Five Strategies for Turning Service Challenges into Opportunities
Machine and plant manufacturers are facing major challenges – especially in the service sector. But what if you could transform your challenges into opportunities? We will show you five strategies to turn support into sales.
You know what they say: the first machine is sold by the sales team, the second by the service team. A poor service experience when purchasing machines and components will drive your customers straight into the arms of the competition.
Aftersales service can not only help to strengthen customer loyalty, but also contribute to sales growth – which machine and plant manufacturers urgently need. Due to the ongoing lack of orders, manufacturers are increasingly pinning their sales hopes on digitalization and the spare parts business.
Using spare parts service as a sales driver: is it worth it?
The Chinese authorities already calculated ten years ago just how much sales potential there is in spare parts: if a Mercedes C-Class had been built using only spare parts at the time, the result would have been twelve times more expensive than a new car.
Your spare parts service is therefore a potential gold mine for new sales. The following five strategies will help you to empower your aftersales and service teams to generate more turnover.
1. Simplify identification
Spare parts are often buried in the depths of paper catalogs and manuals. If your customer cannot find the part they are looking for, it will not generate any sales for you. An important and simple step on the way to more service sales is therefore to simplify the identification of spare parts.
There are various methods you can use to support technicians and machine operators, including:
- A simple photo
- Interactive 3D models
- QR codes
- NFC solutions
- AI-supported part recognition
But before you develop any complex functions, try putting yourself in the user's shoes and ask yourself what do they need to find a broken part. Then consider which identification method best suits their needs and the data you already have available.
Only in the next step do you decide how you can further optimize and digitalize part identification and which tools and functions you need to do so.
Best practice: how to simplify spare part identification
Perhaps an exploded drawing in 2D format, which you can have created by the technical documentation department, is sufficient for your users.
- The problem: Creating exploded drawings is a complex process. The expense may be justified for a series product, but for one-off or small-volume machines it destroys all sales potential.
- The solution: Use the existing CAD data from the design department and a software solution with which you can automatically create 3D spare parts catalogs. This allows you to prepare spare parts information with little effort, even for small user groups, and offer every customer the same smooth search experience.
With a standardized cloud solution such as Quanos InfoTwin, you have all the necessary functions at your disposal. You can use it to create digital spare parts catalogs with or without 3D data and help people to understand their machines.
2. Check information density
A service portal not only simplifies the search for spare parts, but also enables your customers to obtain information about machines and spare parts. The challenge is to determine the right information density. Many manufacturers want to use transparent and detailed designations for spare parts in the spare parts catalog. However, the general rule is that less is more.
Of course you could simply transfer the ERP data to the service information system, but while the designation of the parts may be transparent, you are also giving your customers the opportunity to find the parts they need from other suppliers. A quick Google search for the part name often leads customers directly to third-party suppliers, whose fast delivery times simply cannot be matched by many manufacturers.
Make sure your customers can easily find their parts and have enough information to place an order in your store – but not so much information that they can buy from third-party suppliers instead.
3. Accommodate customer workflows
Once your customer has researched the part they are looking for, the next important step on the way to more sales is the ordering process.
Here too, it is important to put yourself in the buyer's shoes. Some customers cannot order spare parts straight away because they have to follow internal processes. The approval of superiors is often necessary or the order must be placed via the purchasing department.
Manufacturers with a strong customer focus are aware of this and offer the corresponding workflows, so customers can forward purchase-relevant information directly to their manager or the purchasing department to allow a decision to be made immediately.
So don't just add spare parts information to your customers’ shopping carts, but also to their internal workflows. This allows you to support users with their challenges and create a seamless user experience in aftersales, which is a guarantee for sales growth.
4. Offer convenience functions
Do you want your service department to stand out from the competition? Then take the services offered by successful B2C providers such as Amazon as a model.
There are numerous ways to make your service offering even more attractive and increase convenience for customers:
- Provide an order history or watch lists.
- If catalog users are often on the move, optimize your spare parts catalog for smartphone screens.
- Do your customers have time-critical processes? Then provide information on the availability of spare parts or delivery times.
- With delivery tracking, you can optimize the post-purchase experience, i.e., the phase between the purchase and receipt of the goods.
You do not need to implement all these convenience functions at once, but should instead concentrate on the functions that suit your customers and your data.
5. Offer new service models
We have presented four strategies that you can use to leverage sales opportunities in your service offering. The fifth option is to make all four strategies superfluous by offering your service as an all-round carefree package.
Two models are currently gaining ground in the digitalization of aftersales:
- Equipment as a service = Rental of machines
- Pay-per-use = Manufacturers sell the performance of their machines
Manufacturers know their machines and equipment best and can often determine which spare part needs to be replaced more quickly than their customers, whether it has been since superseded, or which additional components are required.
Modern service models take the pressure off operators and give manufacturers the opportunity to compensate for stagnating new machine sales while collecting more data on how their products are used in order to improve them.
However, the users of the products must provide their data for this, something which they have not been prepared to do in the past. Yet these new service models offer unbeatable advantages. In order for manufacturers to benefit from pay-per-use contracts, for example, they must ensure the smooth and efficient operation of their machines – and this ultimately benefits the machine operators too.
Make the most of your service opportunities with Quanos
Whatever service opportunities you want to exploit to stabilize your sales, you will find the right software solutions from Quanos. Get in touch now and turn your challenges into sales potential.
