MindTouch Co-Founder Aaron Fulkerson caught up with Kimberly Matthews Giandiletti, Sr. Manager of Go to Market at Whirlpool during the 2016 SAP SAPPHIRENOW conference. In this exclusive video interview, you will hear Whirlpool’s customer-first approach to engaging buyers across all three phases of the customer journey.

As a global consumer brand, the digital transformation taking place for companies and consumers has a massive impact, and Kimberly shared with Aaron how MindTouch plays a key role in realizing the digital transformation of the customer experience for Whirlpool. With hundreds of products, Whirlpool generates a ton of valuable information about the products themselves. The challenge for any business (but one that’s magnified for companies with 100,000 employees and millions of customers) is making sure that the information that is created is being used to its fullest extent.

In a complex organization where this information is being used by consumers, customers, support agents, and field agents, the digital transformation offered a chance to help paint a more complete picture of the customer experience. With MindTouch and SAP, Whirlpool was able to get this information on their “website for consumers, and also integrated into the CRM so call agents could have access to it,” according to Kimberly Giandiletti. For customers that need in-home support, the information already gathered by call agents can be shared through MindTouch and SAP to the field service agent, who can be prepared with the correct parts and information before stepping foot inside the home.

As Fulkerson notes, by promoting buyer and customer engagement, as well as support and field service enablement in a single eco-system through MindTouch and SAP, “you’re building intelligence on what content was consumed, and that’s helping to lower effort across the customer journey.” For brands big and small, a little less effort goes a long way; check out the video to learn more about how Whirlpool uses MindTouch to tackle improving the customer experience in the digital age.

See how Whirlpool’s product portal is revolutionizing the customer journey

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Transcript: Interview with Kimberly Matthews Giandiletti

Aaron: Empathy is at the very heart of what our mission is at MindTouch. Our mission is about helping companies understand their customers better by helping their customers understand their products and services. Kimberly, it’s great to meet you in person finally. I know that we’ve exchanged phone calls and emails over the last 6 to 8 months or so. You’re here presenting at Sapphire, and it’s on some really interesting topics that you’re excited about. Tell us a little bit about that.

Kimberly: So, yes, we recently implemented MindTouch both on our website for our consumers, and also integrated into our CRM system so our call agents can have access to it for knowledge management.

Aaron: So, there’s two parts. There’s the customer engagement side, where your customers are probably running web searches and finding content to self serve, right?

Kimberly: Right, so our customers can go into our product help page and actually run searches for information that may help them operate an appliance, maybe clean it, maybe even repair something that maybe needs to be repaired as well.

Aaron: Then the second step is, not everybody’s gonna be able to self serve, so they might go through a user assisted channel, call center, email, and in that case your agents are helping there with MindTouch as well?

Kimberly: Yes. So if a consumer should call our call center, and they’re having an issue with a product, or they have a question about a product, our call agent can actually use our MindTouch implementation to go through a list of questions, or fault tree, to get information to the consumer, and then actually send links to them or answer the question. Or in the case where they may have to do a service call, that information can be then sent to our servicer to help them know what was pre-diagnosed, so they can actually have the part or understand what they need to have on the truck to repair the appliance.

Aaron: So, I guess there’s the buyer engagement side, because people are running Google searches and MindTouch is helping promote your content inside the search engines. There’s the customer engagement side where someone’s doing self service. There’s the agent enablement side for them to actually serve the customer in an agent assisted channel. Then there’s the field service, your repair team. And across all that, you’re building intelligence on what content was consumed and that’s helping to lower the operator cost per journey.

Kimberly: Right, and it also then provides information in regards to where do we need help with that information, is an article not helpful or not. There’s ways in which we can actually enhance the data based upon what we’re getting back.

Aaron: I just sat in on your talk about this customer journey and it’s really exciting. You’ve done great work there, and thanks so much for sharing with us.

Kimberly: Well, thank you. It was a great day.

Aaron: Now, not everybody is gonna be able to self serve on the customer engagement side, so when they need help, do they transition from that into a user assisted channel like web or call?

Kimberly: Yeah, so if a consumer should pick up the phone and call one of our call agents, the call agent would go through and ask them questions that are part of our fault tree system that we’ve put in place as part of MindTouch. They can actually send them a link to an article that would help solve their problem. If it couldn’t be solved that way and they couldn’t solve the problem themselves through do it yourself information, they could actually schedule service. And that information from that pre-diagnosis would then be sent, along with the service appointment, to the servicer. This would allow us to actually meet our objective of first call complete, where the servicer could actually have the part on the truck or actually know what parts or tools they need to repair the appliance.

Aaron: So, that’s interesting. You’re taking the contacts from the customer engagement, handing it to the agent to help them serve the customer more quickly. Then you’re taking the context, which is the content that the agent and the customer consumed, passing it to the field service rep to accomplish first…you said first…

Kimberly: First call complete.

Aaron: First call complete, which is like you go out one service and it’s over.

Kimberly: Right, so the servicer comes out, repairs the appliance…

Aaron: They have the right parts.

Kimberly: Right parts, right tools, everything in place.

Aaron: That’s brilliant. So, there’s the higher engagement side, there’s the customer engagement side through self service, the agent enablement side, and the field service enablement. And how they consume the content provides context that lowers operator costs. All of the stages as you were describing when we were in our discussion on your presentation. The outcome’s really about driving lower effort, more engagement, and in increases in first…

Kimberly: First call complete.

Aaron: First call complete. Well, thank you so much. It was a great presentation you gave.

Kimberly: Thank you.

Aaron: Really, really good to see you in person.

Kimberly: Thank you so much.

Aaron: Thank you.

Kimberly: Thanks.

Additional categories: Customer Experience, Video