Improving the Manufacturing Customer Experience
When developing your B2B customer experience strategy, don’t confuse manufacturing customer experience with manufacturing customer service. The customer experience embodies every touchpoint the customer has with the brand. It’s the entire journey, from first becoming aware of the brand to requesting help after the sale. Manufacturing customer service refers only to the experience after the sale.
So, focus on the entire experience and begin improvement by centering the customer in all efforts. During B2B customer journey mapping, identify all sources of friction and eliminate them to the extent possible. The best customer experiences are the smoothest!
Start with a customer-centric approach
When assessing the components of the total customer experience, it pays to take a customer-centric approach. According to Deloitte and Touche, customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable.
From designing the initial experiences to reacting to feedback keep the customer front and center. This means making sure front-line employees are empowered to resolve problems, leadership remains customer focused, and the KPIs you measure resolve around customer experience.
Remove friction from product search
Are your products readily searchable? Search isn’t limited to finding your product on the internet. What happens once a visitor arrives on your page?
Can they easily search for your products by category, SKU, description, or even by the problem they solve? The larger your product database, the more imperative it is to remove friction from the search process.
Make sure search boxes are located prominently at the top of the page. A search auto-complete function reduces the number of keystrokes the searcher makes while fuzzy search helps when words aren’t spelled correctly. Smoothing search gets the customer experience off to a good start.
Offer complete product information
Once a product is located, does the website supply accurate and complete product information? Integrating your eCommerce website with a product information management (PIM) solution or your enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution reduces the chances of incorrect information being displayed. If your products are configurable, can this be done online? The more you allow the customer to self-serve, the better their impression of the experience.
In addition, potential customers appreciate transparency in stock levels and ERP integration makes this possible. By reducing backorders, you reduce the frustration a buyer feels when they finally find a product and place an order only to discover the item is on backorder.
In addition to product quantities, make product data sheets, specifications, user and installation guides, MSDSs, and other frequently requested information available online. If customers or leads call or email asking for information, make sure that information is available online going forward.
Automate processes
How hard is it to get a quote from your company? Once a potential customer has a quote, is it difficult for them to place an order?
Improve the customer experience related to the RFQ and QTC processes by automating them. Allow customers to request quotes online. An eCommerce platform built for B2B should be able to combine a pricing engine and a workflow automation tool to create quotes automatically. The same goes for the QTC conversion process.
Automate your onboarding and remove another source of friction to improve the overall customer experience. The more you automate, the smoother the process, and the better the customer experience.
