- Elisha Kasinskas
- |
- November 09, 2015
Read our four valuable tips for in-plant printers (below), for providing a customer-centric online experience. By making the process intuitive and flow the way your customers think, you'll create a great sense of customer service – before an order is even placed!
Online Orders and the Online Experience
Online ordering is a business-building service that you can offer. Your first touch online can be customized, personalized and automated. The tools are here. They are cost effective. They reduce your in-plant's and your customer's expenses.
By 2017 it's projected that 50 percent of all print orders will be online. That is a low number when you could receive up to 90 percent of your orders online today. It is happening for others, and it can happen for you, too. Become the first place your customers think of when doing business.
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4 Key Tips for Providing a Customer-Centric Online Experience:
1. Spend time observing your key customers in their space. Every good sales or service professional spends some time in the customer's office. Pay attention to how they work. What is their process for completing an order? How many people do they consult to get an order from concept to purchase? Observe these key activities closely. Draft an outline of their order process and discuss your findings with them. Strive to understand what they go through to get an order to you.
2. Examine your order needs. Every shop has modifications to equipment, substrates, approaches, software, people, projects and processes. These modifications can affect what you need to know at order time to achieve optimum efficiency. What do you wish you knew about your customers and their orders? You can better manage when you understand profitability of each type of product or service and whether that profit margin is increasing or decreasing based on volume, frequency and complexity of the order. A best in class system will provide the data you need to improve.
3. Begin with the end in mind. Great project management is a backward process. Start with the end product described in your imagination. Then, move backward through what it takes to get to that end point. When you design ordering automation, envision each step in the process. Back up to order entry; what do you need to know to provide a smooth workflow through order completion?
4. Build for an intuitive feel. A maximized automated order is intuitive; the person placing the order does not have to think about where to go next. You have intuitively automated the next answer in their mind to be the option in front of them. The flow suggests and captures the most likely next information.
By removing barriers for your customer, you make it easy for them to work with you.