Improve order processing by polishing how your organization receives, reviews, fulfills and delivers a customer’s order. Customer dissatisfaction with any aspect of the ordering process can lead to lost or aborted sales or accounts receivable problems downstream.
Order processing starts with order enquiries or placement, whether in-person or by phone, chat, online or other ways. One way to improve this aspect of order processing is to make it easy for customers to place orders. Provide knowledgeable, helpful, and well-trained customer service agents to ensure effective customer interactions. Make online ordering interfaces user-friendly and offer options like guest check-out for customers who do not want to create an account to make a purchase.
Verify orders and ensure that products, services, prices, quantities, delivery dates and other aspects of the order are correct. Label and safely pack items for delivery in the timeframe promised or the customer requested. Ideally, give customers order tracking mechanisms and ensure timely communications about delivery issues.
Do not overlook simple opportunities that could significantly affect how a customer perceives the order processing experience. For instance:
- Is your pricing clear and transparent? Avoid hidden fees or complex pricing structures. Assess whether all-inclusive pricing would be attractive to customers.
- Ensure invoices are timely, clear, and conform to customer requirements—issue invoices immediately after shipping or delivery. Simplify invoices to make them easy to understand and less likely to be disputed. Ensure invoices include proper product or service descriptions, due dates, accounts receivable contact information, pricing breakdown, and other essential details. Meet customers’ special invoicing requirements if, for example, they are major or high-volume customers or if it is relatively easy to do so. For instance, a high-volume customer may ask you to upload invoices to a portal instead of emailing a PDF.
Meeting your duty of care
Improve order processing to avoid downstream problems, including poor or unoptimized sales and payment and collection challenges. Log in to the Finance and Accountingdatabase in PolicyPro, which includes FN 1.02 – Order Processing and countless other policies and tools to help you.
Policies and procedures are essential, but the work required to create and maintain them can seem daunting. The Finance and Accounting, Operations and Marketing, Not-for-Profit, and Information Technology databases in PolicyPro, co-marketed by First Reference and Chartered Professional Accountants Canada (CPA Canada), contain sample policies, procedures, checklists and other tools, plus authoritative commentary to save you time and effort in establishing and updating your internal controls and policies. Not a subscriber? Request free 30-day trials of Finance and Accounting, Not-for-Profit, Operations and Marketing, and Information Technology databases in PolicyPro here.
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