Fisher & Paykel (F&P) has engaged Salesforce since 2012 to build a 360-degree view of the customer and advance its digital transformation journey. Now in 2020, F&P is working with Salesforce to roll out its new website globally, improve its field service technology and enhance its trade portal to better support retail partners – all with the goal of becoming the most human-centred appliance brand in the world.

At the recent Salesforce World Tour event in Sydney, F&P Executive Vice President – Marketing and Customer Experience, Rudi Khoury spoke to Appliance Retailer to explain how the Salesforce partnership is assisting the Kiwi appliance brand achieve this goal.

“In my own words, being a ‘human-centred’ brand means deeply understanding our customers and building products and services centred around people,” Khoury told Appliance Retailer in an exclusive interview.

“By having one single platform we can enable different business functions to see the same data. For example, someone in our call centre and someone in the field can access the same information. It’s about having the information you need to lift the customer experience. When customers purchase a F&P product, it is only the beginning of their journey with us. It is a long journey because customers often have our product in their home for 10 or even 15 years, so the better we can understand and service them, the better we can look after them post-purchase.”

Khoury said F&P does not source data from third party providers and only has information that the customer has consented to provide and what is required to deliver the customer experience.

“If a customer calls us because they need help with a particular product, we will record what the product is and when it was purchased and then over time as we keep interacting with them, we build on their profile. We also carry out customer surveys – for example, if we do an in-home service call, one week later we send that customer an email inviting them to participate in our survey for the opportunity to tell us about their experience. When it comes to customer service, we always have work to do. We know we don’t do it perfectly every time, but we want to constantly improve.”

Fisher & Paykel’s Rudi Khoury presenting at the Salesforce World Tour event in Sydney

F&P started its Salesforce journey with marketing automation, but the first major initiative was implementing Sales Cloud for its account managers.

“We wanted to ensure our account managers had the right information when they did retail store visits, such as when and where they have delivered training sessions, as well as retail order history, among other key information needed at the front line. The next step from there was customer service. We wanted to lift our game and we had legacy systems needing upgrades, so we again chose Salesforce as our partner to help implement our CRM system and that was the beginning of our customer data journey. Next, we jumped into sales with support for our business development managers working in the commercial space with our partners to collaboratively work together to support property developments through tools for opportunity management and quoting, as well as CRM.”

F&P’s most recent project using Salesforce is building new brand websites with Commerce Cloud and its trade portal using Salesforce Community Cloud that enables retailers to check on product inventory, order history and replenishment.

“We have also been working on field service technology with schedule management for our technicians, which we are now bringing together with our trade portal to support retailers and help them understand how we are servicing their customers,” Khoury said.

“Sometimes a customer will visit a retail store with an issue on a product they purchased, so if the retailer has booked a service call on behalf of the customer using the portal, we want to give them visibility of our calls. This transparency supports them and assists with Australian Consumer Law (ACL) requirements. We aim to complete this project by the end of the first half.”

Following the recent launch of its new US website, F&P hopes to roll out its new Australia and New Zealand websites (along with other markets) in 2020.

“It is an exciting project because it supports the way we are marketing our products today in terms of product style and product series 5, 7 and 9, which help the end consumer and retailer understand the breadth of our range and more easily find solutions that satisfy customer requirements.”

Having started in New Zealand, Khoury said the company’s Kiwi heritage remains a unique differentiator and has a major influence when it comes to the creation of products and services.

“New Zealand is located at the farthest reaches of the world. Our purposeful inventiveness has charged New Zealanders to think outside the square, to invent new ideas, products and experiences that value simplicity and are human centred. This flows into the way Fisher & Paykel work. We don’t have scale like other regions such as Europe where a competitive advantage is market size. This means we need to do things differently; create different products and different experiences, whether that be at global trade shows like KBIS or our service at F&P Experience Centres – it is unique to New Zealand.”

On a final note, Khoury spoke to ever-changing customer expectations. “We find that customers are judging brands on the last good experience they have had (with anyone else). For example, if they have had a great experience with Uber, a bank or a telco, this sets the bar and companies need to keep up. What is outstanding today is just expected tomorrow. You need to recreate that outstanding moment every time you interact with that customer.”