1to1 - Spring 2009 - (Page 26) First, an agent must receive an e-card. “You have to prove that you’re empowered and don’t need leadership,” she explains. Next, Whirlpool completes a home inspection to ensure security and privacy (no barking dogs or screaming children in the background). Then a team sets up the home office, complete with VoIP. Working from home, however, can sometimes disengage employees from a company’s culture. To ensure that agents stay connected with Whirlpool’s culture and brands, as well as keep abreast of new products and processes, in-home agents are required to work in one of the cXcs every two months; they also participate in conference calls and sometimes facilitate them remotely. Organizational charts hang in the centers with photos of the at-home agents. On Halloween each year they even send in photos of themselves in costumes taking customer calls. “We work hard to make sure they’re engaged,” Holmgren says. According to Holmgren, the program has resulted in an average of a 4 to 6 percent improvement in productivity. “Agents who work at home take one more call per hour,” Morrison says, adding that at-home consultants also rate higher in customer satisfaction. Additionally, the cost versus benefit is substantial because Whirlpool can grow its staff and tap into other employee demographics like retirees or stay-at-home mothers. As a result, Whirlpool plans to increase the number of its in-home agents in 2009. In the driver’s seat By keeping its employees involved and engaged, Whirlpool is able to continuously learn about customer expectations, as well as potential product innovations and service improvements. The company will continue to drive customer loyalty and be true to the Customer Bill of Rights, the Gold Ring Promise, and to its employees. “[Customers] are getting someone who’s committed to the Customer Bill of Rights and driven by first-call resolution,” Holmgren says. “We’re empowering agents to be able to help customers as much as we possibly can. We put the customers first and we put them in the driver’s seat.” home take one “Agents who work at per hour.” more call The Year ofT echnology Innovation and open communication underpin Whirlpool’s customer strategy, but technology also supports it. In fact, in 2008 Whirlpool implemented new technologies that helped to streamline processes, create a virtual call center environment, and improve agent performance. “It was the year of technology,” says Sandy Morrison, senior manager, customer relations, for the Cleveland Customer eXperience Center (cXc). One key area of technology deployments to the cXc is helping to provide a consistent customer experience via agents, the IVR, and Web self-service. A unified e-commerce platform from Frye that integrates with Siebel CRM and SAP’s order management facilitates this cross-channel experience, allowing customers to make purchases and get support through their preferred channels. Investments made to its virtual contact center operation enable Whirlpool to manage 1,900 agents across four locations and 13 million calls per year. The company uses Avaya’s predictive call routing algorithms to get the right consumer to the right agent at the right time at any of Whirlpool’s four contact centers, and simplifies scheduling agents during peak periods. This process delivered $2 million in savings in fiscal year 2008 and is expected to deliver additional millions in savings to the organization over time. Technology has helped to improve agent performance, as well. Using Aspect Empower, agents are able to manage their own schedules and managers can use flex scheduling to cover staffing levels. And to reduce average handle time, agents’ desktops are integrated into the company’s CRM database, so the agents spend less time toggling between multiple systems to look up customer information, as well as to an external Targus database of consumer household data for verification. In the future Whirlpool wants to score customers to provide a “gold” status to offer preferred treatment in real time by routing the customer to the call consultant who is trained to handle Gold VIP consumers. Tracie Doll, solutions senior manager at Whirlpool, adds that in 2009, the enterprise will focus on delivering natural speech and making modifications to the IVR system in the cXc. Consumer-facing websites are also getting a face lift. Doll says, “We have major projects we’re working on next year that technology will be a part of.” 26 1to1 magazine
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