More and more companies in the manufacturing industry admit that providing great customer experience is vital to their business success. 41% of respondents to the “2024 State of Manufacturing Report” by Fictiv consider enhancing customer experience (CX) one of their top three priorities for this year. Customer service, a critical element of CX, deserves particular attention from manufacturers because it strongly affects client satisfaction and loyalty.
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However, enhancing customer service is no easy task. 30% of manufacturers surveyed by Digital Commerce 360 rated customer service optimization as their critical business challenge for 2024 and beyond. In this context, the importance of customer relationship management (CRM) for manufacturing companies is higher than ever. CRM software consolidates customer data and streamlines the work of customer service reps, which is essential for manufacturers to drive better service.
This article covers the importance of great customer service for manufacturing companies and explores how CRM adoption can improve and streamline customer service.
Why is customer service essential in the manufacturing industry?
There are multiple reasons for manufacturers to focus on customer service optimization.
Standing out among competitors
The global manufacturing market has become much more competitive in recent years, and this trend is only gaining momentum as the number of companies constantly increases. In the U.S. alone, the number of manufacturing businesses has grown 0.7% per year on average throughout 2018–2023, as spotlighted by IBISWorld.
Manufacturers have to adapt to survive in the highly competitive market. Fortunately, producing higher quality products at a more affordable price is not the only way for manufacturers to become more competitive and attract customers. Companies can provide more qualified and personalized service and stand out to customers in this way.
Convert more leads to customers
Typically, the sales cycle in the manufacturing industry is much longer compared to other verticals. A company may have to wait months for a customer to research various offers on the market, compare available options, and make a purchase decision. Providing personalized pre-purchase support to opportunities and leads, a manufacturer can build stronger customer relationships and increase the chances of closing a deal.
Engaging customers after a sale
According to McKinsey, Deloitte, and other consulting firms, manufacturers tend to provide aftermarket services, such as product maintenance, modernization, user training, and other activities, to their customers more often than other companies. On the one hand, this provides manufacturers with an opportunity to enhance customer satisfaction and generate additional revenue, as well as track product use more accurately to improve their R&D. However, a company can capitalize on aftermarket service only if it provides great post-sales customer experience.
The benefits of CRM for manufacturing customer service
Here are the three considerations on how CRM software helps manufacturers streamline the provision of customer service:
1. Aligning customer service with marketing and sales
A CRM system can consolidate customer data from different sources, including a manufacturer’s website, mobile app, and email forms; process it and clean it of errors and duplicates; and store it in one central location. CRM can also generate a comprehensive profile of each customer based on this diverse data set.
Multiple customer-facing departments in a manufacturing company, including marketing, sales, and customer service teams, can access these profiles via a CRM interface to get a complete view of customer interactions and learn their preferences better. For example, before making a call or sending an email, a customer service rep can check at what specific stage the customer is along their buyer’s journey. A rep can also learn what offers the customer has received from marketing campaigns, what purchases they have made previously, and what the customer has already discussed with a sales agent.
This way, a service rep can tailor their communication and provide a highly personalized customer experience, thus ensuring overall better customer service. According to HubSpot’s report, “The State of Customer Service & Customer Experience (CX) in 2024,” customer service executives in companies where customer service and marketing are aligned are 69% more likely to say their customer service strategy was efficient in 2023. This figure is even higher (76%) in companies where sales and customer service are aligned.
Real-life example
The sales, marketing, and customer support teams at Fisher & Paykel, an appliance manufacturing company from New Zealand, lacked a unified customer view, which caused service quality issues. For example, the customer support team couldn’t check past customer interaction history and maintain efficient call center communication. This inefficiency and lack of personalization irritated customers and left them unsatisfied.
The manufacturer implemented CRM to unify customer data and make it available to all departments, including customer support. The agents can now view the history of past customer purchases, existing orders, and past customer interactions with sales and field reps to personalize communication across all channels. Also, because CRM is complemented by an AI chatbot that resolves 30% of queries, support agents can devote more time to complex cases, which also improves service quality.
2. Streamlining customer service operations
CRM software enables manufacturers to automate high-volume and time-consuming customer service operations and enhance their overall efficacy. Creating and updating CRM records, sending emails and chat messages, and assigning tickets to agents are some of the tasks that can be automated with CRM. By optimizing these and other routine activities, a manufacturer can free up its reps’ work time for more important tasks, such as addressing customer complaints.
A CRM system complemented by AI capabilities can provide even more advanced customer service automation. For example, a dedicated AI engine implemented in CRM can classify customer inquiries based on the analysis of historical data and automatically route them to the appropriate reps. In addition, CRM can automatically optimize work plans and schedules for field reps based on their competencies, locations, and workload.
Real-life example
Fantini Rubinetti, an Italian manufacturer of luxury bathroom faucets, adopted a CRM system to integrate and enhance marketing, sales, and client support processes. These workflow improvements fostered collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer support reps and enabled all teams to work more productively.
From 2021 to 2023, the company’s marketing team gathered a base of 30,000 contacts, which was used by sales reps to generate more than 1,000 deals. A revamped and optimized ticket management workflow also enabled the support team to handle 4,000 customer service tickets opened for these contacts and generate additional gross profits for the company.
3. Making the most out of customer data
The data consolidation capabilities provided by a CRM can help a manufacturer significantly improve customer data analysis, which can also contribute to better customer service. The most common case is integrating a manufacturing CRM system with a business-intelligence solution to gain more in-depth insights from customer data.
For instance, employees can use CRM tools to run customer satisfaction surveys and gather customer satisfaction (CSAT) data. Then, they can analyze these data to measure overall customer satisfaction with a company and satisfaction with its specific services, such as customer support. If a CSAT score is too low (it should equal at least 70%, according to Salesforce), employees can process these data with a BI tool to determine why that is so. This way, a manufacturer can get insights to help enhance its service levels and customer satisfaction.
Real-life example
The lawn and garden equipment manufacturer WORX adopted CRM software to revamp legacy customer service processes and enhance customer experiences across different touchpoints. The company additionally integrated CRM with CSAT software to manage and analyze customer satisfaction surveys more efficiently.
To this day, the company has already sent and processed more than one million surveys that fall into three main types. The first two allow WORX to measure customer satisfaction with its products and services and determine improvements required. The third type of survey is used by the company to assess the customer loyalty index and predict future customer retention rates.
Final thoughts
Customer expectations are rising across all industries, including manufacturing. Providing a quality product and an affordable price isn’t enough to keep customers loyal and satisfied, because they expect an outstanding experience as well. Improving customer service is one of the ways for manufacturers to provide better customer experience, and CRM technology can come in handy here.
A CRM system can help a manufacturer align customer service and other departments, as well as automate and streamline critical customer service workflows. CRM can also help a manufacturer enhance customer data analysis, which can provide valuable insights for delivering more personalized customer service.
However, ensuring the smooth adoption of such a complex system as CRM without any assistance can be challenging for a manufacturer. That’s why consulting with third-party CRM experts is preferable. Consultants can help manufacturing decision-makers choose between platform and custom-built CRM, implement the solution, and configure or customize it to ensure that CRM aligns with a manufacturer’s unique customer service strategy.
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