Electrolux takes an active lifecycle interest in consumer safety and quality assurance relating to all its products.
Safety and quality are included in procedures for evaluating suppliers, designing products, selecting materials, testing finished appliances and monitoring product performance. A process is underway to ensure that these procedures are harmonized across the Group.
Consumer health and safety
Electrolux meets and exceeds all legal requirements regarding consumer health and safety, including the most stringent laws in the European Union and North America.
In order to qualify for use, products and components sourced from external suppliers are subject to an assessment procedure including safety and quality elements.
Before a product designed by Electrolux goes into production it undergoes a number of tests and quality assurance activities. It is tested throughout production to ensure that it complies with safety and quality criteria. Tests are based on international and national standards, on whose expert committees Electrolux is a regular participant, and on internal best practice guidelines.
The Group monitors information on safety-related incidents continuously, and analyses early warning signals to identify root causes and effects. These investigations have provided the Group with an understanding of how accidents occur during product use. This expertise is integrated into product development.
In 2012 Electrolux made two recalls, one in Australia and the other in Latin America, but there were no reported cases of incidents to consumers. In Europe, one consumer incident involving an Electrolux branded oven cleaner was recorded.
The responsibility for product safety rests with the respective sector. To ensure that all major issues are reported to Group management, each sector must have a Sector Product Safety Advisory Committee (SPSAC). All SPSACs must regularly report their sector’s product safety status to the Group Product Safety Advisory Committee (GPSAC).
Product labeling
Labels and standards are effective tools to boost uptake of resource- efficient products and weed out poor performers. Required by law in almost all major markets that Electrolux is active in and for all major appliances, labels can potentially influence consumer behavior by creating transparency around a product’s energy efficiency and energy consumption.
The European Union Energy Labeling Directive requires energy labeling of all major appliances based on an A-G system, with A+++ as the most efficient. Europe is in the process of introducing labels for vacuum cleaners.
In the US, the government’s Energy Star program is a voluntary scheme designed to promote energy-efficient products in 60 product categories. In Australia, Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) and Energy Rating Labels have compared electrical goods for 25 years.
User manuals
Through user manuals, Electrolux provides customers with sustainability information and fulfills legal requirements regarding consumer safety. These are either produced online, or in print along with the product.
Consumer satisfaction
Globally, Electrolux conducts approximately 150,000 systematic consumer interactions - large and small - every year to find out more about consumer preferences. Consumers’ product experience is also continually followed up through a number of means and knowledge gained is fed back into design and production processes.
The Group uses methods ranging from ethnographies and contextual observation to quantitative discrete choice surveys. These include the Electrolux Quality Evaluation System, how consumers’ evaluate after-sales service, through service call rates from service technicians as well as other consumer interactions, such as consumer registration and social media. The objective is to collect after-sales service feedback after every customer contact with Electrolux.
Encompassing all sectors and all regions within the Group, the Global Customer Care Program improves how Electrolux cares for its consumers. A system to monitor the customer-care experience and measure improvements was developed and consumers in Europe are surveyed after a completed service experience using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) scale.
The Electrolux Customer Care Manifesto is designed to ensure that consumers can find answers to questions easily and that problems they face are solved quickly and effectively. The Group’s service quality standards documentation is updated regularly and is backed up by service quality management workshops at regional, national and corporate level.
Electrolux systematically identifies strategic growth opportunities through consumer and market analysis—enabling the Group to better understand how products are used and how to improve their functionality. Tools include consumer segmentation models, advanced market statistics analysis, a variety of consumer research methods and indepth understanding of macro-trends. Leveraging these is key to the Electrolux way of creating consumer value and satisfaction.
Marketing communications
Electrolux produces guidelines, shared across Business Sectors, on how the environmental attributes of appliances should be communicated. These guidelines are designed to ensure that environmental claims about Electrolux products are factual, balanced and substantiated and reflect laws and standards relevant to the business.
Customer privacy
Electrolux uses locally managed CRM (customer relationship management) databases in several markets. In the majority of cases, Electrolux does not have a direct sales relationship with the end-user and CRM databases are primarily based on warranty card information. This is particularly the case in for Electrolux in North America.
Compliance with laws on the use of products
Potential non-compliance, disputes or items that pose a material financial risk are reported to Group level in accordance with Group policy. No significant fines were reported in 2012.