It takes more than just the product, branding or loyalty to retain a customer. In our technologically advanced environment, alongside the demands of social media, the abundance of information online and global competition, organisations need to work harder to delight the customer during transactions that they make.
Poor customer journey during transactions may have a negative impact on future sales or online reviews, as customers may be encouraged to consider an alternative supplier next time.
Loyal or repeat customers are increasingly expecting personalisation, clarity and interactions from brands, especially in a B2C marketplace. Therefore, an integrated ERP is important if you want to improve your customer experience and build a loyal customer base.
What is ERP?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a software tool that brings together various components of your business. All-in-one systems can include functions such as inventory control, purchasing, production scheduling, accounting, operations, customer relationship management etc. An integrated solution would allow you to streamline processes, manage the business more efficiently and provide you with access to better business intelligence. ERP can also help with the management of customer expectations better and improve relationships, not just with customers but suppliers too.
Managing expectations
Sales and customer service representatives are the frontlines of your business and are responsible for ensuring that the service or experience the customer receives is high quality and that if not, it is rectified as smoothly as possible. They are in a better position to do this if they have all of the information at hand. ERP with built-in CRM provides this - it means that when they answer a call from a customer, they can see issues that the customer has contacted your company with before, the status of an order as well as information related to deliveries. They can easily get to the bottom of things that might have gone wrong and ensure that they are rectified, or they can simply just relay information to the customer. This is managing your customers' expectations at its very best.
Meeting customer demands
In order to delight the customer in this fast-paced environment, you need to be able to deliver what the customer wants, when they want it. If you don't have a product available or aren't able to deliver it on time, you will be punished, with your customer turning to your competitors. Luckily, ERP can help you manage your inventory and resource planning better. By having accurate inventory information, it can help plan production orders or purchases in advance, so you can better meet the needs of your customers. You can also better manage your staff, because you will be able to see orders coming in, ensuring that you have enough employees available to deal with packing and delivering goods at busy times. Instantly, the risk of upsetting your customers with late deliveries or unavailable products is reduced.
ERP is an extremely beneficial tool for any business, helping you run efficiently and delighting customers during every transaction they make with you. If you need any advice about streamlining your processes, contact us at WinMan ERP today.