Customer Support Needs
- Out of the box Salesforce Service Cloud can manage typical “where’s my stuff” questions but also address other areas where Discrete Manufacturers can have product related issues:
- damages, defects, returns (RMA’s) Service Agreements and Warranties.
- Discrete Manufacturers also can have “Lot” control issues. Since the Prospect is usually manufacturing a specific run for a customer based on requests, lot control can become an issue. With access to ERP data through integration we can track and manage this in Salesforce.
How can we Help?
- Base Service Cloud or even Cases in Sales Cloud can be used to track these issues, but like Repetitive Manufacturers, a Community can help to offload these inquiries to the customer directly.
- We can build out the basic Support features for these clients, but a great way to manage this is by building out a Customer Community. Using a community, clients could self-serve on order status, and could report quality themselves. If the Prospect works with big firms (Big CPG or Automotive firms), though, this becomes unlikely. We aren’t really going to be in a position to ask Ocean Spray to log into a community to report issues.
Questions to Ask
- How do you track issues with clients? Do you track these?
- Are you aware of trends? Declining sales by Product, declining sales by customer, etc.? (BTW, the answer is almost always “no”)
- Do you track Serial Numbers, Lot Numbers, Warranties? If so where is this data? ERP? Spreadsheets?