Overcoming the Fears of Scaling Aftermarket Services
If you split the revenue of any manufacturer into new equipment sales and aftermarket services, you will notice that aftermarket revenue (post-sale revenue from parts, service, digital, support etc.) is clearly equal if not more. When you look at profitability, it is clearly the winner, given high-margin nature as well low expenses in aftermarket departments. So why are machine manufacturers not doubling down on aftermarket services?
In the landscape of aftermarket services, businesses often find themselves navigating a myriad of challenges and fears when it comes to scaling their operations. This critical aspect of the industry, which involves catering to customer needs post-purchase, managing service and parts requests proactively, and ensuring seamless product uptime support, is a complex domain riddled with various concerns. Enter Industrility, a revolutionary solution poised to help manufacturers stay connected with their end-customers, build stickiness and loyalty and overcome these fears, empowering businesses to scale their aftermarket services efficiently and effectively.
Fear 1: We are low on resources and scaling teams is tough.
One common fear businesses face is the ability to scale internal customer service teams to handle a surge in customer requests. When the volume grows to hundreds of service and maintenance requests per customer, the strain on internal resources becomes a significant challenge. Industrility provides a solution through consistency, automation and streamlined standard operating processes. By leveraging smart technologies and AI-driven tools, it enables businesses to handle increased requests without overwhelming human resources. Specifically, Inspection walkthroughs, Training, Maintenance reminders and checklists, help drive proactive customer experience in an automated way without needing to scale your internal teams.
Fear 2: We don’t have Installed Base data.
Accurate and comprehensive installed base data is vital for effective aftermarket services. However, the absence of such data can impede the scalability of services. Industrility assists in consolidating and managing installed base data (for assets and parts), ensuring it’s readily available and updated. This centralized database becomes a single source of truth for businesses to enhance their service operations. Industrility reduced the parts identification and lookup for one of the customers from 3.5 days to 30 seconds and also enabled self-service using the customer-facing portal. This customer was previously using excel sheets, phone calls, emails back and forth to identify customer serial number and identify the right part numbers.
Fear 3: But our data is not clean enough.
Most companies don’t have 100% clean data. Poor data quality can lead to inefficiencies, errors, and customer dissatisfaction. Industrility helps the manufacturers collate and curate the data by pivoting to asset. It has robust data cleansing and management capabilities to ensure that the data is accurate, reliable, and consistent. Businesses can confidently use this information to provide efficient and quality services.
Fear 4: We have a lot of data silos and disparate systems.
A fragmented ecosystem with data silos often hampers the scalability of aftermarket services. Industrility integrates these disparate systems, breaking down silos and creating a unified platform that is customer-facing and white-labeled to customer’s look and feel. Companies can keep their own systems as single version of truth. Industrility simply does not want your customers to see the organizational data silos to your customers. With a unified “single pane of glass” view of customer’s assets, this consolidation enables businesses to access comprehensive data and functionalities such as parts lookup, service reminders, maintenance inspections – all in one view.
Fear 5: But all our departments/service techs have their own way of dealing with customers.
In a scenario where every region, brand, or department makes its own decisions, standardization and scalability become challenging. Industrility promotes a collaborative environment by offering standardized processes and data accessibility across the board. This ensures a cohesive approach to service operations, regardless of the diversity in decision-making units.
In conclusion, the fears surrounding scaling aftermarket services are substantial, yet not insurmountable. Industrility stands as a beacon of hope, providing innovative solutions to conquer these fears. By leveraging its advanced technologies and holistic approach to service management, businesses can confidently scale their aftermarket services, meeting customer needs efficiently and elevating their position in the market. With Industrility, the daunting challenges of scaling aftermarket services can be transformed into opportunities for growth and success.
