What It Takes to Be a Leader in the RV Industry
A tour of Lippert Component’s plant on South Bend’s West Side reveals their reliance on dark fiber
Lippert Components is the leading supplier of premium components for the recreational vehicle (RV) industry. Founded in 1956 as B&L Industries, they have steadily grown to 10,000 people working in 65 facilities throughout the United States, Canada, Ireland, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
One of those facilities — Plant 39 — is located on Sample Street just west of downtown South Bend.
Plant 39 🏭
Plant 39 performs two primary functions: customer service and product distribution. Our first stop was the Contact Center.
We walk into a room bustling with customer service agents. Some agents are sitting while others are walking to the front of the room to utilize the “Call Center Lab,” a fully functional display of various RV components that may be the source of a customer service call. Mike Bloss, Customer Service Manager, explains that this lab is built and kept-up by call center agents who hold specific insight into common issues facing their customers:
Rather than working on images in their head or an online manual they can actually come into this lab, live on a phone call, and work with a customer as if they’re standing next to them.
All around us, television screens display live dashboards containing charts and graphs of what’s currently happening in the Contact Center: where calls are holding, how long they’ve been holding, and how different customer cases are proceeding. Lippert works to operate the center without paper — these dashboards, paired with our quick fiber connection, are one tactic in service of that goal.
“Alexa, Ask One Control Tank Levels” 📡
After touring the Contact Center and distribution warehouse, we step into a wing of Plant 39 where a new technology called One Control is being developed and tested.
One Control functions as both a customer service and experience tool. On the customer service side, it enables a RV in the field to detect system problems and report the system status back to customer service, allowing Lippert to reach out immediately to solve the issue.
On the customer experience side, One Control significantly increases the customer’s ability to easily control components of the vehicle. What used to be a slide-out controller is now a mobile phone or tablet interface with control over lighting, climate, tank monitoring, and more.
In addition to the mobile interface, Lippert is developing the technology to control vehicles using Alexa voice commands. Watch this and more in our video of the tour:
More data. More speed. More possibilities. ⚡️
From the CRM to the phone system, everything at Lippert is cloud-based. On top of that foundation, they continue to push into new technologies aimed at expediting distribution processes and improving customer experience on the road.
These innovations require fast and reliable internet connectivity. With fully redundant circuit and scalable bandwidth, Metronet Zing is able to support this level of innovation with our open-access dark fiber network.
Thanks for reading! We are an open-access fiber optic network serving South Bend, IN and surrounding communities. Learn more: metronetzing.org
