Consumer Packaged Goods Giant Leverages Knowledge Management Solution in Support of Over 90 Brands
Unilever’s contact center representatives support over 90 brands used by millions of people in the U.S. and Canada, every day. Its offerings span 14 categories of home, personal care and foods products. These factors led to significant consumer interaction and knowledge management challenges given Unilever’s vast information repositories. Contact Center representatives were often challenged with finding specific product details to answer consumers’ questions in a timely manner, or were faced with the response “no search lists.” The systems containing these details were a burden to access and maintain. Astute Solutions’ RealDialog helps to overcome this challenge, while simplifying the accessibility and management of key company information.
Leveraged in the contact center, RealDialog Agent Assist expedites call processing and issue resolution to enhance the consumer experience while reducing interaction costs. Unilever representatives simply enter a consumer’s question, verbatim—or select a question submitted via email—and they instantly receive a response in the form of a specific answer, paragraph within a document, and/or file (sound, video, Web page or document).
When needed, RealDialog guides the representative through a conversation with the consumer, prompting them with specific questions and responses to get to the heart of the issue and its resolution. It simplifies and improves the process for accessing relevant information, so representatives can focus on providing high-quality, relationship-building service. At the same time, it enables Unilever to control the messages representatives deliver to ensure a branded experience.
Among the many business and operational advantages it has using RealDialog, Unilever Consumer Services now has the flexibility and functionality to:
- Enhance the consumer experience. By giving representatives at all experience levels rapid access to the exact information they need, RealDialog improves issue resolution and information accuracy for a high-quality consumer experience. Upon implementation at Unilever, the solution achieved an unprecedented 94 percent accuracy, demonstrating its ability to comprehend the myriad ways representatives and consumers phrase questions. RealDialog can achieve even greater accuracy by using self-learning techniques, and by identifying where specific knowledge gaps exist for continuous improvement.
- Improve knowledge management across the enterprise. Supporting multiple touch points, RealDialog’s knowledge base is quickly established by leveraging existing content (Web pages, documents and files) and information systems. This is ideal for companies like Unilever that utilize a wide variety of resources to manage information on scores of topics. Its internal and external customers can now quickly access the information they need. Furthermore, new content can be authored by non-technical business users across the enterprise (contact center agents, product managers, marketers and more), ensuring that end users receive current, high-quality information. As a result, the company maintains and updates information for multiple touch points and end users at a minimal cost.
- Gain actionable consumer insights. RealDialog provides direct and unfiltered insight into consumers’ questions. It excels at capturing, interpreting and organizing large volumes of unstructured data, which provides Unilever with increased reporting capabilities and a unique level of visibility into its consumers’ needs and preferences. The company can identify and respond to trends and problems at an unprecedented rate, and the detailed consumer feedback offers a basis for product, service and process enhancements.
Linnea Johnson, director of consumer services at Unilever states, “this implementation meets two critical needs, it enables us to understand our consumers’ immediate needs and enhance their experience at the time when it matters most. It also gives us powerful insights—through detailed, actionable consumer data—to further our business objective of delivering products that meet the changing tastes, lifestyles and expectations of our consumers.”
“Consumer packaged goods companies have few opportunities to interact directly with the people who use their products. The quality of the interaction experience can have a lasting impact on the individual consumer and those within their social network. This is why the functionality of their knowledge management solution plays such a critical role in the process of building relationships,” said Astute Solutions President, Joseph Sanda. “Our work with Unilever exemplifies the consumer-centric nature of our RealDialog solution. It helps companies meet and exceed customer expectations of receiving fast, accurate and courteous responses to their questions. At the same time, it enables the company to deliver precisely crafted marketing messages and responses that support and enhance their brands.”
During the first phase of implementation, Unilever replaced the Folio knowledge management tool with Astute Solutions’ RealDialog. Proprietary information housed in Folio was converted into HTML pages for RealDialog. It was completed and went live in July 2008. During the next phase of the project, Unilever will integrate RealDialog with its existing company-wide CRM solution.