Manufacturing is being redefined. No longer is service seen as something outside the realm of the manufacturer; rather manufacturing is becoming the provision of complete service over the whole product lifecycle. Providing top class customer service helps you retain those hard earned customer references.
Selling complex products is difficult. Multiple options lead to many possible variations with many rules determining which options can be selected with other options. Pulse PLM offer an Online Product Configurator that will allow your internal staff and external sales force to build up a product based on rules and prices set up by the site administrator.
The rules will determine any inclusions and exclusions for specific product structures, optional selections and will force users to only quote for product that can be delivered to a customer. Once the product is configured the Bill of Material can be exported to Pulse Order Manager or your company ERP system for manufacturing.
Information on your customer base and potential clients is invaluable but are you really making good use of that information. The Pulse Contact Activity and Campaign Management modules allow you to interrogate your customer data to answer searching questions regarding your customers and the products they own. Extract specific customer groups based on filters that you apply to the Contact Manager Analyser.
Target these specific groups via the functionality in the Campaign Manager module so send focused emails or text messages and then view the engagement rate via the various reporting and analysis tools. A great tool for your sales and marketing teams.
Manage any customer or supplier query in your business by recording, allocating, tracking and responding based on criteria that your business establishes. Too often queries coming into the business are not actioned because someone thinks that someone else is dealing with that request.
With the Pulse Helpdesk you can record any query submitted to the company, allocate that query to the correct department for follow up. Request processing are rules based and users are alerted if queries are not answered by specific dates. Importantly management can have an overview of the Helpdesk and set goals for improvement in response times.
How you respond to customer service issues can help you stand out from the crowd. Breakdowns and services requests will happen and the Pulse Cases Management module will allow you act quickly and arrange for a local service agent to respond if need be. Should the customer issue escalate to a warranty claim then the software will allow the customer to file a warranty claim and will allow your staff to process and make a determination on the claim.
Supplier reimbursement is also an important part of the workflow that is often overlooked but this can also be managed in the software. Determine root cause part analysis, report on customers, dealers and product fail rates. Link back to engineering and the Change Management process to improve the design and complete the product history by having all associated information available in the product Serial Number record.