It’s one thing to attract new business to your website, but it’s another to retain that new business. All customers want a streamlined, easy ordering process, but customers in the B2B segment are often relatively neglected compared to those in B2C.
It’s no longer acceptable for fulfillment to respond to requests for tracking updates, which can take hours or days to go through the game of telephone to get back to the customer. In the B2C world, you can place an order and visit the website from which you ordered to get tracking updates. In B2B, all too often, you have to email or call to get a tracking update, which can cause delays for the end customer in notifying their customers.
Automated order fulfillment eliminates the delay between tracking data and your customers gaining access to it. It offers them the ability to view their B2B orders in a B2C way—visiting your website to see tracking info instead of having to call in to get updates.
However, there are more reasons than that to upgrade your order fulfillment process. Here are a few:
Every time human hands have to type in or copy over data, you’re introducing the risk of an error.
Yes, you still need your team to review orders and check them for accuracy (sometimes, the customers do make typos!). It’s far, far faster to have them review orders than to type each one in.
An automated system eliminates the risk of mistakes being made as a simple result of human error. No matter how careful your team is or how well-meaning, everyone eventually makes a mistake—and automation ensures that doesn’t happen.
The beauty of automating your order fulfillment is that you can offer drop-down menus along with preset SKU numbers. Your customers can easily select exactly what they want, and your staff can be confident that there are no mistakes.
This is because the entire process is automated—meaning customers input their orders, ensuring accuracy. There’s no need for additional correspondence with the salesperson, which also saves the sales team time.
It should be no surprise that increased accuracy means fewer returns and refunds. After all, all your customers want is exactly what they ordered.
Automating your order fulfillment also means that you can make the order visible to everyone, from the customer to the rep to your internal team, again ensuring accuracy throughout the fulfillment process.
If you’ve ever played the game “Telephone”, you know how quickly things can get lost in translation as more people pass a message.
This kind of miscommunication can be very funny in grade school, but it’s much less funny when your business suffers as a result.
Automated systems eliminate the issue of miscommunication. It’s no longer necessary to decipher handwritten orders or call in and hope that the person answering the phone can understand what the other person is asking for.
Instead, drop-down menus and pre-populated SKUs make everyone’s life easier. The preset categories ensure that all information is entered correctly and that there’s no risk of mistranslation.
There should be no games of telephone between the customer, the sales rep, your office staff, and the warehouse team.
How many hours a day does your team spend entering the data from orders placed into QuickBooks, printing out, and sending those orders on to the warehouse team to be re-entered into their software?
If you’re a smart business owner, you’ve insured yourself against mistakes by having multiple people entering and reviewing orders at each step.
Which means…double the amount of time spent managing those orders.
Why make it so hard?
An automated order fulfillment system eliminates the need for multiple eyes to check an order and the need for your team to spend hours a day managing those orders.
Thanks to Now Commerce's integration with QuickBooks and your warehouse, your customers simply place their orders, and the automation process takes care of the rest.
No more double-entry data, no more double-checking, and no more errors.
More than just automating your order fulfillment, utilizing a system that automates these processes makes your entire ordering process more efficient.
Instead of switching between tasks whenever an order comes in, the orders are processed automatically. You never worry about outdated inventory information, bookkeeping, product details, or customer information.
Instead, it’s just done. Automatically.
It’s like having a robotic assistant take care of all the routine tasks for you. Software like Now Commerce syncs all of your departments, allowing the entire business to run more efficiently and streamlined.
Automation software is more than a nice thing to have for your business; it alleviates the workload for your office team.
It’s a way to improve the way your business runs as a whole.
It’s already tough to remain competitive as more businesses try to encroach on your established customers.
Sticking to a manual fulfillment process makes it easier for your competitors to steal your customers.
Automating your business's routine tasks allows you to offer your customers something they already get on the B2C side of their lives—access to tracking information and the ability to place orders easily online.
Now Commerce allows you to offer customers the online ordering portal (and automated order fulfillment) they’d love to have from your business.