Have you ever ordered something online, and then when that something was delivered, you found that it was completely wrong from what you originally ordered? It could have been the wrong color, wrong size, or even the wrong item altogether. Having to first deal with the shock of opening up a box containing a totally different item than the one you’re anticipating, and then having to go through the hassles of either returning or exchanging it, is enough to sour anyone on the web store they ordered from. And if a business puts a customer in a bad mood, it’s pretty safe to say that the ticked-off customer won’t be rushing to return any time soon.
For any business, pushing customers away because you don’t fulfill their orders correctly is a mistake that you do not want to make. Fulfilling orders may seem like a simple enough idea, but it is an absolutely critical process. Getting your customer the product that he or she orders can mean the difference between a loyal, long-term client and a one-time-only visitor.
For salespeople and customer service representatives, being able to correctly enter the right customer information and view the history of a sales order is crucial for providing good customer service. An excellent tool for sales folks to use for viewing and organizing their customers’ sales information is Ignify’s . Built on Microsoft technologies, including the .NET framework, the Order Entry Solution is a Web-based portal that offers salespeople and customer service representatives complete visibility over customer order information, as well as the ability to enter data quickly.
The Order Entry Solution also fully integrates with both Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM systems. This integration allows customer representatives to pull information from the ERP or CRM system, enabling them to leverage the information present in the system to better understand the customer’s history, and quickly develop a sales strategy that would best accommodate the customers’ needs.
With the Order Entry Solution, a salesperson or account executive is able to easily look up and view customer and account history, and create new sales orders if needed. And if an order has not been processed, a representative can edit the information in the order, enabling them to add or remove items from an order, change the shipping method, or change the shipping address on an order or order line. The Excel-like interface of the solution makes viewing and editing especially easy by allowing you to tab in and out of fields, and key in products.
The Order Entry Solution improves customer satisfaction and minimizes order errors by offering salespeople and customer service representatives a comprehensive view of customer data and order history, and the ability to make appropriate changes.
Customer management is also enhanced by the fact that the solution can identify for you the customers who have earned preferential levels or VIP status, meaning that you can offer adjusted product prices to the customers who meet those special status levels. Because really, who would turn down a lower price if they can get it? When a store makes an effort to give their return customers tokens of appreciation in the form of discounts and special offers, those customers notice (and become more likely to return – which of course continues the sales cycle).
The integration of the Order Entry Solution with Microsoft Dynamics and systems also assists with providing customer-specific pricing. With this integration, any specific price lists or trade agreements that are set up in the ERP and CRM systems will be reflected in the Order Entry Solution. So for example, if there are particular retail or distributor prices that a store offers, the Order Entry Solution will have that data, allowing the customer service representative to again modify the product prices for customers to correspond with this information.
The in-built marketing functionalities of the Order Entry Solution also bolster a company’s efforts to reach out to both existing and potential customers alike. The instant alerts of an order that qualifies for a rebate, the cues given to salespeople and representatives of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and the ability to create and apply promotional codes and gift certificates are all examples of marketing activities that can help increase a company’s revenue. By utilizing these marketing capabilities to offer customers unique, attention-grabbing promotions, businesses up their chances of immediately capturing those customers and ensuring they come back.
As with any database or software that allows monetary transactions, ensuring that all the data contained within is fully secure is of the utmost importance to both the customer making an order, and the business that is conducting the transaction with that customer. The Order Entry Solution protects against potential problems by instantly indicating to a representative when an order isn’t kosher. For example, the system contains fraud alerts for orders, as well as alerts for other order issues, and it can even be parametrically set up to track advanced fraud. The system can also automatically put orders that meet a certain criteria on hold until they are checked and verified.
By using the rich set of order entry features and functionalities within the Order Entry Solution, and by gaining the valuable insight into customer transactions and history that those functionalities provide, salespeople and customer service representatives acquire a reputation for outstanding customer service that inevitably spreads to the rest of the company.
As business icon Warren Buffet once said, "It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently." Don’t chance ruining your store’s reputation in the five minutes it takes a customer to open a box and discover their order was processed wrong. Use the tools that will ensure your company’s reputation stays spotless.
Ashley Harbaugh is a Product Marketing Specialist at . Ignify is a technology provider of , and , software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify has been included as the for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.
by Ignify
