Revolutionize Your Customer Experience with Order Servicing
Advisory Director Jason Rieckewald-Schmidt shares how Order Servicing enables B2B commerce businesses and customers with order status efficiency and transparency.
While Artificial Intelligence is making considerable technological advances, one area that needs to be improved is how B2B companies service their orders. As consumers, you know precisely where your $30 food order is from when you hit the checkout until it arrives on your doorstep. However, with B2B commerce transactions, there is usually zero communication until your products are delivered or are past due. Then starts the painful (and antiquated) process of calling your sales rep or customer support directly to find out ‘where is my order’ (WISMO). It should not be this way. And it does not have to be with Order Servicing.
B2B Commerce Leveraging Old Tech
The most significant difference between a consumer and business buyer post-order experience is where the order status lives. For consumers, it is in the CRM. This is the primary place companies engage with their customers, target them for promotions, and track all their interactions.
For business buyers, it is never in the CRM but in their ERP. While the ERP is powerful at fulfilling orders, most are decades old and had no concept of personal emails, let alone mobile devices, when they were set up. ERPs are about fulfilment, but in 2023, customers will seek deeper engagement from the B2B companies they work with.
Unnecessary Manual Layers
But not all companies. I recently heard about a vast Health Life Sciences company that removed ERP access from their sales reps. Instead of giving access to critical data that can help solve customer issues faster, they added a new wrinkle of sales reps calling service reps to have them look up order status in the ERP.
So, this company is taking their most expensive channel (sales reps) and making them call other employees (service reps) to find out where a customer’s order is. I was shocked to hear a sales leader was implementing this because he did not want his team to have to look up data in the ERP. So, he would rather add additional costs to the post-order process than give access to data that would increase customer experience and reduce the cost of serving. It blows my mind.
Welcome Order Servicing
The good news is that the solution is simple: bring order status changes and updates into the CRM and then use that data to:
- Engage with customers
- Inform sales and service reps.
This is what we at RafterOne are calling Order Servicing.
While there are great applications for managing an order (e.g., Salesforce, Kimbo, Esker), Order servicing is different. Instead of doing ERP functions like split shipments or returns in the CRM, Order Servicing:
- Integrates your CRM with your ERP for order status updates.
- Sends out automated emails to customers.
- Brings order status into the CRM for better access and faster responses.
Benefits of Order Servicing
By simply bringing in order information such as status or expected delivery date into your Salesforce CRM, you will:
- Reduce cost to serve.
- Improve customer experience.
- Scale a solution that helps you grow your business.
All these are ‘unlocked’ once you grant your shared order visibility with your customers.
Is Order Servicing Right for You?
Now, how is order servicing suitable for your company? Here is a straightforward question that can help as you consider: Do customers have to call or email sales reps or customer support to get the status of their order? If the answer is yes, then it would be worth investigating what it would take to add Order Servicing to your existing Sales Cloud or Service Cloud application.
Next Steps
In the coming weeks, RafterOne will host several webinars to educate our customers about the power of order servicing. At the end of the online seminar, customers will have the opportunity to sign up for a free assessment detailing the cost and the next steps to bring orders into your Salesforce application and dramatically reduce the cost of serving customers. Reach out to your customer success manager or email Jason (Jrs@rafter.one) to learn more.
– Jason Rieckewald-Schmidt, Advisory Director