Customer service has always been a differentiator in distribution. Strong relationships, knowledgeable teams and responsive support remain incredibly important. But what customers consider good service is changing.

Sometimes, the best customer service is simply making it easy for someone to find what they need without having to ask.

Customers increasingly expect access to information on their own schedule. They want to check an order, find an invoice or review account information without having to call their sales representative, send an email or wait for someone on your team to respond.

For distributors, that shift creates an important question: How much can your customers accomplish on their own?

Self-Service Is Part of the Customer Experience

A customer portal should be more than another place for customers to log in. Done well, it becomes an extension of the service your organization already provides.

Think about the routine questions your teams receive every day.

Where is my order?

Can you send me another copy of this invoice?

What did we order last time?

Is this product available?

Can I access information about my account?

Each individual request may only take a few minutes to resolve. Multiply those requests across dozens, hundreds or thousands of customers, however, and they can consume a significant amount of your team’s time.

Providing customers with convenient access to frequently requested information can make those interactions easier for everyone involved.

What Information Are You Giving Your Customers?

The first step toward better self-service isn’t necessarily adding more technology. It’s understanding what customers routinely need from your organization.

Depending on your business and the systems you have in place, a customer portal may provide access to information such as:

• Order history and current order status
• Invoices and other account documents
• Product information
• Pricing and availability
• Shipment and tracking information
• Account details
• Frequently requested documentation

The right mix will vary by distributor. The important part is identifying which routine interactions can be handled quickly through self-service and which are better served by direct interaction with your team.

Self-Service Doesn’t Mean Less Service

There’s an important distinction here.

Providing customers with more self-service capabilities isn’t about removing people from the customer relationship. It’s about making your people available for the conversations where their knowledge and experience matter most.

If a customer simply needs to check the status of an order, they may prefer getting that information immediately through a portal.

If they’re trying to determine the right product for an application, resolve a complicated issue or discuss a larger business need, that’s where the expertise of your sales and customer service teams becomes valuable.

Good self-service creates room for both.

The Operational Benefit Behind the Customer Experience

Customer portals aren’t only a customer-experience tool. They can also be an operational-efficiency tool.

Every routine request that customers can handle independently is one less manual task for someone internally.

That can mean fewer emails to process, fewer phone calls for basic information and less time spent searching systems for information that could have been available directly to the customer.

For distributors facing ongoing pressure to increase productivity without continually increasing headcount, those small efficiencies can add up.

Instead of spending time repeatedly answering transactional questions, employees can focus more attention on solving problems, supporting customers and creating value.

Your ERP Should Help Make This Possible

Effective self-service depends on reliable information.

A portal is only as useful as the systems and data behind it. Customers need accurate, current information, and internal teams need confidence that what customers are seeing reflects what is actually happening within the business.

That’s where an integrated technology environment becomes important.

When customer-facing tools are connected to the systems distributors already use to manage orders, inventory, financial information and other operational data, self-service becomes part of the larger business workflow rather than another disconnected system employees have to maintain.

For organizations using Infor CloudSuite Distribution, the broader goal should be to make the information already flowing through the business more accessible and useful to the people who need it.

Start With the Questions Your Team Answers Every Day

You don’t have to rethink your entire customer experience overnight.

Start by talking to your sales and customer service teams.

What questions do customers ask repeatedly? What information are employees constantly pulling from the system and sending manually? What requests take up time without necessarily requiring someone’s expertise?

Those questions can reveal some of the best opportunities for self-service.

Technology should make doing business easier, both for your customers and your employees. Giving customers access to the right information, at the right time, is one way distributors can improve the experience on both sides.

NSA Computer Exchange helps distributors evaluate and optimize the technology supporting their day-to-day operations, including Infor CloudSuite Distribution and the solutions that connect to it.

To learn more about how your technology environment can better support your customers and your team, contact NSA at solutions@nsacom.com.

NSA, your partner in the distribution space.