About Quooker
The Quooker was the very first boiling-water tap in the world. Inventions like the highvacuum insulated tank, the all-in-one taps Quooker Fusion and Flex and the series of black boiling-water taps brought about a revolution in the kitchen. Innovation ‘around the sink still continues every day.
Quooker is a family firm, based on enthusiasm and entrepreneurship. The ambition: to supply as many private kitchens as possible with boiling water, in a smart and responsible way. To achieve that, Quooker in Ridderkerk, Holland, has 300 people working on new technical ideas and design solutions to make the taps even more efficient, even easier to use and even more attractive.
Challenge and Solution
Due to the Pandemic, and not being able to get customers into their showroom safely, Quooker were looking for a solution that would enable customers from around the UK to attend virtual demonstrations of their showroom in a simple to use, fun, and high quality format.
Three areas of their showroom were identified as areas of importance and as such, three cameras were needed to focus on those areas. However, these three cameras needed to work together and switch seamlessly on a single system that was controlled by a tablet operated by the speaker who would be walking around the room. There needed to be both preset focus area buttons and the ability to move and zoom the cameras manually to focus on a variety of features around the room. This posed an interesting challenge for the VideoCentric team.
The Zoom platform was chosen after it was found to be more customer friendly, as people have been meeting friends and family on Zoom since the pandemic began and as such feel comfortable using that platform. Zoom was also chosen for it’s ability to control multiple cameras from a wireless tablet, which was a key element of this project.
As for the hardware, AVer cameras were chosen for their high quality images and zoom ability, and the Poly Focus UC headset was chosen as the audio element of the system, for its ability to provide quality sound in a noisy environment.
Usage and Outcomes
appointmentWhen the showroom shut due to Covid, they had to rely on phone calls as a main selling tool, but they are now fully utilising the virtual showroom into their everyday processes. “With a product like this, it is brilliant but its sometimes hard to explain over the phone, so having a visual concept of it does make it alot easier.” When using a virtual showroom becomes ingrained into the company culture, it inspires a video first approach, providing a dynamic buying experience for the customer. It also allows the team to have the capacity to provide more demonstrations in a day, and means that customers don’t have to travel at all or incur any associated costs by going to the showroom. It is a win-win for Quooker and its customers.
Since it’s install, the Quooker team have been fully promoting their virtual showroom, and have been actively encouraging customers to head to their website and sign up for a one-to-one private session throughout the day or book to attend the group demonstration on Saturday mornings. The one-to-one sessions are proving to be extremely successful. The system allows customers to see close up details of the products and interact freely with the Quooker team, which often results in customers being so impressed, they choose to buy by the end of the session. The group sessions are also proving to be a fantastic resource for new customers as the multiple camera angles allow a run through of company history by zooming onto the history wall, and an overview of the system and products by zooming onto products. Zoom also allows the management of up to 50 participants and shares their questions through the chat function which can be seen on the tablet.
Future
The Manchester showroom system has been primarily used to speak to consumers but the system is also used for training with their distributors and kitchen dealers, and as such there are plans to expand the existing system to include more cameras to allow for even more angles of the showroom and products. After using and enjoying the showroom system, they have also started looking at other ways to implement the solution in their business. Rafi Newman states “Its hard to explain and resolve potential issues over the phone and so we are looking at implementing the system at our service office in Brentwood. We will have a camera set up and when a customer joins with an issue, they can show us on their camera and we can show them how to fix it over the virtual which will save us time on servicing as it avoids us having to send out an engineer.”.
“VideoCentric recently installed camera equipment in our Quooker office in Manchester and they are brilliant. we are able to connect with our
customers to show them a virtual demonstration which has proven to be a success. the camera quality is excellent and the equipment is all really
professional. the fitters who came on the day were super friendly and showed us how easy the equipment was to use. In a post COVID world this
became a necessity for us and Video Centric made the transition seamless and a quick turnaround as well. highly recommend.”
Louie Basso, Quooker
If you would like to join a Quooker virtual session, you can book a slot here: https://www.quooker.co.uk/schedule-a-virtual-appointment
