Standardized customer communication in service

Bundle all customer enquiries via social media, e-mail and telephone on a uniform platform

Central Challenges in Service for Mechanical Engineering Companies

Customer Enquiries in Service

Communication in Transition

Frequency of Customer Enquiries

Habits of the Customer

Customer Enquiries in Service

Are you the service manager of a mechanical engineering company and do you often feel overwhelmed by customer enquiries via various communication channels?

The goal of customer service is to guarantee maximum availability of your machine at the customer's site. A critical success factor for this is the efficient and professional processing of customer enquiries.

Customer enquiries usually arise when the customer has an acute problem with the machine or the machine needs to be serviced. In the first case the customer likes to use unusual communication channels or familiar contacts.

Communication in Transition

Traditionally, communication with the customer was by telephone or e-mail. However, the popularity of social media for customer communication in a corporate context has been growing for years.

This is also becoming apparent in the service business of mechanical engineering companies. Nowadays, the customer uses every opportunity to contact you or your service technicians.

Be it via LinkedIn, Xing, Whatsapp or WeChat - as soon as the customer knows a name or phone number of an employee, he or she is usually contacted directly in case of problems.

Frequency of Customer Enquiries

Difficulties arise not only from customer enquiries via the various channels, the high frequency of enquiries, sometimes outside business hours, creates significant challenges for the service department. In combination with a lack of qualified personnel, this quickly leads to stress and frustration for you and your employees.

This results in the risk that customer data is lost due to the non-transparent communication or that the concern is forgotten by the customer during stress.

Habits of the Customer

Another challenge is the customer's habit of using known contacts instead of sending the request directly to the service department. This leads, for instance, to service technicians being contacted privately in case of problems.

In this case, it cannot be guaranteed that the employee contacted has the appropriate expertise to solve the problem. As a result, the employee must forward the customer enquiry internally, which costs the customer valuable time and you personnel resources.

Revenue Driver Service

Free whitepaper on the digitalization of customer service in the field of mechanical engineering

Our Offer

Our solution helps you to bundle customer communication and customer enquiries via the various channels in one platform.

The customer enquiries are collected centrally and structured based on predefined rules. After receipt of the request, the customer receives an automatic confirmation of receipt.

The customer enquiry is additionally linked to the corresponding company to ensure seamless communication. Even if the customer changes the channel, the conversation remains associated with the company and the corresponding transaction and is assigned to the previous conversation.

Afterwards the customer enquiry can be assigned to the appropriate employee for further processing. The customer receives a short update that his request is being processed.

Transparency in the course of the customer enquiry allows the assigned employee to quickly familiarise himself with the problem. In case of ambiguities or missing information, the employee can contact the customer directly via the platform.

If the problem cannot be solved remotely, additional people can be added to the conversation.

Usually this is the service technician, who as a specialist is able to solve the problem.

The service technician, in turn, has access to the conversation that has already taken place in order to prepare for the customer and the problem.

Once the measures necessary to solve the problem have been determined, the service technician can plan the further procedure.

On this basis, the platform is used to coordinate with the customer.

Finally, all employees involved can upload the files and information necessary for the documentation of the service.

These documents supplement the history of customer communication and are available for future customer enquiries from the company.

After completion of the documentation, the customer enquiry can be closed, about which the customer is automatically informed.

Benefits

Service Manager

Orientation of customer communication to the needs of the customers
Uniform collection of data and information from customer service
Professional handling of customer enquiries
Increased efficiency in the processing of customer enquiries
Ideal distribution of customer enquiries to the available employees

Service Customer

Freedom in the choice of channel for contacting
Flexibility in the usage of different channels within the process
Fast and efficient processing of customer enquiries
Reliable planning and coordination with the service staff
Continuous updates on the status of the processing

SAP FSM Field Service Management Old World IBsolution

Service Technician

Access to the customer communication that has taken place
Insight into the service history of the company and the machine(s)
Consistent workload through optimized distribution of requests
Forwarding of customer enquiries in case of failure or illness
Service documentation can be attached to the customer enquiry

”Successful communication in service today is determined by meeting customer expectations.“

− Dirk Zimmermann −

Set yourself apart from your competitors and be one of the first companies to align your customer communications with today's customer expectations.

Simply complete the form and submit it. We will discuss everything else with you personally.

Your IBsolution Team