What is HelloFresh?
HelloFresh is the world's leading meal kit provider with the mission to revolutionise the way consumers eat by making it more convenient and exciting to cook meals from scratch, at home. The company delivers everything that is needed to create wholesomely home-cooked meals to everyday households, without the hassle of planning, preparing and grocery shopping. HelloFresh provides consumers with thousands of exclusively chef curated recipes and the ingredients needed in the execution of these recipes and deliver them straight to the consumer's front doors, whenever it is most convenient for the consumer.
2-3 stars review
Across all three social media platforms, 20% had positive sentiment. Significant insights: consumers care the most about the quality, the convenience and how reliable the service is. however, HelloFresh failed to meet these factors.
Research Process
Online Ethnography Results
1-2 star reviews by most users on Facebook. Significant insight: Some users highly praise HelloFresh on it's concept and wide range of recipes. However, there were numerous emphasis placed on the reliability of the service. For example, the unreliable delivery of the HelloFresh boxes on time and the quality and lack of ingredients. Although the consumers loved the idea of the product, they turned to HelloFresh initially for the "convenience" as advertised but HelloFresh failed to delivery this "convenience".
Demographics
80% of the comments made on the HelloFresh facebook discussion page are female and 20% are made by males. With further observation in the ethnography process also shows that majority of the female consumers are full-time working mothers with children, newly wed couples, and recently moved out living away from their parents, around the age of 28-40. Hence, the "convenience" and "quality" of the service offered by HelloFresh is a highly important aspect.
Unreliable delivery of HelloFresh boxes and failed to notify customers of delivery
Need to uncover whether this is the carrier's fault. If yes, may have to consider a change in carriers. Also need to implement a better tracking notification system to allow for consumers to feel more at ease and not be uncertain about whether the delivery will arrive that week or not. This way they can plan ahead for dinner, lunch etc.
Poor customer support
Maybe due to a lack of training in the company's human resource. Employees may not have been fully trained on how to respond in such situations or are unclear of how much compensation they are allowed to offer or of what is the right thing to say or even who as a superior to seek for help.
Broken product packaging
Low quality or inefficient use of packaging of HelloFresh produce causing ingredients to go bad or allowing dust and rain to enter. Non-weather proof packaging is an issue as HelloFresh produce is delivered to front doors of homes and are left unattended. The damage to ingredients can prevent customers from cooking their meals. Thus, defeating the service's whole purpose.
4 star reviews and mostly positive comments made by consumers on Instagram. The HelloFresh on Instagram community are mainly positive about the service. They are happy with the range of recipes, the healthiness of the recipes, the aspect of getting to try new things and express their excitement in cooking and eating these home-cooked meals. However, whilst some were happy with the service, some expressed complaints about the quality of and the lack of ingredients.
Demographics
Majority of the comments on HelloFresh's instagram account are made by female consumers. Going further into understanding the demographics of the consumers on instagram, there were an outstanding trend of fitness and health conscious related posts shared by HelloFresh's instagram audience. This shows that these consumers turned to HelloFresh for the purpose of healthier living/eating and more convenient meal planning. Another observation was that the instagram HelloFresh demographic were individuals in around the age of 25 to 30. This younger audience in comparison to the Facebook audience could be due to the fact that instagram is a social media platform that is used by a more younger audience . Hence, the freshness and the tastiness of the ingredients and recipes are important to meet consumer satisfaction.
A personalised experience
HelloFresh's service promises the consumers with the ability to customise their menus and a wide range of chef curated recipes. In addition to this, HelloFresh from time to time includes surprise treats into the the HelloFresh box. Examples of treats are dark chocolate and sweet potato chips, as well as other healthy and delicious snacks. Consumers gave positive feedback to this as they are able to try healthy snack alternatives.
Environmentally friendly product
In the current times, individuals have become more environmentally conscious due to the current climate issue made aware in the media. HelloFresh making their products more environmentally friendly by utilising re-useable and recyclable packaging, have resonated well with the consumers and had evidence of positive feedback.
Rotten and missing ingredients
Consumers are receiving HelloFresh boxes with missing and/or rotten ingredients. This may be due to the lack of quality control in the back end of the service. The poor quality and missing ingredients causes a huge inconvenience to consumers as it affects their ability to eat dinner that night or plan ahead for the week and meal prep.
1-2 star comments made by consumers on product review. Customer insights includes: developing and establishing a clearer refund and compensation strategy or policy. Customers had also commented on the lack of customer support and the need for an improvement. A lot of the reviews have been made from HelloFresh consumers who have decided to no longer continue with the service.
Demographics
80% of the comments on Product Review were made by female consumers of HelloFresh, whilst 20% of comments were made by male HelloFresh consumers. The demographic of the consumers on Product Review are mainly individuals of the ages 37-45 and who are full-time working individuals with and without children.
Poor quality control of ingredients
Poor quality control of ingredients causing consumers to go out of their way to purchase replacement ingredients in order to prepare their meals for the day etc. This causes consumers to spend an extra amount of money on top of paying for the HelloFresh service which was promised to save them money and provide them with all of the ingredients needed.
Poor compensation and issue resolution
Consumers have raised the issue of having poor compensation on low quality produce and missing ingredients. The resolution that have been offered was a highly low monetary compensation and a lack of acknowledgment in the inconvenience caused to the customer. Having issues such as missing main ingredients and broken packaging can actually throw off a customer's daily routine. Thus, not being able to compensate or please the customer of the issues leads to low customer satisfaction.
Poor customer service and help support
Poor customer service and poor customer support. This affects the customer's experience of an easy and convenient service. Having a poor customer support system can affect negatively on HelloFresh's customer loyalty, decreases the chances of retaining existing customers and attracting new customers due to bad reviews and generate negative word-of-mouth.
Delayed delivery
Consumers work full-time and have extremely busy schedules ,thus, HelloFresh offering for flexible delivery was highly attractive to consumers. However, it has not been well carried out throughout the service and has resulted in unreliable and inconsistent delivery of HelloFresh boxes. In some cases, the boxes have failed to be delivered.
Affinity Diagram
