How Fisher and Paykel stays customer first

It can be a slippery slope for business leaders to let the technology direct customer experience rather than the other way around.

Rudi Khoury, chief digital officer at Fisher and Paykel explains to Digital Nation how the appliance brand stays customer first.

Speaking at Twilio Signal in Singapore, Khoury said enterprise sales and technology salespeople have a habit of selling a customer the solution without the problem.

He explained organisations should have a three-dimensional approach to speaking to customers.

“As an organisation is incredibly disciplined, start with what's the experience, gauge the business problem you're trying to solve, and what's the efficiency gain you're trying to solve?” He said.

While technology is a core part of what organisations have to do, Khoury said they also need people, processes and experience design.

“To get the best out of the technology, you have to have a clear service experience, process or whatever it is you're trying to build. Once you've got that, you can use the technology to scale it and that's the key point,” he explained.

Khoury said he has seen multiple times people starting with technology and not knowing they need to start with people and process.

“What is the experience you want to deliver? Once you understand it, you use the technology to scale it. We can't have a one-to-one ratio of customers to marketers. Then the people, use your people to innovate they enhance the technology and for me, that's the formula,” he said.

“To do that in the company is difficult and you have to have those principles and stick to them. And again, it comes down to leadership and discipline in my mind.”

Khoury emphasises the importance of having long-term goals and visions for organisations.

“I often get up on forums like this and talk about all the wonderful stuff that we've been doing and I'll remind people that we might have been at it for a decade or 15 years, I've been at my company for 15 years,” he said.

“There are initiatives we talked about a decade ago that are only coming to life now. That's why it's critical to have a long-term vision and a long-term plan for how you want to transform your business.”

Customer journey

When it comes to experience design, Khoury said he always reminds his team that there is a customer at the end of a journey.

“Over time that's going to change where the human might talk to a bot, that bot might talk to my bot at Fisher and Paykel, and the Fisher and Paykel bot is automating tasks. But, you always have to keep in mind that right at the end of that chain is a customer who is a human,” he explained.

“You’ve got to put yourself in that position. You have to take yourself out of the company go stand in the customer's shoes and see how that feels, is that the right channel for that job, for example.”

He said brands need to understand that one size does not fit all in terms of customer channels.

“[Brands need to think] for that particular job the customer wants to do, what is the right experience for them to have? The strategy that has worked well for me is just empathising with the customer and putting yourself in their shoes.”

Athina Mallis travelled to Twilio Signal in Singapore as a guest of Twilio.