For several years now, the W4 development and marketing team has been supporting the leading manufacturer of laser and grinding machines as well as guide elements in Switzerland in various areas ranging from development and marketing measures to the automation of processes. This is why Agathon also turned to W4 for sales optimisation within the framework of a customer experience platform.
THE CHALLENGE
The initial situation was that Agathon's sales staff had quite a lot of work to do to meet all customer enquiries. They acted as a central contact point for enquiries about standard products and specific solutions. In order to relieve the sales department and make it more efficient at the same time, a solution was needed that would cover a large part of the information provision. It should be possible for interested parties to obtain basic information quickly and easily without needing direct contact with the sales team. In short, a win-win situation needed to be created in order to provide excellent customer service and free up sales capacity so that the sales team could focus on concrete, specific customer enquiries and global lead generation.
THE SOLUTION
Prospects should be given everything they need to make a buying decision without a sales team. The solution is Agathon's new customer experience platform, which significantly reduces the workload of the sales team so that they can focus on their core competencies and the global acquisition of new customers.
All standard products are clearly illustrated on the platform with all relevant information. It now functions as the first point of contact for comprehensive information. For further questions, the sales team is of course still available for interested parties. However, the internal effort for the standard products has been decisively minimised and field staff can concentrate efficiently on core tasks.
THE IMPLEMENTATION
The W4 development team developed an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of the platform, a prototype so to speak, order to offer our client Agathon added value as quickly as possible. This allows us to evaluate at an early stage how the customer experience platform is received by (potential) customers and at the same time it can be further developed. In the process, our developers not only put customer wishes into practice, but also showed initiative, identified optimisation potential and implemented it quickly.
Interested parties are comprehensively introduced to the standard products on the platform through application examples and detailed product information. In addition, they can create quotation requests via the platform and use the calculator for fine centring. A design calculation is thus quickly created.
Furthermore, (potential) customers can upload drawings and other files to the shopping cart if a standard product does not meet their expectations. In this way, it can be quickly made clear to the sales team, for example, "Yes, we are interested in this standard product, but please with these dimensions...". The uploads go directly into the Magento backend and the corresponding sales employees receive an email with the link to the request in the Magento backend. This is the best way to ensure that the employees do not overlook any enquiry and have the current, complete customer data at their disposal.
The expert blog, which is exclusively accessible via the Customer Experience Platform, also serves as an important source of information for deeper insights into mould making and fine centring.
The Customer Experience (CX) platform is set up with Magento, an open source e-commerce platform. Product information is retrieved from the Akeneo PIM (Product Information Management) via an interface and played out directly on the CX platform.
AN OUTLOOK
The CX platform is highly performant and expandable thanks to software integration. By the end of 2023, the inclusion of the complete standard range is also planned for other areas such as mechanical engineering and punching. In addition, the platform will also be available in English in the future.
