Whether you’re in the brokerage or 3PL space, over-the-road trucking, assets, or anything in between, customer experience is what sets a freight company apart from its competitors.
The largest factor of a good customer experience, according to Frank Kenney, director of industry solutions at Cleo, is visibility.
“As we move out of a freight recession, the name of the game is a combination of providing excellent service with best-in-class visibility,” said Kenney.
While mishaps and mistakes can occur in any organization, transparency is the one factor that will give customers confidence to keep coming back.
The most important operational metrics have shifted from things like on-time delivery, according to Kenney, to the frequency and accuracy of data.
“Being late is one thing, but if you communicate, you can often alleviate a bad customer experience entirely,” Kenney said. “Freight customer experience starts with expectations. It’s up to the service provider to be clear and transparent with those expectations so that clients can plan around them.”
Visibility and transparency make a tight ship, says Kenney. Accountability to partners and customers is not only a motivating force for your company to follow best practices, but also allows those customers to better work with you to create solutions.
“Customers appreciate the more data you can give them,” Kenney said. “Newer technology and trends such as AI, APIs and digitizing processes drive the need for data. Your customers will use the data in a way that solves their challenges; the data feeds into their secret sauce and business models.”
Kenney’s advice? Invest in visibility and empower your customers to help with solutions. “You’ll both be better off,” he said. The demand for transparency and visibility is clear in the trends.
“There’s a direct line between customer experience and margin,” Kenney said.
Successful companies only make significant investments in new technology when they see a return. “No carriers, brokers, software solution providers or any other company in the freight space adopts tech for tech’s sake,” said Kenney. “They only do what they have to do.”
According to Kenney, when customers tell their providers they need something, that’s when those providers will adjust – and what customers are telling them is that they need more visibility.
Since 2020, logistics software and supply chain management software companies have increased in value from $400 million to billions. Manufacturers and freight companies subscribe to services such as Cleo’s ecosystem because their customers find value in them.
When comparing one vendor to another, freight companies will choose the one with greater transparency, better integrations and more connectivity. “Visibility is the differentiating feature,” said Kenney. “ That’s the common theme.”
In a market where companies have to maintain their slim margins and therefore are reluctant to buy new technology, decisions are made based on sales drivers.
“Cleo works with robust, mature carriers,” Kenney said. “Some use top-of-the-line cloud-based integration, some use old products, but every one of them want API integrations and real-time visibility.”
The increased adoption of technology, Kenney says, is not due to any initiative or quality-of-life improvement wish lists. “The sales teams hear what customers want, and that’s how business leaders are choosing their direction,” he said.
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