Whirlpool’s 360 degree model of service
More than 27 million kitchen appliances, manufactured by Whirlpool UK Appliances are located in homes across the UK. Stephen Hodgson, customer services operations director, said: “We have a 360 degree model from designing the product, selling the product and now what has become really important, keeping the product in the customers’ homes. “As customers have invested in a product, when it goes wrong they want to phone someone who will have empathy and solve the problem quickly and keep that product in their home.” The company’s head office in
When I first started at ERT, back in 1999, one of the first conversations I had with a well-known retailer who told me that Sony and Hotpoint were the friends of the independent sector. “There has always been a special relationship
between Hotpoint and independent retailers and that will continue,” Mr Goldsmith said. “Indesit and Hotpoint now have strong
reputations and, therefore, we are in the right place to help the retailers get the conversion they need, when consumers are thinking for longer about what products they actually want. “I’ve been away for seven years, but I’ve seen
in the independent channel, that we’ve been winning awards, and our team that face the independent channel is so stable. There is this love that our team have for the independents, and they are maximising it.” Mr Goldsmith said he is really proud of what channel director Innes Murray his team have created in the independent channel. “We’ve still got more work to do, we still want
to engage with even more independents, but the progress has been really good since I’ve been away,” he said. Our conversation moved on to talk about the
love of the KitchenAid brand and took a bizarre turn when Mr Goldsmith suggested that I Google the term ‘KitchenAid tattoo’ – I was surprised with what I saw. “All these people have got KitchenAid tattoos,”
Mr Goldsmith said, before conceding that it’s unusual for consumers to brand themselves with a brand.
He continued: “KitchenAid is a brand that when people know it, they love it, and what a foundation that is to grow from. It’s all about improving the awareness of KitchenAid, and they will convert to it.” Looking ahead, Mr Goldsmith said that there is
a project underway within the business looking at KitchenAid major domestic appliances. “We’re really thinking about design a little bit
more, because we have this iconic stand mixer, but how do we create that in major domestic appliances? What I’ve seen in terms of our development plan, it’s looking good and we aim to bring this to market in 2025.” So what did Mr Goldsmith miss when he left the UK back in 2016. “It goes without saying, I missed the team,” he
said, “but I also missed the infrastructure. “We manufacture, we deliver, we service and
we recycle – that is such a powerful ecosystem that we’ve got – from a business point of view, I missed that.”
July/August 2023
Peterborough is home to 350 call centre staff, a reprocessing and recycling centre, an engineers training academy and a factory outlet, where refurbished machines are sold to both staff and the public at heavily discounted prices. The parts centre is like an Aladdin’s cave, with 6.6 million individual parts for a range of machines. All of Whirlpool’s engineers are trained in
Peterborough and get to work on the full range of Whirlpool machines from over the decades, because the breadth of range and age of the products in customers’ homes could well need that knowledge.
Mr Goldsmith is relishing the opportunity to
grow the business and he says central to that is the connection that Whirlpool UK Appliances has with consumers. “We’re in the same number of homes as Harry
Potter books, with the appliance pool that is out there,” he said. “What a connection with the consumer we have, that’s what also brought me back – what can we do with that connection with consumers going forward? “I’ve got a smile on my face, it’s nice to be back home.” Mr Goldsmith concluded by talking about the
state of the UK white goods market. “I think we all came into this year thinking that it was going to be a little bit more buoyant, a bit more robust, but we are seeing that everything is day-by-day at the moment,” he said. “From all the indicators, we do believe that in Q4 the market will be back to a more positive trend, but it’s going to be a tough fight for everyone – for both retailers and manufacturers – in this next period. “We remain convinced and determined with our brands, our infrastructure and our people – we will win through it.”
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