While customers have always been at the center of business operation focus, the customer experience journey is newer jargon that didn’t emerge until the 1990s when businesses could track more customer data than ever before, thanks to the internet. Suddenly, there was a wealth of access to data tracking customer actions, interactions, purchases, and more.

Today, companies rely heavily on the customer experience journey, and investing in customer service yields a high return on investment. Investing in the right ERP software solution is a prime opportunity to increase operational efficiency and enhance customer loyalty. Here’s why.

Always-On Communication With AI-Enabled ERP

According to a study by Deloitte, 92 percent of organizations that view customer experience as a differentiator offer multiple contact channels. With artificial intelligence (AI) comes new ways of retrieving information through voice and text-enabled chatbots. Chatbots can answer and even predict customer queries, automating customer service to free up resources in the business. For example, sales managers can make inquiries such as stock availability around the clock and from across the world, during standard work hours or not. As a result, customers can expect always-on service delivery.

Last year, “Ken the bot” was introduced as part of SYSPRO’s new ERP software solution, aimed at helping manufacturers and distributors to automate and streamline processes and information through natural conversations. “Ken” lets organizations expose certain business functions to their Operators, Customers, and Suppliers over everyday channels, conveniently surfacing information and performing actions from anywhere, at any time.

Human Interaction Is Still the Core

AI and machine learning enable quicker analysis and decision making, by learning from the past through the application of algorithms and statistics to historical data. These patterns reveal trends and predict future outcomes, resulting in actionable insights for real people to proactively manage customer relationships. Because although chatbots allow for a level of flexibility and always-on customer access, they won’t replace the human element. Human interaction should still be at the core of your customer relations strategy.

Customers Want It All, And Faster

Whether you operate a small-scale factory or a large-scale multinational network, a vital part of improved customer experience is the ability to have visibility across your entire supply chain. With this visibility, you can offer customers quicker response time and access to products where and when required.

ERP software solutions allow you to connect and monitor every facet of your business. It can assist with the reduction of planning cycles, timely delivery of products, maintaining minimal on-hand stock, enhancing production scheduling, and automatically generating and managing purchase orders. This means companies that can deliver a better product to market faster gain the competitive advantage. Businesses that can anticipate demand as well as build and participate in strong supply chains all have a substantial edge over those that do not.

Customers Want Real Change

According to Nielsen’s recent global sustainability report, 81 percent of respondents feel strongly that companies should help improve the environment. Customers are now demanding that manufacturers enter the circular economy, supporting the reuse of resources and decrease in waste. In the circular economy, each end-of-life product becomes a new resource rather than being discarded. It recognizes the value of waste items, repurposing them as alternative resources that can be used again and again in a circular goods cycle.

With customers demanding that companies now operate according to a bigger purpose, the practice of sustainability therefore also impacts the customer experience journey. Sophisticated technology such as ERP software solutions should be used to store and converge all types of operational data to optimize the green outcome.

Integrate An ERP Solution With PositiveVision

Customers expect always-on communication, product visibility, and a business to be underpinned by purpose. Customer expectations and business strategies have certainly changed over the past ten years, but the good news is that the right technology is available to address their unique needs and deliver on the end-goal.

Ultimately, your customer experience strategy must integrate ERP software solutions in order to offer your customers a seamless experience, not just an end product. That’s where the experts at PositiveVision come in. Let us help you reduce inefficiencies and costs and increase productivity and profitability by finding the perfect ERP software solution for your business. Talk to one of our experts now to find out how.