3 Ways to Make it Easier for Customers to do Business with You

No one sets out to create complicated processes. But it’s very easy, over time and through the use of complicated technology like SAP, to end up with friction-filled customer interactions. When it comes to ordering it’s crucial to simplify interactions, whether for off-the-rack products or when dealing with complex, configurable products.

“Complication creep” comes in over time through technology decisions, mergers & acquisitions, new features and functionality, and your own changing catalog of products and offerings. The first step is assessing the customer pain points and committing to fixing them. This often isn’t the clear-cut job of one person or team. It’s going to require a combination of customer care, sales, IT, and even finance or operations to address–but the result means more loyal customers, keeping your promises, and ultimately, increased revenue.

Start evaluating your organization by asking yourself questions like:

• Where am I complicating things?
• Is the lack of communication between systems resulting in duplication of work or data?
• How many clicks and steps does a new customer have to take to do business with my organization?
• Are we prioritizing the customer experience every time?
• Do the right people have the right information at the right time to keep our promises to our customers? 

1. Embrace the Shift Towards Modernization

Ensure your technology stack is working for you. Start by looking at where swivel-chair processes are involved internally as those are probably issues on the customer side as well. At a minimum, it’s critical to have user-friendly online platforms for placing and tracking orders. Your eCommerce solution should be a truly self-service portal with the ability to order your entire catalog–from off-the-shelf SKUs to customizable and configurable products. And the shopping cart should reflect negotiated account, regional, or volume discounts.

If that sounds like you have to connect to SAP to deliver an enhanced customer experience, you’re right! There’s simply no way to spend the time and resources to replicate and then maintain even a fraction of the business logic, product detail, and account information in a commerce solution. And if you can’t connect to your SAP data, you can forget about commerce add-on technologies, like 3D product visualization. None of these enhancements can function effectively or accurately without the crucial foundation of SAP data. 

Today, if a buyer doesn’t have a visual guide for buying, and if there’s inefficient data integration between key information systems, the buying experience suffers, succumbing to missed orders, errors, unclear pricing and more. Enable your organization to modernize with technologies like a 3D product visualization solution (ThreeKit) into your ordering process to power visual commerce..Have 100% confidence that the resulting order and BOM would comply with all SAP-specified order requirements, pricing, and buildability parameters with enosix. Deliver an unmatched experience to your buyers to not only sell more efficiently, but also reduce errors and accelerate your go-to-market strategies.

2. Ensure Accuracy to Drive Trust

Nothing is more frustrating than an eCommerce experience that doesn’t reflect your personal relationship with a company. Consumers expect coupon codes and loyalty discounts to be automatically and properly applied. B2B buyers expect the same–just with volume discounts, account-specific pricing, orderability per country or region, etc. As soon as your systems don’t support a seamless and accurate experience, trust begins to erode.

For many customer interactions, this begins with quoting. Two ways to make quoting a great experience for customers? Speed and Accuracy. When internal teams have immediate access to real-time data on pricing, availability, and configurations–all within their quoting tool, they are able to produce accurate quotes in record time. Instead of spending valuable time chasing down pricing variants or availability, sales and service teams can focus on revenue-generating activities, not administrative ones. 

Sonny’s is the world’s largest manufacturer of conveyorized car wash equipment, parts, and supplies. You can read their SAP-integration story here but in summary, Sonny’s has scaled a CPQ (configure-price-quote) solution with real-time SAP data so distributors and sales reps can access pricing and inventory information in just a fraction of the time.

“We are getting more accurate information out the door…and we’re delivering far better experiences,” said Tim Elhefnawy, GM & VP, Sonny’s Parts Division. “There’s continuing thought on how we can make it easier to do things.”

Ensuring accuracy not only builds customer trust and loyalty, but it protects margins by not having to honor incorrect pricing or delivery information. 

3. Make Your Mantra “Make it Easy” 

Mannington Mills, a leading flooring firm, had best-in-breed solutions from SAP to Salesforce. But as they leaned into SAP functionality for pricing management, order management, and ATP (availability to promise), getting that data into the system that sales reps used to service customers became complicated. John Campbell, Mannington Mills senior manager of customer technology strategy noted that around 50% of inbound calls were from sales reps requesting the latest pricing or stock availability–which was locked inside SAP.

Campbell was relentless in his efforts to simplify the experience for sales reps, customer care reps, and customers. “It’s about enabling the customer,” as he explains. “Every time a customer is enabled themselves to get the information, it means they’re not going to a sales rep. That gives freedom and more time for the sales rep, and more time for a customer service agent to service that customer, which has a powerful impact.”

Read more about Mannington Mills success in this SAP Insider article.

Data integrations are notoriously tricky because there’s multiple different architectures and paths you can take. And it can be easy to underestimate the impacts on customers. Ultimately, prioritizing a seamless customer experience not only differentiates your brand in a competitive market but also fosters long-term relationships that contribute to sustained success. Let’s talk about how unlocking SAP data in your customer-facing systems and applications can become your competitive advantage.