I was born in NY, raised in Korea, and grew up in California. After graduating from UC Davis with a BA in Psychology and Communications with a background in Fashion, I joined Apttus as a Partner Marketing Associate. My idea of a good time is having a picnic at Golden Gate Park and reading a Haruki Murakami book.
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Bill Gates once said, “How can we keep the customer happy? How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don’t, somebody else will.” But how do organizations create customer loyalty in the era of easy access to information and highly competitive options? The short answer: engage customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
Quote-to-cash is the end-to-end process that spans the entire customer lifecycle, starting with a customer’s intent to buy all the way to the recognition of revenue. By focusing on improvements to the customer experience of your quote-to-cash process, you can be dramatically more effective at delivering an engaging customer experience. Here are four ways to improve your customer lifecycle by automating quote-to-cash:
Make it easy for customers to purchase.
Let’s look at the purchasing experience holistically. When ordering pizza online, you can configure what crust you want, what toppings you want, and there are rules and restrictions, and price changes. You can make your pizza as simple or as complex as you want. Rarely can you do this with more complex products. Offer customers more convenient and personalized buying experiences with highly personalized, branded e-commerce storefronts. Visitors can easily navigate sites, review items, add to cart, and place orders at their convenience. But more than having online offerings, syncing e-commerce with a configure, price quote solution will allow full catalog configuration and complex product offerings in a simplified manner, just like ordering a pizza. Customers can select the combinations that match their specific needs, as well as receive recommendations for products they may not realize they need.
Be more responsive to customer needs.
How many times have you wanted to buy a product and had questions but there was no one around to help you? It’s an extremely frustrating situation; one in which the customer satisfaction goes down the drain. Automating processes will cut down cycle times drastically and allow you to be more responsive to customers’ needs. Fast quotes are the path to smarter, more effective selling by helping you shorten sales cycles, eliminate deal erosion and accelerate revenue. Automating quoting can decrease your approval cycle times by 75%, and by tying your quotes to contracts, you can cut contract cycle times in half.
Make renewals painless.
Gartner has found that 80% of a company’s revenue will come from 20% of existing customers. Clearly, renewals are paramount to revenue — customer satisfaction should be a core priority for all companies. Renewals can be a headache, but in having a streamlined quoting and contract processes, as well as clear visibility into deal terms, will help make renewals more painless. Satisfied customers can receive a quote, electronically sign, and be renewed within a day’s time.
Simplify billing and order management.
One of the most overlooked aspects of the customer lifecycle is invoicing, which has typically been relegated to the back-end machinations of ERP systems. This is ill-advised since invoices are often the last touch point that customers have with your business. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have invoice information managed with all the rest of your customer information?
Simplify billing management by integrating it into to your entire quote-to-cash process. As customers update their orders, or change terms and conditions in their contract, the invoice will automatically contain all the latest and most accurate information. Put customers at the center of your strategy. Quote-to-cash can help you become a customer-centric company that provides a seamless and exceptional customer experience.
To learn more about improving customer experience across your customer lifecycle connect with our experts. You can also join Apttus and Bluewolf at Accelerate 2016 in San Francisco for Quote-to-Cash solutions and stories.
