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Consumers Are Spending on Home, and This Appliance Maker Is Focused on More Than Dishwashers and Dryers

Rudi Khoury of Fisher & Paykel

Fisher & Paykel retail household appliances around the globe. Their focus has always been on customers and team.

Founded in New Zealand in 1934, Fisher & Paykel retails household appliances in more than 30 countries, including the United States, where it also operates luxury outdoor kitchen brand DCS. In addition, the company has a large network of customers, including builders, designers, retail partners and, of course, consumers. In this episode, Rudi Khoury, executive vice president of marketing and customer experience, walks us through the global company’s COVID-19 response, and how they use technology to keep their remote teams at work and their customers at the center of marketing, sales, and service. This week’s special guests also include Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, authors of Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.) who explain the importance of joy at work and the science of humor for better health and personal well-being.

If you’ve watched Rudi Khoury in this episode of Leading Through Change, or even if you haven’t, here are some ideas from the episode and how they use Salesforce for success.

Fisher & Paykel EVP of Marketing and Customer Experience Rudi Khoury speaks with Salesforce’s Sarah Patterson

Top three takeaways from this episode of Leading Through Change

1. Consumers are investing in home improvements

People are really focused on their home right now because that’s where they’re spending a lot of time. Think about how important appliances are to your life right now; preserving your food as long as possible and being able to keep your clothes in your house clean. They’re making decisions and investment decisions around being comfortable. 

A lot of us are trying to stay positive that the pandemic is going to get better soon, but even with vaccines and such, no one’s really sure how much longer we’ll be hunkering down. Khoury feels there’s still a lot of unknown hanging over our heads, and that people will continue to focus more on making themselves comfortable at home.

2. Field service is facing new challenges

Though the Fisher & Paykel field service team has always been remote, their service team faces new risks they’ve never had before. Khoury reports they’ve been very concerned with making sure their team is safe, and still able to help customers in their homes. 

With so many people who support those working in the field – the global business-to-business (B2) and business-to-consumer (B2C) support teams and contact centers – they’ve always had people working remotely in Dunedin, New Zealand or Oakland, Calif., but not at this current scale, and not on such short notice. Fisher & Paykel has done a lot of work digitizing their customer service tools.

3. Better employee experience translates to a better customer experience

Khoury believes that a strong employee experience translates into a stronger customer experience as well. Getting that right is everything. For example, by automating workforce management across channels, skills, and teams, your productivity and customer service quality can improve, creating better experiences for both your customers and service agents. The result? A heightened sense of loyalty from customers and employees through the delivery of exceptional customer experiences. That level of commitment is what the company is trying to achieve.

See Fisher u0026amp; Paykel on Salesforce World Tour Sydney Reimagined

Learn how they’re managing customer engagement across marketing, sales, and service by building a complete manufacturing CRM, and their journey to bring visibility into sales.

This post is the latest installment of Leading Through Change, our video conversation series with industry and thought leaders who use Salesforce products to transform the way they work.

Karen Solomon Senior Blog Editor

Karen Solomon is the senior editor for the Salesforce Blog, where she brings a wealth of experience as a writer, content strategist, and storyteller. In addition to writing four cookbooks and a travel book, she’s worked for Bank of America, Autodesk, Williams-Sonoma, Donnelly Marketing, and Under Armour. She’s also authored numerous feature stories for national press.

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