CCD has a friend indeed

India’s Largest coffee cHain Café Coffee Day (CCD) is tapping its 1.08 million Facebook friends to create products that they will like—crowdsourcing, in a word. Using these inputs, CCD has already created Warm Choco Indulgence, now its second-largest selling dessert, after Chocolate Fantasy. To create Warm Choco Indulgence, CCD began by asking its Facebook friends if they would like more chocolate, fruits, or nuts in their dessert. Extra cocoa got the ayes. Also, the crowd wanted the dessert rich, gooey, and indulgent. The name ‘Warm Choco Indulgence’ was a natural. Once the early versions were done, CCD invited some Facebook friends to a tasting for feedback. “Digital presence helps us know what consumers want. That morphs into sales,” says Venu Madhav A., chief operating officer, CCD. Besides creating products based on social network inputs, CCD also uses such media to get a feel of the type of merchandise or the genre of music customers prefer at its 1,100 outlets.