Aldi's Five Winning Ways For Building Trust

When it comes to brands, which ones do you trust?

Believe it or not Aldi – yes, that quirky supermarket with the eccentric centre aisle – is consistently rated as one of Australia’s most trusted brands.

Why is Aldi so trusted? Its Communications Director, Adrian Christie, did his best to answer that question recently at gathering of public relations professionals in Sydney.  

Adrian pointed out that with 530 stores around Australia, chances are there’s an Aldi near you and that, he said, was a critical component of building trust. “Trust comes from proximity,” he told his audience. 

“More and more we’re looking to those around us, near us, and that’s where trust is earnt, that’s where the strongest bond is.”

Of course there’s more to trust than simply being the nearest supermarket so in addition to proximity, Adrian added these must-haves:

1. Core Values
2. Crisis Management
3. Employee Engagement
4. Customer Care

 CORE VALUES

Aldi has three core values: responsibility, simplicity and consistency. According to Adrian, they serve as the company’s moral compass, guiding everyone’s actions and reactions. Here’s some examples of how they work in practice.

RESPONSIBILITY

In Adrian’s words, responsibility means Aldi doing the right thing by its customers, staff and suppliers. It does this in numerous ways, including:

• Signing up to the Grocery Code of Conduct and the Voluntary Tax Transparency Code
• Deciding to display unit pricing two years before it became mandatory in Australia
• Stocking food with sustainably-sourced palm oil and no artificial colours or MSG
• Sponsoring the FFA’s youth football program across Australia

SIMPLICITY

Simplicity, he said, is the core value that customers notice most in store. Shopping at Aldi is a ‘no-frills’ affair. There are no whizz-bang self-serve checkouts, there’s no one rounding up trolleys, and items are placed on shelves in their original suppliers’ packaging, with no fancy displays. Keeping it simple, said Adrian, meant the company didn’t spend money on trolley collectors, expensive registers or more staff to unpack and display, and that helped to keep prices down.

CONSISTENCY

The best way to achieve consistency, said Adrian, was to have fair, sustainable supply chains. Aldi works with more than 1000 Australian suppliers and importantly, the contracts they sign include room to renegotiate in the face of severe hardships, such as droughts or fuel shortages.

Interestingly, up until March this year this policy did not include Australia’s dairy farmers as they’re not Aldi’s direct suppliers (the companies that process milk are). Aldi was pushing for government-led policy reform instead to help dairy farmers out. However, it’s now agreed to raise milk prices, a sign that it acknowledges the importance of sustainable supply chains, directly and indirectly.

CRISIS MANAGEMENT

If a company’s core values are in place, handling crises becomes far easier according to Adrian, and one of the best ways to build trust.

He cited KFC as one example. When its UK operations switched suppliers and couldn’t get chicken to its stores, it had to close down until the supply chain was fixed. KFC reacted by giving this honest apology:

Publicly owning a crisis builds trust, Adrian said.

“Consumers start to think: if this is the type of communications from this company going out externally, this must be the type of conversations they’re having internally. They’re very clear on the direction they’re going, and their moral compass is in line with mine, so I trust that brand more.”

So how does Aldi deal with crises? Back in mid-2017 the company was accused of selling spiral mixer taps that could contaminate water with dangerous lead levels, despite the company’s internal testing showing no problems.

CEO Tom Daunt decided the best course of action was to talk directly to customers via a video that reached around 300,000 people, with 590 shares and only three angry reactions.

It was evidence, Adrian said, of Aldi’s core value of responsibility driving its external communications in a crisis. More importantly though, it was also at the heart of internal discussions.

“I’ve been in a few meetings where we’ve had to withdraw products and when you withdraw a product from sale, there’s massive costs that go with that. Not once have I been in one of those meetings where we’ve talked about the cost to the business. We act with integrity in the moment, with what is the best thing we can do in the circumstances.”

LOOK INWARDS

It was at this point that Adrian sent a very clear message to the communication experts in the room: when dealing with a crisis, turn the focus inwards, rather than outwards.

"I don’t think we can do much, as communicators, if we’re looking outwards to build trust. If you’re looking outwards, that’s way too late. If you’re thinking about what you’re going to tell the media, what statement you’re going to publish, that’s wrong. It’s the conversations that happen in the Boardroom around the integrity of the organisation [and] what standards you want to upkeep – that’s what’s most important.

“The higher you go up in an organisation you find that – perhaps – the customer [or other affected stakeholders] is not present in those conversations… You often find that the Board isn’t close enough to the information that’s going on and it’s your responsibility to bring it. You need to make sure that if you are influencing the Boardroom to act with integrity.”

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

During his talk, Adrian rattled off the number of Aldi employees in Australia with ease: 12,646. 

Clearly, that’s huge opportunity for building more trust, and the company recently launched MyAldi, an internal app for staff. As well as rosters, employees will find the latest Aldi commercials with fun facts about how they were filmed, plus any statements to media about newsworthy issues, so that frontline staff can interact confidently when customers want to chat at the checkout.

CUSTOMER CARE

And finally, Adrian addressed the way his company deals with customer complaints, as those interactions can obviously make or break trust. He revealed that his communications team deals with around 2000 calls and emails a day, and their responses are led by first asking themselves whether they’re making the right decision by that customer.

He also advocated speaking to customers directly, rather than relying solely on social media comments. He makes time to call one customer every week – usually someone threatening to never shop at Aldi again – and he said he’s almost always managed to talk them off the ledge.

FIVE WINNING WAYS

So there you have it, the five paths to building trust according to Aldi: Proximity, Core Values, Crisis Management, Employee Engagement and Customer Care.

Now that’s something to think about next time you’re strolling down the centre aisle and seriously contemplating buying that air fryer you’ve never wanted.

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A former journalist with over 20 years’ experience, Christine Heard is a Media Skills Network? accredited media trainer, with clients spanning some of Australia's biggest corporate names and well-known brands, SMEs, not-for-profits and start-ups.

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