Better customer service means never standing still
Sales processes have evolved with time and technology. Nowadays, customers seeking product information almost always use the internet. We have countless visits to our website from people seeking information but we don’t get any real insight into what they’re looking for or how we can help them. Therefore, our pilot concentrated on finding proactive processes to discover the identity of potential customers and their projects to shed light on how we can help.
One example of this is in Norway where we have established an Industrial Automation ‘inbox’ which encourages our customers to communicate with us. We monitor it and follow up questions or product queries. And of course customers that are familiar with our web-ordering system will know that we’ve all put in place facilities for leaving email messages for our engineers via the homepage.
Also, by enhancing our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, we have managed to improve efficiency. Customer queries are recorded so that if they call back later, any member of the Danfoss customer service team will understand what the issue relates to.
An integral aspect of the pilot was a customer perception study, which highlighted the values that are most important to our customers. Product price, quality, service and support from the supplier all emerged as crucial competitive parameters. This gave us insight into how our customers see Danfoss and how we can live up to their highest expectations. We have also channeled some resources into high level training for our sales engineers.
All of our sales engineers now know the new processes and we can ask directly how they are working in each country. This lets us take the best practices and streamline them – so we can “speak the same language”.
By Joakim Johansson, Regional Sales Director