It’s harder than ever to attract and retain new customers or upsell your current customers, and yet it’s easier than ever for them to leave. That brings us to one of the simplest and most effective ways to improve your customer service while improving your fulfillment times, accuracy, and ability to scale.
By using a software solution such as Now Commerce, you can offer a level of customization, customer service, and insight into the fulfillment process that your competitors often can’t touch.
Are you wondering how more technology can help insure your manufacturing business against losing customers because technology makes it easier for them to find other options?
If it’s easy for you to lose customers thanks to technology, it’s just as easy for your competitors to lose customers.
By offering perks and benefits to working with your company over the competition, you provide numerous reasons for their customers to leave them and order from you instead. Those perks don’t have to be discounts or sales; honestly, they shouldn’t be those things. Discounting or offering “rock bottom sale prices” devalues your product and leads customers to believe those sale prices should be the regular prices. It leads to customers selecting you based solely on price, which turns your product into nothing more than another commodity.
Instead, increase the value of working with your business – and the value of your product as a result.
That value can come from offering your customers the ability to place their orders online, thanks to a customized customer portal provided by the Now Commerce platform. Customers can log in at any time convenient for them, see all of the products associated with their customer profile, as well as their pricing, and place their orders.
Your team gets the order, reviews it, and then passes it to the manufacturing department to make and ship it. Your customers can track the progress, giving them insight into what’s happening and peace of mind that their order is being fulfilled.
This type of personalization doesn’t have to come from increased staff training sessions or repeating the customers name more often in phone calls – it happens automatically, every time they log in, thanks to technology.
If you’re already using QuickBooks, the last thing you want is another system for your office staff to manage and copy data to and from.
The Now Commerce platform doesn’t act as an entirely new invoicing system that you copy to QuickBooks – it simply integrates with QuickBooks, offering a bridge from your website to your business software.
Your customers are actually writing and generating their invoices, saving your team time by not having to generate invoices themselves and making the customers happier about their control over the process.
The customer can log in and place their order at any time, from anywhere with an internet connection. They need access to your website and the link to their portal that’s provided there.
Did I mention the whole personalization thing? The portal can be personalized, both for your customers in terms of items and pricing that they see and with your own branding details. Your customers generate their own invoices, saving you time, and it’s all in the name of better customer service.
The seamless integration with QuickBooks also means no double-entry, reduced errors, and an uptick in efficiency. Rather than needing multiple eyes at multiple steps to double-check each part of the order process, it’s a simple review, and then the order is passed along for fulfillment.
Many manufacturers struggle to justify the monetary black hole—er, the increasing expense—of growing their customer service department. Despite data and studies indicating how essential customer service is to customer retention, it's rarely seen as an investment that nets appreciable returns.
Offering exceptional customer service is becoming one of the key ways that top-performing manufacturing businesses seek to differentiate themselves from the competition, and as a small to mid-sized manufacturer, your competition is even more extreme. You don’t have the budget to double how much you spend on customer service each year; honestly, you’re not sure there’s much more you can do to improve your department.
Instead of looking for ways to spend more money on the customer service department, a small investment in order management software (like Now Commerce) can provide that differentiating customer service experience you’re looking for.
Your current customer service team can continue doing what they do best, helping solve any issues that arise with your customers. No need for expensive training seminars or hiring even more people – the current team will be able to do more in the same amount of time.
More than just managing placed orders, Now Commerce also allows your customers to see the status of their orders. No more calling the customer service team for updates, no more emailing back and forth, no more waiting for an answer—the customer can log in and see the latest update whenever they like.
If the customer wants another copy of the invoice, they can print it. They can see it with just a couple of clicks if they want to double-check what they ordered.
It’s improved customer service without your employees having to lift a finger.
It’s really that easy, and it’s really that effective.
Why haven’t you started using order management software yet?