Top 10 Tips To Reduce The Cost Of Your Order Taking Process

Reduce the cost of your order taking process

Here are my Top 10 Tips to help move from a telesales order taking process to a 24/7 online customer engagement portal.

While every business is looking to cut costs and at the same time increase sales and improve customer retention, here are my top tips for what should be considered when you are looking to reduce the operational costs of your order taking process:

1. Price.
   The online price must be exactly the same, if not cheaper, as the telesales price that you offer to the customer. If customers feel that they can get a different deal if they pick up the phone, they will phone every time.
2. Product/Service Information.
   The information that is presented to your customers online must help the user answer every question that they may have. By monitoring the conversations that take place during the current telesales calls, you can determine the frequently asked questions that will need to be covered across your website.
3. Navigation.
   Make the online workflow similar to the order build workflow that your telesales process follows, it helps your users feel comfortable that they understand where they are within the order process. Should the customer be configuring a large order, this will be important if they need to save the order and return to it later.
4. Up selling and cross selling.
   The fact remains that the telesales operators do help to increase the average order value by occasionally dropping in associate or similar products into the conversation and this is especially poweful when new products are launched. The website must display these same products and services to the user at the correct stages within the online process.
5. Trust.
   By bringing the new website into the heart of every conversation and referring to the website during every call in the early days, this will build the trust that the website is there to help your customers 24/7.
6. Central Source of Data.
   The website can act as a central source of information for staff and customers, becoming the tool that everybody trusts as the oracle of customer facing information over time. Keeping the site fresh and up to date with news, events, deals, and product information will help staff, customers, and of course, all the key search engines.
7. Stock.
   When a customer places an order online, they must be informed of what will be happening next and when it will be happening. If your stock file is out of date and the order delivery does not arrive when the customer expects, the customer will either go back to picking up the phone or look for another, more reliable supplier. Of course, they will start their search for another supplier online!
8. Deals and Discounts.
   Publishing special, available from the website only, offers for products that you may want to shift quickly can easily be pushed to your entire customer base with ease and allow the recipient of the messages to easily forward to others within their organisation. Creating direct Social Media links will help spread the word that you have an offer available.
9. Delivery.
   The reason that this should be locked down is because informing the customer of an accurate date for delivery is of the utmost importance to them. Decisions around shipping are often made in the warehouse when the order is being picked and packed - this happens hours or days after the customer's order has been placed and despatch is often delayed as a result of trying to juggle orders. It can be an extremely expensive way to manage delivery if this decision is not locked down and fixed by the end of the online process. The reason that this should be locked down is because being given an accurate date of when the items will be delivered will be the least thing that an online customer expects to be told.
10. Automation.
    If any part of your current telesales order process requires human interventaion to make decisions, these must be thought through, ironed out and automated for the online process. The website must be able to manage and help the user through the process seamlessly and intuitively.

Summary

When you are planning the detail of how your customer engagement portal should function, I suggest that you home in on the detail of the workflow and figure out what questions need to be asked and answered by your business and your customer, and in which order. By starting here, you will be well on track to designing a process that will be intuitive to use and can remove the need for human intervention.

This, in turn, will create the perfect workflow for your new customer engagement portal and will help reduce your operational costs of having to key-in or re-key orders as the portal can be fully integrated into your back office system.

For more information on B2B and B2C online ordering and back office integration, or for assistance in planning your customer engagement portal, please contact me at richard.nash@gravit-e.co.uk to discuss further.

Richard Nash | Head of Business Development | www.gravit-e.co.uk | 07970 735 679 |

In my next blog, I will focus on recognising the value-in-use of your company website.