Five ways to Create a Seamless Workflow between Customer Acquisition and Delivery

An issue that most companies will experience at some stage of their growth is a degree of separation between individual departments. This gap is felt particularly between sales and the order fulfilment team, where miscommunication can lead to big customer satisfaction problems. 

Comprehensive communication systems are the key to bridging this gap: now more than ever. When in the physical office space, data could be shared simply by turning around in your desk chair (or via a whiteboard in the break room), working from home has presented companies with a prominent communication deficit that some are still struggling to resolve.

Firstly, let’s define what style of communication system is most valuable to your company, based on the type of business model you use to get your products or services to market.

Direct sales-to-consumer businesses

Businesses where the sales teams are responsible for contacting consumers and selling to them directly have the advantage when it comes to communication. This is because the business model is built on excellent communication methods that get the consumer building a loyal relationship with your brand, which can encompass but is not limited to:

• Board meetings
• One-on-one meetings
• Phone calls
• Trade shows
• Emails
• Instant messaging systems

Because these companies are likely to have heavy focus placed on the importance of consumer relationships, the workflow issues are most likely to occur internally. Internal communication helps the sales team work with the fulfilment team to:

• Coordinate projects
• Manage customer expectations
• Create realistic goals and targets

Fulfilment-to-consumer businesses

Fulfilment to consumer businesses run slightly differently, in that the customer interacts directly with the product or service through a digital platform. Tracking of stock and availability is all done digitally, and all customer touchpoints have to display that information clearly.

Benefits: 

• Staff across every department can gain live updates on availability
• Customers get accurate purchase information immediately
• All company data is in a single place for quick and easy analytics, and accurate forecasting

Deficits: 

• Tracking stock digitally is more complicated
• Digital stock tools can often cost more and require more maintenance
• You need to find and implement a tool that works well for your business

No matter which model your business operates on, in both instances communication- both internal and external are some of the most important considerations to ensure your workflow is as streamlined and efficient as possible.

The problem with multiple communication channels

When communication is split up over multiple channels, it is easy for information to get lost in the mix. You may be sending messages to your teams using multiple email domains, Skype, Microsoft Teams, over Zoom calls, and WhatsApp all at once.

The best digital communication tools combine inter-departmental and consumer-external methods to encompass every interaction in a single place. Only then are all elements of your business synchronised and working in a streamlined way.

How Optimiser can help

Optimiser is a powerful CRM tool with integrated solutions suites that can be personalised to suit the needs of any business. Our expert team works with you to identify areas of your business where our solution tools can be implemented, and then the fully-assisted onboarding process implements the system into your everyday processes using instruction videos and guided walkthroughs.

Optimiser is the ultimate solution because it allows you to manage all your communications from a single tool/ platform- integrated with your operations tools for a unified business process

No matter what size your business is, these functions of Optimiser are vital parts of a seamless workflow that link your processes up from customer acquisition to delivery

• Analytics
  • Optimiser’s Analytics are a part of the integrated CRM suite that allow you to understand business metrics from across your company’s full scope
    • By analysing comprehensive records of historical relationship management, you allow your sales and fulfilment teams to create realistic timelines for customers, manage and surpass expectations, and balance nurturing with acquisition.
• Calendar
  • Cloud-based calendar allows teams to synchronise a schedule or project timeline across departments
    • By coordinating all team and project activity on a single shared calendar, you can enable custom groups of staff to view your calendar. Today’s View linked to calendar enables daily schedule management at a glance.
• Tasks
  • Comprehensive Task Management features allow managers to create, assign and prioritise tasks 
    • Reduce missed and duplicate tasks, enhance people resource management, and create task-specific chat rooms that allow targeted problem resolution.
• Ticketing system
  • Track conversations with customers across your platforms under a single ticket for seamless order fulfilment, complaint handling and contact profile building
    • By assigning all communications related to a specific query or issue, you allow your teams to: link one-off challenges to standing Contacts or Accounts, resolve new incoming queries faster and more effectively, and pass issues internally between sales and fulfilment teams without information being lost or misinterpreted.
• Cloud computing
  • Cloud computing is used by businesses to combine all business processes and data into a single unified store.
    • Once all business processes are being managed from a single store, you can discover company-wide analytics, create targeted and synchronous KPIs, and share data easily between departments.

Optimiser is a comprehensive CRM software company, providing businesses a customisable solution to their personal goals for sales, productivity, and growth. Powerful integrated modules include lead management software, a B2B sales toolkit, automated marketing suite and more for sale under a single subscription. Try Optimiser’s CRM software demo with access to the full Enterprise Licence FREE for 30 days, and find out how you can skyrocket productivity in just one month!