Customer experience is no longer just an optional consideration. It’s a critical factor in winning business and building customer loyalty.
In the 2024 Deloitte The Future of the Digital Customer Experience survey, businesses reported significant business benefits from enhancing customer experience, with increased customer loyalty and satisfaction, higher sales or revenue, improved issue resolution time, and greater margins ranking at the top of the list.
For manufacturers selling highly configurable or custom products, this presents a challenge: how do you deliver a seamless, efficient customer experience when your products are complex?
Customers expect to specify exactly what they need, receive fast and accurate responses, and move through the buying process with minimal effort. But without the right technology, complexity can slow everything down, leading to inconsistent quotes, longer lead times, and a customer experience that doesn’t meet their expectations.
In this blog, we’ll look at how DriveWorks technology enables manufacturers to configure complex custom products with ease, streamline their quoting process, and provide a customer experience that wins sales and builds customer loyalty.
What makes a great customer experience in custom product sales?
Customer experience is about more than the quality of the final product. It’s influenced by every touch point in the buying process, from initial enquiry to configuration, purchase, and delivery. For manufacturers dealing with complex or custom products, this means combining complex customer requirements with a seamless and frictionless buying process.
Meeting complex customer requirements
Today’s B2B customers expect products that are tailored to their exact requirements. This often involves managing complicated configurations, multiple options, and technical dependencies.
A great customer experience ensures these complexities are handled with ease, delivering accurate quotes, models, and drawings with a fast turnaround.
Delivering a seamless buying journey
Even when products are highly configurable, the process of specifying and buying them should feel simple. Reducing friction, removing unnecessary manual steps, and enabling clear visualization of their choices all contribute to a smoother buying experience.
The easier it is for customers to understand and get stakeholder approval, the more confident they feel in their decisions.
Responding quickly and accurately
Customers expect a fast turnaround on quotes and specifications, without errors or inconsistencies.
A responsive approach builds trust, keeps the sales cycle moving, and builds customer confidence at every stage of the buying process.
Connecting customer experience to business outcomes
Delivering a better customer experience drives measurable results.
When processes are optimized and customer interactions are more efficient, manufacturers often see increased revenue growth, higher customer satisfaction scores, and reduced operational costs.
How DriveWorks enhances customer experience
DriveWorks technology enhances the customer experience by streamlining the design process, enabling customers to visualize their product choices in 3D, and automatically generating accurate quotes for custom products.
Design automation automates manual engineering tasks, enabling faster generation of accurate, customized designs and documentation to reduce lead times and ensure consistency. 3D product configuration enables customers to visualize their product choices in real time, so they can see exactly what they are ordering before committing. CPQ streamlines pricing and quoting by automatically generating accurate, rule-based quotes, reducing errors, and accelerating response times.
Meet complex configuration requirements
How DriveWorks helps:
- Design automation ensures accuracy and consistency
- 3D product configurators enable customers to visualize tailored solutions in real time
The customer experience impact:
- Confidence in the product
- Reduced errors and rework
- Faster decision-making
Simplify the buying process
How DriveWorks helps:
- CPQ automates quoting and pricing
- Guided selling enables accurate configuration for customers and sales teams
The customer experience impact:
- Faster quotes and order turnaround
- Reduced friction in the buying journey
- Improved customer satisfaction
Deliver proactive customer service
How DriveWorks helps:
- Automated workflows and approval
- Faster responses to customer enquiries and configuration changes
The customer experience impact:
- Quicker response times
- Anticipation of customer needs
- More consistent communication
Develop long-term customer loyalty
How DriveWorks helps:
- Consistent, reliable delivery of custom products
- A seamless experience from configuration to product delivery
The customer experience impact:
- Increased trust
- Confidence for repeat purchases
- More likely to make referrals and leave positive reviews
Providing quotes and technical drawings within minutes, anytime, anywhere, with DriveWorks
F.H.Brundle wanted a solution that would enable internal teams, customers, and distributors to configure balustrade systems to their own dimensions online, then automatically receive order-specific quotes and technical drawings in minutes. Estimating and quoting custom designs was time-consuming and vulnerable to errors.
They identified an opportunity to improve the experience of internal teams and trade customers by creating a product configurator.
F.H. Brundle chose DriveWorks as their design automation and online product configurator solution. Using DriveWorks, F.H. Brundle built Liveconfigurator™, an online 3D product configurator for their internal teams, distributors, and customers.
Implementing DriveWorks has enabled F.H. Brundle to simplify quoting, improve accuracy, and deliver superior customer service. Customers can configure custom balustrades anytime, anywhere, and receive order-specific sales documents, parts lists, and technical drawings within minutes.
“Our sales staff are saving valuable time and our customer service is better than ever. We are building customer loyalty, increasing sales, and avoiding mistakes.”
Richard Twiddy, Design Office Manager, F.H.Brundle
See how DriveWorks can transform your customer experience
Request a demo with a DriveWorks technical expert to learn more