Customers don’t just want a professional tone and prompt responses to their emails and messages. They expect their products to be in stock when they need them. They want fast shipping and exceptional quality control, and generally won’t tolerate unnecessary delays.
As a result, proper inventory management is crucial to the customer experience. The best support in the world can’t replace poor inventory management, but if you get this aspect right, it could be plain sailing from there.
Constant Stock of In-Demand Items
Strong inventory control starts with customized inventory management software. RealSTEEL™ tracks your inventory in real time, from the moment the raw materials enter your warehouse to the moment they hit the production line.
It tracks weights, yields, dimensions, and other key attributes, but more importantly, it ensures you have the stock you need to accommodate current demand. Using demand forecasting, the software can even predict future demand, allowing you to increase orders and prepare accordingly.
Fewer “out-of-stock” notices mean your customers can get what they need without delay. Your support team won’t be left scrambling to contact customers after a product unexpectedly runs out of stock, and you can stop fielding endless questions about when you’ll get more stock.
Faster Fulfilment
Every second counts in the warehouse. A fully optimized layout backed by expert inventory management software will streamline the storage, picking, packing, and shipping processes. No bottlenecks. No delays.
You can pack and ship quickly, ensuring the customer gets what they ordered well within the estimated delivery timeframe. In the modern world of same-day and next-day delivery, customers expect rapid delivery timeframes. While some of the process is out of your control, it all begins at your warehouse and relies on your inventory management.
Long-Term Customer Relationships
Inventory management builds stronger customer relationships by reducing obstacles in the ordering process. Competition is fierce in the steel and metals sector. If your shipping process is painfully slow and customers are constantly met with delays, they’ll eventually look elsewhere.
If they get what they need every time, never have to wait too long for a shipment, and receive excellent customer support when needed, you’ll have a customer for life.
To improve the customer experience, you can integrate CRM features into your ERP software. The ease of integrating CRM is one of the reasons why RealSTEEL™ uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It means you can offer a more personalized experience, as well as cross-selling, upselling, and subscription features.
Error- and Delay-Free Deliveries
Picking and shipping the wrong item or missing key requirements can cause immense frustration for your customers, delaying their order and potentially driving them to one of your competitors for future orders.
By using basic spreadsheets and other traditional methods, you’re relying on messy, cluttered, and error-prone processes.
With proper inventory management, efficient warehouse management, and sales-quoting integrations, you can eliminate most of these mistakes. ERP software tracks all items, automatically collects data, and includes exact customer specifications and advanced comment management to prevent order and processing issues.
Improved Customer Support
The inventory management features used in ERP software like RealSTEEL™ make customer support significantly easier. Your representatives will have easy access to all of a customer’s open cases, active orders, and contact details. They don’t need to direct them to different departments or disappoint by providing vague, unhelpful information.
It’s a unified platform. So, rather than keeping your customer support, sales, processing, and shipping separate, everything is connected, and employees from one department can see required information across the whole company.
As a result, your customers will get faster answers and more direct resolutions. It also greatly expedites the returns process and allows you to trace returned steel back to the original supplier. That way, if there is a serious issue, you can determine whether it’s isolated to a single order or applies across an entire batch.
A Personalized Experience
Every customer is different, and if you want to keep everyone happy, you need to treat them as individuals. Inventory management software helps with this process by collecting key data on each customer and using it to build a personal profile. It analyzes every order to identify a purchasing pattern, telling you when they are likely to order again, and even whether they will be susceptible to certain offers.
Using this information, you can tailor their experience and judge how likely they and other customers are to order products during a specific season.
Improve your Inventory Management with RealSTEEL™
RealSTEEL™ is a complete software solution built for the steel and metals sector. Our steel optimization software connects your entire organization to a single source of truth, greatly enhancing the efficiency of your operations and improving your customer service as a result.
Whether it’s metal fabrication software, steel nesting software, steel service center software, or inventory management software, RealSTEEL™ is an all-in-one solution that can take your business to the next level.
Contact us today for more information or to book a demo and see RealSTEEL™ in action.
