Providing good customer experience is the heart and soul of any online business. According to recent studies, approximately 90 percent of shoppers refused to return to an online store after bad customer experience. From an investor standpoint, it costs you 7 times more to grab the attention of a new customer than to retain an existing one. No wonder, 68 percent of marketers focus their time and effort on offering commendable customer experience.
It is extremely important to create a consistently good customer experience across all your channels to meet the expectations of your customers and expand your customer base. To accomplish this, you have to keep an eagle eye on the entire customer journey, for which you require transparency across your systems and seamlessness across your business operations. ERP integration will help you achieve this by seamlessly connecting backend and frontend operations, managing silos of data and driving accurate business insights to propel your business to untapped markets.
A state-of-the-art ERP integration helps you deliver fine customer experience, increases customer loyalty, and directly contributes to your company’s revenue. Here is a detailed account of how ERP integration enhances customer experience and helps your business grow exponentially:
- Enhanced inventory and supply chain management - An automated system like an integrated ERP ensures that the product is sourced and delivered in time. From production planning to managing labor, from flawless packaging to the delivery process, everything is handled by ERP integration. Your customer will not have to wait while you check the availability of the product he wants to buy because the information will readily be available in the centralized system. Furthermore, you will not fail to deliver in time. Proper ERP integration helps you strike a balance between demand and supply, thereby, eliminating the risks of underselling and overselling. Good customer experience – Check!
- Improved user interface - With ERP-integrated online store system, you can provide your customers an impeccable user interface and brilliant user experience resulting in increased conversions. Such seamless integration brings transparency in the flow of information, taking customer experience a notch higher.
- Access to real-time customer information – To achieve good customer experience, you need a system that churns out accurate customer order information in no time so that you can resolve issues, queries, requests, and doubts speedily. ERP integration works wonders as it unifies all the information into a single database. It helps you keep a grip on the market trend by walking through your customer journeys. In addition, you have the option of tracking and analysing your customer behavior, purchase history, and preferences. To put bluntly, it helps you offer great customer experience, retain existing customers, and make new ones as well.
- Analysing customer feedback and resolving complaints - ERP integration helps you keep an eye on customer service requests, its status, how the issue was dealt with, and customer feedback. You can leverage this information for overcoming future obstacles. When you know what dissatisfies your customer and you resolve it, standing out in the competitive market becomes easy. ERP integration not just helps you resolve an issue but it enables you to do it quickly and efficiently, thereby, offering your customers an excellent experience.
You will only be able to enjoy the above benefits if your ERP integration is done right. In other words, just integrating your web store with the ERP system is not enough. Doing it ‘correctly’ is the most important aspect of the exercise.
To get it done the right way, there are two major considerations:
- An ERP integration expert
- Tried and tested methodology
If you are looking for an is one of the leading systems integrators supporting complex e-commerce integrations with various ERPs, POS, CRM, Accounting, Mobile and Social Applications.
i95Dev’s methodology for ERP integration includes:
- Assessing your ERP system’s ability to integrate
- Being aware of the business functionalities
- Sound data management
- Securing all connections and end points
- Testing
- Validation
Nice article on ERP integration related to customer experience.