When you mess up, don't panic. Successful businesses call on their customers for support.
Blume, a plant-based and caffeine-free coffee alternative, recreates cafe flavors with superfoods. Cofounder and CEO Karen Danudjaja always has put customers relations first. When the power of the community was put to the test recently, Blume was able to successfully mobilize its fanbase to help battle and overcome a real-world corporate issue.
Although she started her career in commercial real estate, Danudjaja felt inspired to found Blume after going from coffee meeting to coffee meeting and experiencing the negative impact of too much sugar and caffeine. A few products Blume offers include rose London fog, salted caramel, and matcha coconut vegan powder drink mixes. Today, Blume can be found online and in over 2,000 stores including Whole Foods and Erewhon.
Until raising a first seed round of $2.5M CAD last year, Danudjaja bootstrapped Blume. This forced her to focus on building strong customer relationships. “Customer by customer, it was about generating meaningful connections that led with kindness,” said Danudjaja in an exclusive interview with me. “At Blume, we believe that word of mouth is the most powerful referral, and that our relationship with our consumers is just as important as a great product.”
Blume makes plant-based, superfood-rich coffee alternatives.
A recent incident proved the strength of Blume’s customer relations. For several weeks, Blume had found itself grappling with a series of conversion issues plaguing the e-commerce platform. Suddenly at the end of March, traffic and bounce rates were heading the wrong direction. Despite side audits, screen recordings, and investigations, Blume was unable to pinpoint the root cause of the declining conversion rates. With e-commerce representing a significant portion of sales, the urgency to resolve the issue was mounting.
And so, Blume reached out to its community for help.
What happened next shocked the team. The community rallied hard. The Instagram post quickly gained traction, going viral within hours. It was shared organically over 1,000 times. Meanwhile, more than 2,500 orders flooded in from new and existing customers. Over the next 36 hours, the brand experienced two record-breaking sales days, generating gross revenue of over $180,000 Canadian dollars.
In addition, hundreds of comments, screen recordings, and screenshots poured in from customers, providing Blume with valuable insights into the underlying issues that had caused the drop in conversion rates. Professionals in the community offered to look at the back end and get their hands dirty digging into the problem.
For Blume, the incident served as a valuable reminder that brand building isn’t just about sales numbers. “Sometimes as you work through the grind of entrepreneurship and small business, it is easy to attach a clear ROI to every interaction,” says Danudjaja. “But Blume is walking away from this experience knowing more than ever that investing in connection and community is the most important thing we can do as we continue to build our business.”
Karen Danudjaja is the cofounder and CEO of Blume.
“Transparency and authenticity are what consumers seek from businesses today,” Danudjaja elaborates. Here are her five top tips for building the kind of powerful costumer connection that Blume enjoys:
1. Start by listening
So often when we fail, we either move into hero or victim mode. Before plunging into action, make sure you fully understand what happened and are listening to your customers with an open mind.
2. Be proactive
Get ahead of the issue. You know your community best! Keep an eye out for trends and listen closely to consumer feedback to identify issues as they arise. Foster an open communication environment by letting customers know when and where they can reach you. Engage in as many conversations as you can.
3. Lead with transparency
Get real with your community. Acknowledge the impact of issues you face, and don’t be afraid to own up to any shortcomings. Empower your consumers to be part of the process. Collect feedback, share updates as you have them, and talk about what’s going on behind the scenes. Take control of the narrative in a way that feels authentic to your brand and community. Share what you do and don’t know. No one has all the answers. It’s more important to be authentic and open than it is to be right.
4. Show up and be present
Get in there and make yourself available. Leave no question unanswered, no email unresponded to, and no DM unread. Recognize your consumers’ contributions to the resolution by showing your gratitude and pay it forward by sharing learnings. Don’t be afraid to overshare. Community starts from within. Take this time to work closely with your team and celebrate the wins!
5. Display kindness for yourself and the journey
We are all human and we all make mistakes. It is a fast-changing world and we can't get it right every time. The startup road is going to be that much harder if you don't show yourself some kindness in terms of the failures. Just learn from them. Create processes and values so that you don’t make the same mistake twice.
