Pre-pandemic, the day-to-day use of a CRM for manufacturing companies in many sectors amounted to an expensive Rolodex: a quick way to look up contact information.
But the COVID-19 pandemic hit the manufacturing industry hard back in 2020. Businesses of every size and in every niche suffered major supply chain shortages—particularly companies depending on international trade—and social distancing requirements forced numerous sites to close their doors for months on end, if not permanently.
In the two years since the industry has recovered, some businesses are flourishing more than ever. How? Certainly, the pandemic has not lightened up, and thus neither have most of its accompanying restrictions.
Simply put, the past few years’ events have forced the industry to evolve, effectively changing the way manufacturing companies do business. Given that Industry 4.0 and the smart factory were already a significant rising force in the pre-pandemic market, we can see this evolution as entirely natural, albeit unexpectedly accelerated by a decade or more.
The obvious examples are remote sales and—when applicable—remote work. Sales reps had to find alternatives to face-to-face meetings quickly to continue consulting prospective clients, developing new business, and nurturing existing relationships.
But the key shift, as in virtually every industry, has been a greater-than-ever emphasis on customer satisfaction. Indeed, a seamless cross-channel customer experience and knowledgeable, personalized customer service are key competitive differentiators in a world where clients will readily pay more for a brand that goes the extra mile.
As such, the secret ingredient to many companies’ success has been customized CRM software. For manufacturing businesses at every scale, managing cross-channel sales efficiently and gaining deep insight into individual customer behavior empowers them to offer their clients a competitive, loyalty-building brand experience.
Just as with sales, production, and marketing, a CRM for manufacturing greatly benefits the workdays of your service and support team.
As we mentioned earlier, customer service has become a chief competitive differentiator in the post-COVID world. Digitally savvy and product-educated clients choose again and again to do business with the brands they trust—and that begins with exceptional customer service.
So, for instance, when a support technician has a customer’s entire history in front of them, it becomes much easier to identify potential issues. But naturally, quality service goes far beyond dealing with post-sale problems.
Again, the idea is to create a cohesive, omnichannel customer experience for your brand. Each interaction you have with a client, from every department and at every stage of the customer lifecycle, can be easily streamlined, tailored, and updated with live data to reflect a 360-degree view of your ongoing relationship with that client.
Furthermore, you maximize each customer’s lifetime value by learning their behavior and forecasting which new products and services they may be interested in based on repeat business, as well as identifying cross-sell and upsell opportunities, personalizing promotions for them, and more.
The marketing automation capabilities of CRM software for manufacturing make all of this even simpler. Want to offer a client a coupon to thank them for their loyalty? You can send one automatically at a customizable spend threshold. Did the coupon bring them back? Send them another when they haven’t purchased in a while.
All of this and more is possible with a customized CRM for manufacturing. If you’d like to know more, check out our CRM solutions for manufacturing!
