Gorillas is a new grocery delivery app that’s striving to change traditional consumer shopping habits. With convenience as its primary value proposition, Gorillas implements a hyper-local distribution model that allows it to deliver groceries to customers’ homes in just minutes. Given this lightning-fast turnaround time, few would disagree with the company’s bold tagline: “Faster Than You”.
The model has been a tremendous success. After a Series C investment round of nearly $1B, Gorillas has achieved ‘unicorn status’ as Germany’s fastest-growing startup of all time. But, amid this rapid growth, Gorillas has stayed true to its original core values — namely, the belief that people come first. For this reason, all Gorillas riders are benefit-receiving employees of the company.
Social media plays an integral role across multiple facets of the brand’s marketing and business operations. And, as the company scales, managing the brand’s social media accounts has become increasingly complicated. Fortunately, Kelly Williams (Social & Content Manager at Gorillas) has been equipped with our social media management solution since day one and it’s been an indispensable asset to the Gorillas team as they continue to expand.
“We have a separate account for each country that we operate in, which was a strategic decision we made, as all audiences are culturally different. For these reasons, it’s important for us to be hyperlocal through our social media presence.”
The Challenge
Since launching in Germany, Gorillas has developed into a multi-national company with a presence in 60 cities throughout eight countries. This proliferation affects the business in numerous ways. In regards to their social media initiatives, Gorillas has a separate account for each country it operates in. Instagram is the company’s primary channel for branding, awareness, and monitoring trends/mentions, and Facebook is also a key channel for community management and customer support. But the multitude of country-specific accounts makes publishing, monitoring, and community management inherently more complex.
Gorillas is frequently tagged in customer posts, so it’s crucial for Kelly and her team to be able to monitor what’s being said about the brand across social channels. The company also receives a high volume of inbound messages through Facebook and Instagram, and these often need to be routed to the appropriate support agent.
For example, if a location-specific question comes in, the Berlin team may need to assign it to the US team — and this has the potential to present a logistical challenge due to differences in their working hours. Furthermore, there are subtle cultural divergences between countries, and this impacts how the team communicates with customers and refines brand messaging. For example, community management and branded copy in the US sometimes requires a slightly different tone than in Europe. This same concept also applies to the content Gorillas publishes on its social profiles and pages. Given these nuances, Gorillas’ social media accounts cannot be treated with a uniform, one-size-fits-all approach — which is why diligent organization and efficient collaboration are essential to keep Gorillas’ social media operations running smoothly.
The Solution
Gorillas’ social media activities have now been fully streamlined and consolidated within a single, intuitive solution. Rather than handling each of Gorillas’ country-specific social accounts on an individual basis, everything can be planned and managed from a unified hub (including scheduling, publishing, community management, and social listening). In her previous role, Kelly remembers when she had to work natively within each network interface to respond to DMs and handle other tasks. She’s very thankful that’s no longer the case.
The sleek, customizable interface Kelly has access to makes it easy for her to arrange her dashboard in a way that suits her needs. This has allowed her to devise her own system for maximal productivity. She has multiple activity feeds set up, with one serving as an archive of communication from Gorillas’ social channels. Another feed is dedicated to new inbound messages, so she’s always up to speed on the latest inquiries.
All Gorillas’ DMs have been integrated into a centralized inbox, empowering Kelly and her team to work more simply and efficiently from a sole command center.
Additionally, the Gorillas team can seamlessly overcome the logistical challenges of working in different time zones. If the Berlin office has messages or tasks that need to be passed off to the US team, they can simply assign those tasks accordingly within the interface. With this capability, everyone on the team is always clear on what needs to be done. Subsequently, messages/tasks are addressed promptly and systematically. And, beyond DMs, when Kelly needs to track what’s being said about the Gorillas brand on social, she can tap into the Listen module to spot trends, gauge sentiment, and engage in meaningful conversations.
“We have some agents in Berlin who help us on our weekends or during off-hours when we might not be online yet. And if they don’t know what to do or what to say, they will just assign [the inquiry] to me. So, I really, really like that feature."
The Impact
For Kelly and her team, the most notable impacts our solution has had can be considered across three different categories: efficiency, team collaboration, and analytical insight.
In terms of organization and efficiency, Kelly’s workflows have been fine-tuned to augment her productivity and enhance her overall efficacy within her role. As she puts it, it would be “hard for her to miss something.” And, with publishing, social listening, community management, and analytics housed neatly under one roof, Kelly can avoid tedious admin tasks and allocate her energy toward more strategic and creative activities that will propel Gorillas’ social media efforts forward.
We have also bolstered the Gorillas team’s collaborative abilities. Given that they’re working with eight social media accounts across nine countries, it’s highly advantageous for them to be able to manage everything within a comprehensive, centralized solution. At any given time, each team member can log in to see where they stand in terms of content planning and also check in on customer inquiries/responses — constantly keeping a finger on the pulse of the Gorillas community. And, with our solution serving as the central point of truth, every team member who works on Gorillas’ social media is always on the same page (regardless of location/time differences).
Finally, our robust analytics has been a vital source of insights for Kelly to assess performance, learn what’s working, and make data-backed adjustments. Going forward, she feels that this data will be instrumental as Gorillas begins experimenting with new content formats and tactics. Not only will it guide strategy — it will also help her to convey the value and reasoning behind these new initiatives to senior leadership, thus facilitating executive buy-in and support for Kelly and her team to continue driving Gorillas’ social media presence onward and upward.
“We plan to introduce new types of content on our channels, as we’ve seen success from various tests. It’s key for us to measure these moments of strong performance with data, then relay it up to leadership to explain the why and reason behind it."