End User Spotlight: Kathy Nelson, Whirlpool Corporation on Contact Centers

Back in January, Avaya announced that home appliance manufacturer Whirlpool had seen some great results after deploying their contact center solution to integrate nine contact centers into one system. We decided to chat with Kathy Nelson, vice president and general manager, Consumer & Appliance Care, Whirlpool Corporation, about her experience with the new solution. Nelson is in charge of Whirlpool North America's customer care strategy, which includes overseeing its customer service facilities, agent, technologies and programs. She also is accountable for the region's parts and accessory sales and warranty service.

FierceVoIP: Before going to this new contact center solution, how did Whirlpool manage their contact centers?
Nelson: All of our call centers were managed independently with each using different processes and limited synchronization among them. When we acquired Maytag in 2006, we needed to integrate nine contact centers with around 1,900 agents on different customer service platforms into one efficient system. The original Whirlpool contact centers were running on an Avaya platform, but the Maytag contact centers ran on an entirely different system.

FierceVoIP: What were some problems you encountered with the old way of handling your contact centers?
Nelson: Our contact centers are located in areas that can be hard-hit by bad weather and other disasters that made them vulnerable to outages. They were also susceptible to attendance, systems issues and call overflow, as well as inconsistencies in how we responded to consumer needs. We needed to eliminate repeat calls, transfers, and customer irritation/complaints from frequent transfers.

FierceVoIP: What made you decide to upgrade to a new solution?
Nelson: Because of our focus on meeting our customers' needs, we were looking for a solution that would help us improve the customer experience and better reflect our brands' promise to "build unmatched customer loyalty... one customer at a time," and do so in an efficient and effective way. Having one system across all of our contact centers would mean we could provide the most efficient service to our customers.

FierceVoIP: What about the solution you went with made you choose the way you did?
Nelson: We found the Avaya solution best met our needs. The most basic requirement for our customer experience center is continuity of service, and this Avaya solution enables us to feel confident about maintaining business continuity in several ways. It distributes our contact center to locations spanning the United States, which gives us a long 'service day' and the option to redirect calls in the event of a weather or other type of emergency at one location. It provides ease of management so that we can make emergency changes ourselves without a service call and, it enables us to have a large number of our most experienced agents working at home to take calls under almost any conditions.

FierceVoIP: Tell me more about how the contact center solution has allowed the company deal with weather disasters. What would have happened using your prior methods?
Nelson: It has helped us respond much more quickly and effectively than we would have been able to in the past. When a blizzard hit Michigan and a tornado occurred in Tennessee--two states where we have contact centers in--on the same day we were able to re-route calls to two other locations and our home-based agents. Without the Avaya system we would not have been able to respond nearly as quickly.

FierceVoIP: Since upgrading to the Avaya solution, what has changed from your old system and what are some of the improvements?
Nelson: In general we have seen productivity improvements and improved customer satisfaction scores. The ability to employ at home agents has been a big benefit, offering us more flexibility in our workforce, the ability to attract and retain good employees, and ensure a more consistent customer experience. Agents at home also generally have less absenteeism, fewer distractions, excellent quality scores, greater productivity, and a lower rate of attrition. They also have more "In and Available Time" over in-center agents. In addition, we have more space available at the contact center locations for future expansion.

From the management perspective, the contact center has moved from a cost center that many people considered a 'necessary evil' to a profit center that offers significant competitive advantage. We can provide active mining of customer data for our marketing and engineering groups with a broader set of customer and segment-focused metrics. We have moved from simple transaction management to customer relationship management that includes customer retention, satisfaction, and revenue.

Technology-wise, we have replaced our previous silos of systems with a much more sophisticated, integrated IT landscape that will grow with us as we continue to institute improvements.

FierceVoIP: Are there any other IP communications investments you are discussing/planning in the near future?
Nelson: We are always looking at systems and processes that will help Whirlpool provide a better consumer experience.