The gorgeous Nespresso Creatista

Much to the chagrin of my many fiends who are coffee aficionados, I am an unashamed Nespresso fan. But I despair at the company's disjointed, disconnected and dizzyingly confusing web presence that in turn makes for a poor omni-channel experience. Failure to solve for this is hurting the company, not least in lost opportunities to connect with its fans, allowing competitors a near open field upon which to plant their brands.

Nespresso Creatista - you beauty

Returning to Europe from the US provided a great opportunity to revisit coffee choices. For years a Nespresso fan and having accumulated an assortment of machines, I'd managed to fork lift my much beloved Maestria from Spain to the UK in hand luggage. (I know - don't go there.) But I was increasingly disappointed with the machine and specifically its milk foaming capabilities. In fact, the one thing that lets down all Nespresso branded machines is milk foaming which I have consistently found to be sub par and well below barista expectations.

With that in mind, I was seriously considering abandoning the Nespresso nest and returning to a 'bean to cup' machine. That would have involved a much larger initial investment (capex) in exchange for much lower consumption cost (opex.) That was, until I stumbled across the Creatista Plus at a local Nespresso boutique. It is a natural replacement for the elegantly retro but now dropped Maestria. The R&D department at Sage (rebranded from the modest market Breville and with input from modern chef genius Heston Blumenthal) have rethought the user experience in numerous ways, creating (sic) an outstanding machine well worth the relative nose bleed price for a Nespresso machine. In essence they have captured the semi-manual processes of a Sage Oracle and shoehorned them into the Creatista and at a third of the retail price.

Superb in-store experience

I'll not use this as a Creatista review per se except to say that Sage/Nespresso have brought bone idle but satisfactory semi-snobby home coffee making right up to date. More to the point, they've done it in an elegant package that is not only frugal on worktop space take up, but also the milk frother is genius, delivering exactly what I want in microfoam for lattes and egg white consistency for cappuccinos. The in store experience was professional and understated as the server deftly demonstrated latte art skills, registered the device for warranty all while skillfully upselling me on supplies.

I can readily appreciate the work and thought that Nespresso must have invested in order to get someone on the shop floor multi task proficient while supporting the premium brand ethos. But that's where it stops.

Online and stuck in 2015

In the online world, Nespresso is no further along than it was in 2015, a time when I had to call in to get the Nespresso site to accept a change of country. Right now, it looks like I will have to go through that whole process again, despite the fact the boutique was able to register the Creatista to my current UK and emaił addresses. That's a red flag straight away because in my eyes that should not have been possible without at least initiating a change of country, or requiring input by me for security reasons at the store.

I was able to confirm this disconnect when I logged into my Nespresso account. Sure enough, it still has me registered in the U.S. but more to the point, it is not offering me ways to make a country change. That means I cannot see an easy way to buy capsules online in my local currency or for my current lcocation. Even if that is possible, the amount of friction involved is unacceptable in 2017.

In early 2016, Stuart Lauchlan reporting on Nestlé's 2015 performance concluded that:

Bulcke (then CEO) is setting very conservative expectations for Nestlé in 2016, which is probably wise. The 2012 strategic commitment to digital transformation gives the firm something of a head start on the competitors eating into its market shares across various brands, but there needs to be a shift to a front foot, rather than the defensive tone that’s been the case throughout 2015. Whether effective digital exploitation can enable that remains to be seen.

Prudent maybe but a year on and despite reported growth in the Nespresso business, the online investment appears to have stagnated beyond updating for new machines and coffee types. What's more, and as I considered my approach to this topic, it dawned on me that despite Nespresso's past appreciation of my lauding them on Facebook, the company has not been in touch on a proactive basis for over two years. In addition and since returning to the UK, I have gone to third party online suppliers rather than back to Nespresso. Why?

Third party winners

A search online for 'Nespresso capsules' shows Nespresso owning the no.1 Google slot but third party suppliers are easily seen, owning the number two slot. These third party suppliers make the price difference play and, as a result, have won my business the last few months. As a Nespresso fan, I was initially dubious about coffee quality but quickly found a supplier that punches at Nespresso's weight but at fractional cost. The next test is to determine whether that translates across to the Creatista or not. If it does, then given what I have said about the brokenness of the online experience, I don't know how Nespresso wins me back into the fold.

Nespresso might well argue that its Facebook investment more than outweighs investments elsewhere and sure, accumulating 6.1 million likes on Facebook may well be something the online marketers feel very happy about. But Facebook is NOT the only destination and the very fact I can point to an alternative experience as a direct result of Google ranking should surely count for something.

Mindshift required

What makes this story all the more sad is the fact that Nespresso has a more than 30 year history in what we today call the subscription business model. As always in these situations, success in one channel doth not an omni-channel experience make. The fact the third party players exist, let alone thrive, through a combination of smart and brute force online marketing should tell the Nespresso mavens enough about how and where they could readily improve.

But - if the past couple of years is an indicator, that conservative streak Lauchlan identified last year is alive and well. Now, it is hurting the brand and taking away from the otherwise excellent in store experience. Technology alone will not fix this, it's a mindshift issue.