Posts in category: Business

Major changes are anticipated due to the manufacturing and retail business around the world. Disruptions in the social, economic, and demographic spheres made possible by technological advancements are among the strong forces causing this transformation. However, despite the rapid pace of change, equipment manufacturers need to focus more than ever on the service they provide to their current clients. Those who do will survive the emergence of this upcoming era.

To become a top product and service provider of the future, OEM brands and dealer networks must improve and digitize the customer experience they offer.

Online shopping has altered consumer expectations and behavior. The expectation that shipping would be included was the first clear indication. The prospect of quicker shipment times came in second. Both were requirements set by Amazon, which the rest of the market had to follow to have any chance of competing with the behemoth. 

As a result, Amazon has assumed the role of an industry leader and is on target to overtake UPS as the top shipper by the end of 2022. Amazon improved the industry, and as a result, it received the best incentives. However, there are some standard tactics that OEMs and dealers may use to improve customer service and make money from the transition.

5 Lessons From Amazon’s Customer Service

Constantly Aim To Improve

It’s our daily responsibility to make every key component of the customer experience a little bit better, says Bezos in a quotation that appears in the website headline for the Amazon employment board.

With a user-friendly website and a 92 percent customer satisfaction rating, Amazon caters to every area of the customer experience. With more than 304 million active customer accounts globally, Amazon is aware of the need to provide services that are user-friendly and promptly, compassionately, and in the customer’s best interest to respond to concerns. OEMs should work on their platform to serve their clients better and build an attractive digital customer experience.

2. Completely Inform The User

You should put upfront effort into initially understanding your clients for two reasons. By first showing consideration for customers’ requirements, you can reduce stress. Second, you develop a strategy based on the broadest information you can compile over time, provided by those same customers.

Once you have a strategy, you must put it into action, and the first phase of every plan implemented by Amazon customer care agents is to inform the client of the plan’s details. One of the key ways that Amazon stands apart from its rivals is by keeping its customers updated.

Amazon sends confirmation emails after receiving purchases and the second one with tracking information practically instantly. This happens even when there are no issues. So, the consumer is free to follow their incoming purchases throughout the entire path.

It would be prudent for you to follow in their footsteps by stating the procedures you intend to take to address any customer issues. Next, OEMs can ask customers if the outcome will satisfy their complaints after outlining the steps they’ll take. This final section is crucial. You should not be in the customer service industry if your goal is not to satisfy your clients.

3. Make It Easy For Your Customer To Stay In Touch 

Since more than half of consumers already use their devices to make e-commerce purchases, mobile commerce has passed the tipping point. Given the company’s enormous selection of products and categories, it is impressive that Amazon’s mobile-first strategy has become the industry norm. Amazon’s website’s search and categorization tools are slick and simple to use. The buying experience is convenient thanks to auto-fill, recommendation engines, 1-click ordering, and other features, which are crucial for today’s mobile shoppers. As you cultivate loyalty and gratitude by always keeping the mobile customer experience in mind, follow Amazon’s example and meet your customers wherever they are.

4. Do Not Fear Unsuccessful Experiments

Most of your experiments as a startup or expanding business will fail. That is how innovation is done. There is no room for improvement without failure. You could say that Amazon was founded on failure because of how many of its products and projects failed.

There were numerous unsuccessful marketing campaigns, A9 Search and Amazon Auctions, to mention a couple. Don’t be scared to experiment with new marketing strategies and take chances. Many will fail, but some will be a gold mine.

Take only calculated risks at the same time. For instance, if you redesign your newsletter, test it on a subset of your list before sending it out to the complete list.

Even though your OEM and dealer network might not grow to be as successful as Amazon overnight (or at all), the Amazon empire should serve as an example for companies of all sizes.

5. Construct A Course Of Action With An Anticipated Outcome

In all cases, a team member must develop a strategy to deliver results after learning about and comprehending the client’s issue. Ascertain whether the result will satisfy the client. Ask them what the outcome will be if not. They might not want to pay for the return freight, for instance. If you made a mistake with the order, that is not entirely unreasonable.

Even exaggerated stories about Amazon’s customer service have been circulated. Customers might, for instance, spend hundreds of dollars on gadgets, request a refund, and never really return the item.

That’s stealing! However, Amazon will permit some consumers to get away with that conduct. We’re not suggesting that OEMs need to fly that high. That’s not logical at all. However, it does demonstrate what Amazon will accomplish on behalf of its clients.

If you simply stay plugged into the Amazon solution, buy stuff and see how their promotions and marketing campaigns work, you’ll have a clear path to success.  Platform and customer experience success is easy to find online, and you should model much of what is possible over those that have led the way for years.

About EquipmentFX

Over the years, the services we offer have evolved to meet each client’s unique needs. We like to lead with our proprietary A3 assessment to really understand the gaps and opportunities. From there we can discuss follow-on services that we can customize together.

After each assessment, the two questions clients usually ask us are “Can you just do this stuff for us?” followed by “We have marketing people—how can we make them and our processes more efficient?” And sometimes we simply deliver the road map and provide support as needed.

At the end of any engagement, you will have a formal framework and internal audit process to improve your program or build a program from scratch to create more new customers and sell more to existing ones.
To find out more about the EquipmentFX A3 assessment, digital marketing, or technology consulting services, please contact us.

In the 1970s, when e-commerce was first developed, few marketers thought it would be a viable business model. However, the growth of the internet in the 1990s brought forth a new, digital method of shopping and searching for products for consumers.

According to the latest report on Global Equipment Aftermarket Trends from the newswire, The size of the equipment market is anticipated to increase by $3,220.15 billion from 2021 to 2022, representing a 10.3 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

eCommerce is becoming more and more popular. But where will they carry it out?

The three leaders in e-commerce and innovation are Amazon, Google, and Apple. Over the past three decades, these businesses have forged distinctive routes in the industry. But what can OEMs learn from these industry leaders to build a robust ecosystem, and how will this help the equipment manufacturers and dealers?

OEMs Are Becoming Aware Of The Massive Expansion That Digital Ecosystems Enable

With all these dynamic changes occurring, equipment OEMs are starting to see the need to assist and enable software innovators to create the most appealing products, deliver the best customer experiences, and hasten the growth of their top and bottom lines.

This new shift in perception is occurring for numerous reasons:

• Product Complicatency

Vehicles are at a turning point in their development to join the “smart computing edge,” becoming more and more software-controlled and software-defined, which forces OEMs to choose between complementary and core competencies and encourages the growth of partnerships and ecosystems.

• Expansion Of Reach

By enabling scalable communication between current partners and customers, digital ecosystems can expand the reach of OEMs. However, they can also give unidentified parties a way to collaborate and exchange ideas.

• Accelerated Growth

OEMs must change from being value-chain-structured companies that trade with well-known partners and add value incrementally to becoming a member of a faster and more dynamic networked digital ecosystem with revenues tied to digital goods and services rather than hardware.

This shift in perspective through openness, transparency, and a two-way dialog with OEMs regarding access to remote data and controls, access to in-vehicle accessories, and controllers possibly in the future, creates many opportunities for innovation and creativity.

Lessons Learned From Apple, Google, And Amazon That OEMs Can Use

The Method Used By Apple To Create A Successful Platform

Ron Johnson, the project’s main architect, understood that Apple was committing a grave error as it was ready to open its first physical location. While traveling to the pre-launch meeting, he informed Steve Jobs that the design was flawed. The corporation was shifting from a singular focus on items to a holistic lifestyle encompassing television, music, movies, and more, but the store didn’t represent that change. So they had to begin again.

A few minutes later, Jobs was the one to declare that they would be starting over with their strategy for retail. But, of course, it was entirely Johnson’s responsibility to make it happen, and what he delivered radically altered the retailing of technology.

OEMs must realize a significant distinction between making a sale and delivering an experience. There is a significant benefit to developing a long-lasting business where people want to spend their time, not just their money, beyond pop-up stores and marketing gimmicks. This is true even for eCommerce experiences.

Amazon: Try New Things, But Always Adhere To The “Two-Pizza Team” Rule

The work environment at Amazon is “experiment-friendly.” Start small if you want large ideas to succeed. The “two-pizza team” principle is followed by Amazon, which states that innovative ideas should be carried out by a team that can be fed with two pizzas. Internal testing was nonexistent within the corporation’s walls; instead, the goal was to deploy as soon as possible, even if it meant publishing a barely viable product.
If the launch is successful, Amazon doubles down on the initiative and launches it again at scale, enabling the business to identify problems with the initial concept quickly. This strategy is ideal for OEMs looking to break into the eCommerce market via a developer environment. OEMs can invest little and test their ideas most safely if they start with a small team of industry specialists and clear objectives. Then, when you achieve the desired outcomes, you might choose to scale up production and move forward quickly. Hiring tech specialists for consulting services can be a terrific approach to determining your ideal goals and building your developer ecosystem from the ground up while staying within the allocated budget if you don’t know where to start.

Google’s “Keeping It Simple” Strategy

Make the consumer experience straightforward. Undoubtedly, Google’s primary motivator from the beginning has been usability. A clear, uncluttered interface that serves a clear function is a search bar with a button to activate after entering the search term. The outcomes are also uncluttered. Everything is incredibly helpful.

Consider this question, along with many others of a similar nature: Are all those pages and pages on your website merely unnecessary clutter, or are they helpful to users in purchasing decisions?

Doing something correctly just once is insufficient to earn praise and, ideally, money. Therefore, Google is constantly looking for ways to improve, whether it’s the way its doodles are created and presented, a change to Gmail, or the advancements made in the machine translation of Web sites utilizing Big Data techniques. Institutional unhappiness with the current situation is the only way to maintain the improvement ethos. OEMs must decide what risks they should be willing to take to deliver incremental success especially when huge outcomes are what you’re chasing.

Today, all OEM’s have essentially a blank canvas from which to design their dreams, systems and outcomes.  If you’re curious about new solutions your customers are looking for, we’d love to chat!

About EquipmentFX

Over the years, the services we offer have evolved to meet each client’s unique needs. We like to lead with our proprietary A3 assessment to really understand the gaps and opportunities. From there we can discuss follow-on services that we can customize together.

After each assessment, the two questions clients usually ask us are “Can you just do this stuff for us?” followed by “We have marketing people—how can we make them and our processes more efficient?” And sometimes we simply deliver the road map and provide support as needed.

At the end of any engagement, you will have a formal framework and internal audit process to improve your program or build a program from scratch to create more new customers and sell more to existing ones.
To find out more about the EquipmentFX A3 assessment, digital marketing, or technology consulting services, please contact us.