The Business Guide To Enhancing Customer Experience Through Technology

We are all well aware that creating a great customer experience is how we ensure the future of any business.

Happy customers pay on time, purchase more products and provide references. We have to look beyond traditional ERP and CRM to ensure we are using technology to provide the ultimate enabler to help us better manage the complete customer experience, including:

• Call Centre
• Sales
• Service
• Marketing
• Education
• Returns and warranty
• E-commerce

In today’s digital age we are all transacting, every day, through multiple digital channels. Our customers are finding multiple different ways to transact and to purchase our products and services. Mobility is key!

So too is ensuring that our business understands customers and their buying journey. Customers want choice – provide it to them and provide your customer with an outstanding buying and delivery process to get repeat customers.

So how do we make sure that we add value to every single customer interaction through the right technology?

Technology for customer experience: Enhancing the customer journey

Technology can help us better manage the customer buying journey through CRM, e-commerce, analytics, artificial intelligence, IOT and back office ERP integration.

ERP Solutions are a must-have – managing financials, supply chain, cash flow and manufacturing is critical. There is massive potential in the ERP space to improve customer interaction and satisfaction, cash flow and supplier engagement. ERP is the starting point, now take that ERP information, integrate to a full customer experience solution and complete the picture with end-to-end delivery of value for your customers.

End to End Customer Engagement: What Are the Key Aspects?

Achieving true competitive advantage requires a seamless connection between front office engagement tools and back office operational engines across several key categories:

1. Managing the Customer Buying Cycle

Most customers start the buying journey online. Whether your business operates in a B2B or B2C environment, it is highly likely that the buying journey starts with an online search for information. You must track the customer journey and provide meaningful information and content for your prospective customers. Helping your prospective customers navigate quickly and easily to get the information they want is critical, as is educating your customers with fresh, relevant content.

2. Digital Asset Management

Your business will naturally be building a wealth of digital assets. These assets will need structured management, strict version control and regular updating to ensure consistency across digital channels.

3. Omnichannel Order Intake

Utilising an omnichannel model allows your customers to engage with you through their preferred buying process. This includes e commerce, click and collect, point of sale, direct ship or traditionally shipped warehouse orders. The goal is to make it easy for your customers, whether business clients or retail consumers, to buy from your organisation.

4. Shipping Operations and Delivery Fulfillment

Tracking shipping and delivery allows you to provide your customers with real time updates on shipping times, delays and back order status. Ensuring on time in full delivery while keeping accurate real time data on any delays allows you to keep customers informed for better overall customer service. Commercially, quicker delivery times and happy customers shorten the entire quote to cash process.

5. Service and Warranty Management

Complete the delivery and customer feedback cycle by managing the service and warranty components of your customer engagement. Ensure your support team has access to customer warranty details, historical service issues, resolution timeframes and relevant customer feedback.

6. Front Office and Back Office Integration

A focus on front office customer engagement relies entirely on real time integration to back office ERP solutions. We want real time data to flow between ERP and CRM or customer experience applications so that we can make accurate operational decisions. Critical information about stock availability, customer price lists, sales orders and manufacturing lead times needs to flow seamlessly between the front office and back office.

7. Big Data and Predictive Analytics

Through various digital channels, your systems will collect massive volumes of data that need to be analysed for better decision making. Data analytics from multiple data sources to provide meaningful information is critical to corporate success.

8. Personalised Customer Experiences

Customers expect a highly personalised experience. The world is moving away from purely shipping products and towards a world of service through every aspect of the customer journey. Use data analytics to provide your customer with personalised service, offering regular updates on shipping times, new product updates and digital assets to educate your customer.

Conclusion

Today’s technology solutions help you put your customers first, no matter what business you are in, from e commerce and retail to manufacturing, services, medical, healthcare and more. If you want to learn more about transforming your business with technology and getting closer to your customers, you can download the official SAP guide to customer engagement.

Want to receive a demonstration of how SAP Customer Experience can help you put your customer first? Contact us on 1300 045 046 or email [email protected] today.