OnPoint’s team of product service veterans has 65+ years of experience in the manufacturing, insurance, warranty, service fulfillment and service administration technology verticals. The team is well positioned to help you deliver the best customer service experience possible in the industry.
A key area in any CX strategy is parts logistics. However it’s often an afterthought, even for manufacturers. Ensuring adequate supply of parts, especially parts commonly used for repairs is essential to improving the consumer’s experience with both a product and a brand.
As new technology emerges, customer demands are evolving at lightning speed, impacting logistical requirements for service and repair. Not having an adaptive and future-focused parts forecasting and fulfillment infrastructure can create severe strains on both ends of the service and repair process. Backordered parts or mounting storage and shipping costs limits speed to service, efficiency and profitability. Below, we’ll address the most important things to look out for related to parts logistics.
There are 3 can’t miss parts distribution concepts to address when considering a CX strategy.
Source: https://www.ameyo.com/blog/logistics-and-distribution-is-a-customer-service-business
Like it or not, customers are becoming more accustomed to having more information and flexibility in both ordering (and modifications) and delivery. Commons examples are order modifications and addons, saved checkout carts, and preferred delivery time windows. This can present a challenge to ensure the right allocation of resources. Having an experienced partner in this area can help tackle these challenges and minimize any negative impact to the customer.
Seasonality can be “make or break” periods from both a sales and logistic perspective. On the positive end, you may have increased sales. However, with this increased activity, you also run the risk of negative customer experiences if your logistics infrastructure is not scalable during this time. Preparing for service and repair is critical during this time and face the same logistical challenges. Customers will gauge their overall experience not only on the product or service itself but also by how quickly parts are replaced and/or service calls are resolved. Having a partner with the latest technology to help facilitate this process and can scale during peak seasonality is critical to creating a positive customer experience.
As mentioned earlier, customers are more empowered with information. Another critical piece is the method of communication throughout the customer experience from product delivery status to technician or replacement part arrival. Emails get filtered, calls get ignored, and direct mail gets tossed in the recycle bin. What’s the answer? Asking customers’ preferred means of communication and following up across multiple channels. Therefore, it’s critical to stay in constant contact with your customers through the process as well as ensuing your resources are allocated most effectively. We can help with this.
Improving the customer experience, good old-fashioned people skills are still just as important to attracting and retaining customers as they were 60 years ago. Ensuring staff has both parts knowledge and customer rapport is key. Find out more from organizations that rely on OnPoint Warranty to provide the highest levels of customer satisfaction and NPS of any provider: https://www.onpointwarranty.com/our-solutions/service-fulfillment