Adjustable Bed Manufacturer
Delivering a Seamless Warranty, Parts, and Service Strategy
What if... we could streamline warranty registrations and use order management system capabilities to automate orders for parts and services?
Our client is a diversified manufacturer of various engineered components and products that can be found in homes and automobiles. The company’s bedding division is the leading provider of differentiated products along the value chain, from adjustable beds, raw materials, innersprings and other bedding components, specialty foam, finished mattresses, to distribution and fulfillment.
The Warranty and Parts Fulfillment Experience Was Problematic
90% of consumers say the post-purchase experience is just as important as the quality of the products they buy.1 They want a seamless, customized, and personalized experience with self-service capabilities and great customer service.
Customer satisfaction is paramount to our client, which recognized an opportunity to provide a better post-purchase experience to customers who had bought an adjustable bed. Specifically, customers lacked the ability to register their warranty or request replacement parts online and instead had to contact a call center agent.
Because our client has three warranty tiers and each bed comes with its own bill of materials, call center agents had to access a large, siloed database and search for the necessary information. This resulted in long call times, incorrect product information, and delayed part replacements—all of which led to a poor customer experience.
The system needed to be modernized to allow customers to register online, activate their warranty, and perform warranty-related activities associated with their adjustable beds, such as ordering replacement parts and accessories, making payments, and completing returns.
Our client asked us to create an automated and streamlined process for parts and service orders by offering self-service capabilities and quick and easy call center interactions.
Improving Self-Service and Call Center Capabilities
Our client wanted an application that could identify the unique serial numbers and bill of materials for an adjustable bed in order to identify which replacement parts are permissible to order. It also needed to associate a warranty claim with a warranty order and a service request and to maintain a history for the registered bed.
Building an Out-of-the-Box System With Sterling OMS
We began by collecting preloaded serial numbers, warranty, and shop order data from our client's ERP and manufacturing systems and uploaded them into custom tables in IBM Sterling OMS. This enables access to warranty terms on individual serial numbers and allows the manufacturer to assist customers with any issue they're having with their bed.
Next, we set up different parts for order types, chained orders, and order line types to allow our client to maintain relationships between claims filed by customers and warranty orders and service requests, while also keeping all historical data tied to the claim.
Our client's adjustable bed customers can now bypass customer service by self-registering their warranties online through the portal. Doing so allows the company to track website traffic usage with the new workflow.
Results
Putting Customer and Agent Frustrations to Bed
In a single phone call with a customer, service representatives can now easily create orders, troubleshoot problems, open a claim on a registered bed, place a warranty/parts order, and create a service request. Agents can also measure hold times, call volume, and handle more tickets.
Our client's adjustable bed customers can now bypass customer service by self-registering their warranties online through the portal. Doing so allows the company to track website traffic usage with the new workflow.
Our innovative approach and creative use of Sterling OMS made us the ideal partner to assist our client in the transformation of its warranty and call center operations.
