Manage customer service with a leaner team
High-tech equipment manufacturers want efficient engagement with their customers during sales and service operations. Offering a self-service Customer Portal is a key strategy for accomplishing that goal. The Oracle Cloud offers some portal solutions including a Digital Customer Service portal for service and Commerce Cloud for quoting and ordering, but not a complete unified experience. To address this issue, Inspirage has developed a modular Customer Portal solution that encompasses subject areas including service, quotation and ordering, sales agreement releases, installed base, document sharing, and order status tracking. Within the service subject area, for example, you can automate the process of warranty and contract checks. This reduces the number of service requests requiring manual checks by Customer Service agents before they can be assigned to appropriate departments, such as Logistics for parts or Field Service for labor.
A better way
At one company we worked with, separate legacy portals were being used for service, quotation, and document sharing and none of them were enterprise-wide. This resulted in high IT costs and an inconsistent customer experience. The legacy portals lacked a real-time link to their respective ERPs, leading to data inconsistencies and incomplete information. The legacy portal for service, for example, did not have real-time information for shipped products, associated warranties/contracts, or contract consumption figures, making it impossible to expose certain functionalities on the portal.
The solution? The Inspirage Customer Portal. With a built-in subscription engine, this single, enterprise-wide platform provides all the required functionalities and real-time links to Oracle SaaS applications. The Inspirage Customer Portal’s modules have links to the following underlying SaaS modules:
- Customer Service: B2B Service, Installed Base, Subscription Management, Product Information Management (PIM)
- Quotation & Ordering: Oracle Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ), Order Management, Product Information Management (PIM),
- Sales Agreement Releases: Oracle Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ), Order Management
- Order Status: Order Management, Inventory Management
- Installed Base Information: Installed Base, Subscription Management
- Documents: Product Information Management (PIM)
How it works
Here are the steps involved when creating service requests using the Inspirage Customer Portal:
- The user enters the problem details along with the FG (machine) serial number. For Logistics repair and exchange requests, the return component part number is also entered.
- That submission action fires up the Customer Portal’s subscription engine. For Logistics service requests, the subscription engine checks whether the return part is covered under warranty. If not, it checks for the system contract or warranty. For Field Service, it checks whether the system serial is covered under any labor warranty or contract.
- If the subscription engine determines that there is coverage, the attributes are set for automation so that the service request is assigned directly to the relevant department without any intervention from Customer Service.
- Automated email messages are sent to customer contacts in the event of coverage determination.
- Customer Service will only get involved if the subscription engine does not determine coverage. In those cases, Customer Service reviews and progresses the service request.
Inspirage can help
For companies of all shapes and sizes, a self-service Customer Portal with background automation makes service operations more efficient and helps you do more with leaner customer service teams.
As the Integrated Supply Chain Specialists, with recognition from Gartner, IDC, and winners of Oracle’s 2021 Game Changer Award for SCM Service Delivery Partner of the Year, Inspirage is uniquely qualified to be your success partner. Whether you are upgrading your on-prem system or have decided to move to the cloud where continuous improvement is built-in, our team is prepared to guide you on your transformational journey.
