Customer satisfaction at the heart of the warehouse of the future

A sustainable business must continuously improve customer satisfaction. This requires, in particular, quality products and good customer service. Improving your offering boosts customer satisfaction, which, in turn, encourages loyalty. To succeed in this, you need to identify the problems faced by your customers and find lasting solutions to them. The automated warehouse plays a central role in this process. So, here’s how to improve customer satisfaction and increase your productivity.

Definition and ways to improve customer satisfaction

To increase customer satisfaction, it is important to understand what it is based on and how to measure it within the company.

What is customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is the consistency between the customer’s expectations and their actual experience. It, therefore, takes into account the quality of the product received, the delivery time and customer service. The goal is to offer a customer experience that meets the demands of consumers in order to secure their loyalty.

How can you measure customer satisfaction?

The first step is to listen to consumers’ expectations and ensure that the company’s offering is in line with its customer experience promise. The best way to find out whether customers are satisfied is, logically, to carry out a satisfaction survey. These surveys provide a valuable database, which can be used to improve the customer experience and build consumer loyalty.

To accurately measure customer satisfaction, three parameters must be taken into account.

The first step is to analyse the overall customer experience through customer service. Instead of focusing on a particular element, the questions are general and the customer is asked to rate their level of satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10. A question such as “Are you satisfied with your experience?” is ideal for measuring overall customer satisfaction.

The second element to consider is the whole customer experience, in order to gather detailed information for in-depth improvement. Here, the company tries to determine precisely whether the product lives up to the customer’s expectations, whether the customer service is good, whether the after-sales service contributes to customer satisfaction, whether delivery times have been met, etc. This comprehensive survey is used to examine all elements of customer satisfaction and to prioritise consumer expectations. As such, it contributes greatly to improving the customer experience and enhancing customer service.

Finally, the aim is to find out whether customers are satisfied enough to enter into a loyalty and recommendation process. Using the same rating system as above, the customer indicates on a scale of 0 to 10 whether they would recommend the product or service to those around them. Obviously, the higher the score, the more satisfied the customer is. As a result, the higher the level of customer satisfaction, the more likely the company is to retain customers and thus increase its overall growth. QED. It may also be interesting to take the analysis further by measuring the customer’s intention to repurchase and how often they plan to do so.

The study of these three elements, carried out by the customer service department, is key to obtaining satisfied customers who are ready to enter into a long-term loyalty process.

How can you improve customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is at the heart of a company’s development: it is how loyalty is gained. It is therefore just as important to focus on the customer’s experience and expectations as it is to seek out new prospects. It is also necessary to be familiar with your target market.

To improve the customer experience, it is essential to develop tools for calculating customer satisfaction. As mentioned above, satisfaction surveys are essential. They must be collected on a regular basis and their data analysed in order to optimise the company’s performance in a sustainable way.

Similarly, all returns or complaints to customer service must be taken into account. These indicate precisely why the customer’s expectations were not met and provide valuable information on key areas for improvement.

An exceptional customer experience always helps to build loyalty: satisfied customers will feel that they are front and centre of the company’s concerns. To achieve this, customer service must be attentive, responsive and more efficient than that of competing companies. Customer satisfaction is primarily about providing a personalised shopping experience. Combined with good customer service, services such as free delivery or the ability to return an item are greatly appreciated and undoubtedly increase customer satisfaction. Targeted loyalty programmes also need to be developed to ensure customer satisfaction.

Benefits and challenges of the warehouse of the future

To improve customer satisfaction, it is important to take advantage of the technological developments that are available to you. These include the smart warehouse, a breakthrough that can make a real difference to a company.

Why is the warehouse at the heart of customer satisfaction?

As a bridge between the company and customer satisfaction, the warehouse makes it possible to provide a quality offering. If your warehouse is inefficient, it cannot meet customer expectations and it is pointless to try to optimise customer relations. To help you meet your commitments, there are several parameters to consider.

The first is the ability to process orders efficiently. Analyse your performance and make sure that most, if not all, products are delivered on time. Naturally, the more orders that are fulfilled on time, the more efficient your warehouse is.

The ability to handle returns also increases the efficiency of a company. With product returns becoming more and more frequent, the effective management of returns within the warehouse is essential to save time. This can be simplified with automation tools that provide a real-time view of each product, its location and status. By optimising the warehouse, errors are reduced, the ecosystem is flexible and returns are processed quickly, leading to increased customer satisfaction.

The smart warehouse: The future of customer satisfaction?

Automated warehouses are increasingly demonstrating their ability to optimise customer satisfaction and product quality. The use of advanced technologies is a means of optimising the entire supply chain. This is because they provide an overview of the company’s activity, both at a given moment and over the long term. It is, therefore, possible to adapt in real-time, as well as to anticipate customer expectations.

Smart warehouses are therefore emerging as a new trend and represent the future of successful companies. They help meet productivity requirements and increase the number of satisfied customers. The smart warehouse is therefore central to customer satisfaction, as it improves inventory management, order traceability and the dispatch of each product.

What tools are used to ensure customer satisfaction?

To automate your warehouse, you can combine the use of advanced technologies with robots. Several tools already exist for this purpose and will continue to be developed in the years to come.

WMS, WCS and MES coordinate all tasks throughout the supply chain.

Pallet shuttles, stacker cranes and wire-guided vehicles streamline the picking and deposition of each product, helping to improve customer satisfaction.

The transport of products can also be optimised by using autonomous robots or drones.

Finally, big data and artificial intelligence of objects enable the collection and analysis of a large amount of data, which improves the whole supply chain. Each operation is optimised to save time and increase productivity. This improvement leads to a significant increase in customer satisfaction, as consumer expectations are more easily met.