Recent Articles
A Superior Approach to Ecommerce Customer Service
Providing the best eCommerce customer service starts with having the means to offer immediate access to address each and every one of the customer’s requests. "In the world of Internet Customer Service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away." -American Banker, Doug Warner There are several capabilities to support quality customer service. Your staff should be able to enter and review orders, view the list of products purchased, record payments, manage contacts and update customer demographics, all within a single screen. This vital detail can help decrease the odds of falling into the massive customer service fall out that exists today. "In the U.S., the cost of poor customer service is $41 billion per year."-New Voice Media Notifications would be sent and alerts received every time a customer makes a purchase, and/or requests information, whether via phone call or email. With efficient customer management in an order management system, businesses can: Look Up Customers Quickly & Accurately A relational database containing the entire customer file could be queried in seconds, with options to search by name, email, phone, etc. Without
How to Maximize Your Inventory Turnover Rate
What is an inventory turnover rate? Simply put, it’s the number of times inventory is sold or used in a period of time. Also known as the cost of goods sold or net sales divided by the average inventory. Although a high inventory turnover rate signals strong sales, it can also indicate an ineffective inventory purchasing plan. And, since a low turnover rate implies fewer sales, excess inventory is right around the corner. High inventory levels are not ideal, since inventory usually has a return rate of zero, and it can open up your company to financial concerns if prices start to fall. You can learn how to monitor and calculate your inventory turnover ratio, but then what comes next? Adopting Automation for Efficiency Managing the retail supply chain from the point of purchase to management and delivery, has reached a point where automation is necessary to provide the maximum inventory turnover rate. As retailers begin to recognize where these processes line up, it becomes easier to understand how the business is affected by even small changes in processes and practices. The chart below underscores the need that midsize
3 Essential Steps to a Comprehensive Shipping Process
Your customer was shipped the wrong item once again and you are at your wits’ end. The hassle, time and money it takes to handle this could and should be avoided. Here’s how. Improving the Pick, Pack and Ship Stages Utilizing barcode scanning is the most efficient way to pick and pack your orders. Using a barcode scanner not only saves time, but ensures complete accuracy and efficiency. Not to mention that barcode data entry has an error rate of about 1 in 3 million. Automatic Shipping Calculations Tailor your company’s shipping policies to your specific market. Create your own customer shipping charge schedules for each shipping method based on actual shipping costs, order total, number of items, C.O.D. premiums, etc. Verification & Printing With an address correction and verification module, you can take advantage of reducing shipping delays and carrier imposed penalty fees for correcting inaccurate addresses. Print shipping labels, access tracking information and control shipping rates for batches and more. Integrating the shipping process to your OMS with the above ingredients will alleviate bottlenecks and avoid unnecessary manual
What is the Best Way to Manage Complex Inventory?
The last thing you want to do is disappoint a customer by posting an item for sale, when you don’t have the inventory to fulfill it. You need a clear and straightforward way to monitor your inventory levels across all sales channels. First things first. Having a centralized system to manage complex inventory will ensure you are publishing accurate available to sell levels to your sales channels. "93% of retailers rated system-wide inventory visibility as the most significant capability in executing their omni-channel fulfillment strategy, yet only 45% can enable it." -Retail Times With up-to-the minute status reports, you should be able to easily select and review orders by status, and that means all orders. These include: • Orders that have not been picked, packed, shipped or backordered • Orders awaiting credit card approval • Orders with a particular stock item Avoiding overselling an item is key, and you are on the right track to making sure that never happens again. One area this will come in handy for is kitting (aka bundling products). Whether you sell an item on its
How to Stay on Top of Omnichannel Orders
Your customers are everywhere, and with your experience in omnichannel selling, this is not exactly news. But, what you may not know is how this little morsel of information can send your business into a frenzy if you are not properly equipped. Creating an omnichannel experience for your customer requires a bit more than just giving them multiple channel options. When not managed properly, adding sales channels can create bottlenecks and cause for customer concern in your processes. “Consumers value speed, simplicity, quick responses to questions and reliable delivery, rather than worrying about whether they shop online or in-store.” - Economist Insights To be successful in an omnichannel environment, you need to be able to efficiently monitor sales and fulfill orders from all channels. Logging in and and manually updating multiple orders from several sales channels can be daunting. With optional features, you can manage as many as 50 different companies in one system. You can quickly switch from one company to another with just a few of clicks of your mouse or choose to share inventory across companies. All
Why Your Order Management System Needs to Do More
Customer loyalty greatly relies on how effective your order management system is. Responding quickly to your customers is a given, but what else can you deliver? An effective and streamlined OMS plays a pivotal role in your sales and delivery operation and gives you the upper-hand in customer service. “95% of leaders say providing a good customer experience is the top priority, but only 37% have the budget and means to implement ways to improve the experience.” - Forrester Research Study Discovering the ins and outs of how your solution can truly benefit you is the next step to success. The back-end order fulfillment processes are often seen as an afterthought when building a functional website. You want to be sure to focus on the ‘inside’ too when managing your orders. After all, customer expectations are dramatically increasing, and will only need to get stronger as time goes on. Processing orders can be overwhelming for all businesses, and even more so as growth comes. A comprehensive order management solution is more than convenient for a few reasons. When all features and