Every customer is different. This is true for any business, but it is especially important for industrial aftermarket teams to keep in mind. Aftermarket teams are responsible for providing continuous support, maintenance, and repair services for industrial equipment and ensuring aftermarket growth for their industrial organization. This means that they often deal with a diverse range of customers, each with their own unique needs and requirements.
“When it comes to Industrial Aftermarket- Every Customer is Different!”
Every Customer is Different
In a recent discussion with a pump-manufacturing customer of ours, the customer success team discussed the fact that one of their best-selling parts had a much higher consumption rate in Louisiana than in most other parts of the continental United States. Our team was wondering why there was such an anomaly. The customer explained that it was because the water in Louisiana is more brackish than in other parts of the country resulting in faster wear on the product.
For those of us at Entytle who don’t have a prior manufacturing background, that was a very important lesson. Every customer is different. Their equipment usage patterns are different, the wear-and-tear is different and therefore, their parts and services needs are very different.
Enhancing your Customer Knowledge
One of the key challenges for any aftermarket team is to understand the specific needs of each customer and to tailor their services accordingly. This requires strong communication skills and the ability to listen carefully to the customer. It also requires a deep understanding of the various types of industrial equipment and the different ways they can be used.
Here are five ways in which your aftermarket teams can provide high-quality service and support to your customers while ensuring the success of your business:
- Provide Personalized Support: One way to improve customer service is to offer personalized support. This can include providing customized maintenance plans, training programs, and repair services. By offering personalized support, aftermarket teams can help your customers to get the most out of their industrial equipment and ensure that it is running smoothly and efficiently.
- Have a knowledgeable and experienced team: Aftermarket teams should have a deep understanding of the various types of industrial equipment and how it works. They should also have the technical expertise to troubleshoot and repair any issues that may arise. By having a knowledgeable and experienced team, aftermarket teams can provide high-quality support and service to your customers.
- Build stronger relationships: In addition to providing personalized support and having a knowledgeable team, aftermarket teams should also focus on building strong relationships with their customers. This can involve regular communication and follow-up, as well as offering additional services and support. By building strong relationships with their customers, aftermarket teams can establish trust and credibility, which can help to foster long-term loyalty and satisfaction.
- Access to reliable Customer Data: Industrial Installed Base data is stored in multiple systems and in various formats. Your aftermarket teams have to go through these systems to have reliable information at all times and even then when they get in touch with customers they lack crucial information that would have helped them to make better sales. Having a deep understanding of your customer activities, access to up-to-date information, and getting to know your customers’ needs before they do will help your aftermarket teams to stay on top of your customers at all times. Enabling your team with a single source of truth definitely comes in handy in such situations.
- Get an Installed Base Platform: An Installed Base Platform is the single source of truth that your industrial aftermarket teams need. With an Installed base Platform your teams can directly access all of your Installed Base data in a single place. An Installed base Platform will unify, organize, and analyze all your data and generate reliable insights to enable your aftermarket teams to stay on top of your customers. You can also use it to create targeted hunting lists and AI-based opportunities to enhance your aftermarket growth.
Installed Base Platform vs BI Tools for Industrial Aftermarket Teams
When we pitch the Entytle Installed Base Platform to manufacturers, the single most frequently asked question is: Why can’t I just run reports? What manufacturers are really asking is how Entytle’s data science-driven Installed Base Platform differs from their BI system. The answer comes down to just one truism about the Aftermarket, and that is that every customer is different.
“One Size Doesn’t Fit All”
Aftermarket practitioners all know this instinctively. Yet they tend to clump thousands upon thousands of their customers into broad, meaningless segments. Most likely, it’s because their expensive BI systems are only capable of producing crude averages for vanity metrics like mean times between failures. Unfortunately, the one-size-fits-all approach by BI tools is limited, and frankly, just doesn’t work. As I said before, every customer is different.
With Data science, on the other hand, we use sophisticated data science techniques like cohort analysis (amongst many others) to group similar customers together to compare and contrast behaviors within a cohort. We then calibrate this against every customer’s past behavior at each location. This then results in predictions that are completely tailored for every customer – down to the last zip code. With a tailored approach like this, Entytle’s opportunities and insights drive high conversion rates and translate directly into increased topline for the Aftermarket.
Learn how an Installed Base Platform will help your Aftermarket Teams- Schedule a demo today!