is to be admired.  They are quick to adapt, willing to take risks and have a strong focus on the customer.  In this ever increasingly competitive marketplace all food brands have to make sure that we stand for something or risk brand erosion/decline.  It's good that we all keep each other on our toes!

Hannah on Twitter & Linkedin