BUSINESS BRIEFING technologyreseller.co.uk 31 With Technology constantly evolving and the sector known for being the pioneers of innovation, historically the only way for companies in this space to grow, has been to continue to recruit more staff in all departments. The offering has been perceived as too complex, with staff required to educate customers on products and services, take them through the sales process and then deliver the after sales support. While this delivers the personal touch, it makes scaling challenging and while customers will need assistance on some occasions, in others they will be capable of and would actually prefer to navigate their way through the procurement process. Red Technology are helping technology companies achieve this, designing, building, and delivering powerful E-Commerce websites built on their award-winning platform, tradeit. Tradeit provides you with a formidable suite of tools to drive online growth, enhance customer experience and the way you service these customers. Strategic customer self-service tools are a fundamental part of these, freeing your talented staff up to focus on areas of the business where they are imperative. The importance of Self-Service When engaging with customers, while talented staff are great, there is a limitation to the amount they can do and they are understandably expensive. The perfect hybrid of quality employees and the right technology can deliver the best possible results. Allowing customers to perform their own actions where appropriate means they are able to engage with you at the time that is most convenient for them. So what does self-service look like for an IT customer Customer engagement is a fine balancing act. By offering customers the option of both speaking with your staff and allowing them to engage with you by placing their own orders and making their own requests, is a proven way of satisfying both of those needs. In this space E-Commerce has evolved to the point where customers can use advanced configurators, product finders and insite facets to customise their own solutions in their own time. This is beneficial to both the merchant and the customer as it means that orders can be placed outside traditional working hours. However if some of these actions can’t be completed online, then a quote can be requested for the appropriate member of staff to respond to. How does this affect your sales team Companies thinking strategically will always be on the look out to identify ways to aid their sales team to work more efficiently, allowing the business to prosper from more orders. The misconception with E-Commerce platforms is that they look to replace sales staff which couldn’t be further from the truth. Platforms like tradeit actually provide sales teams with a wealth of tools to make their jobs easier, while enabling the customers that can cater for themselves to do so unassisted. With tradeit, staff can use the platform to engage with customers, while seeing all personalised promotions, offers and product alerts the customers can see for effective up and cross selling, while also being able to manipulate pricing and see the margin they can work to in quote creation. So to recap why self-service is becoming imperative in this space All business decision making is influenced by improving the financial position of the company, facilitating more orders, offering an improved customer service, to improve sustainable competitive advantage within the sector. Identifying strategic technology, like tradeit, can aid growth through enabling existing staff to work more efficiently, rather than having to recruit more. Intelligent platforms will drive sales through personalised customer engagement, based their actions to maximise conversion, without relying on human intervention in the sales process. E-Commerce Portals also provide customers with all order information in terms of status and necessary financial information, meaning contacting customer service is only required if there’s a problem, enabling staff to be more productive elsewhere. Red Technology deliver class-leading ecommerce solutions for the IT industry via the tradeit ecommerce platform and range of complimentary services. For more information or a remote introduction call 01865 880800 or visit Ecommerce Solutions for the IT Industry. Technology Sector reaping the rewards with Self-Service functionality in Customer Portals CUSTOMER SELF SERVICE VIEW ORDERS, SHIPMENTS VIEW AND PAY INVOICES DOWNLOAD PRODUCT DATA, PDF’s etc PRODUCT CONFIGURATOR PRODUCT FINDER CUSTOMER-SPECIFIC PRODUCTS MANAGE USERS AND THEIR ORDERS REQUEST AND CONVERT ORDERS tradeit
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