Salesforce - Helping Processed Food Manufacturers Delight Customers

The processed food manufacturing industry is undergoing a major transformation – over the last few years, buyers across the globe have developed sophisticated palates, resulting in companies in the sector coming up with innovative products that satisfy the needs of their customer’s taste buds.

Another key trend shaping the processed food manufacturing sector is the rapid growth in the number of consumers purchasing online. According to a research conducted by Salesforce, 68% of people said they are most likely to purchase food and other necessities through digital channels even after the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end.

How can processed food manufacturers meet the needs of their customers for new, tasty products and provide excellent online buying experiences? They need a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. An effective CRM system allows manufacturers of processed food products to collect relevant, timely data about customer tastes and enables them to deliver hassle-free digital buying experiences.

One of the most widely used CRM systems in the processed food manufacturing industry is Salesforce. Today, we will look at how two leading processed food manufacturing companies are leveraging the power of Salesforce to achieve business success.

Empowering a Biscuit Manufacturer to Deliver Yummy Customer Experiences

A world-leading biscuit manufacturer with operations in more than 170 countries used Salesforce to come up with novel products to meet the ever-evolving tastes of its customers. The company also used the powerful CRM platform to deliver seamless digital buying experiences. The food manufacturer made the best use of Salesforce to:

Analyze Data Pertaining to Changing Customer Tastes Very Effectively

Tasty food prepared from plant-based materials, vegan biscuits, wafers prepared from soya milk -- the list of consumer tastes is long and constantly evolving. It is very important for the biscuit manufacturer to keep itself in the know of changing consumer food habits to come up with the right products to stay on the top of its game. Making things complicated, consumer tastes are primarily driven by geographical and demographical factors; for a company with worldwide presence, this means it needs a powerful analytics tool to crunch data collected from various sources.

The biscuit manufacturer relies on Salesforce Einstein Analytics (EA) to collect consumer data – EA’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled capabilities help the company to gain the right insights about consumer tastes at the right time. This allows it to come up with new products that satisfy the dietary needs of its customers. For instance, the company rapidly met the growing demand for biscuits containing eggs across its global markets in the wake of COVID-19, as people increasingly began consuming protein-rich food.

Set Up a Customer-friendly Digital Store

The biscuit manufacturer fully understood the importance of providing seamless online buying experiences to its customers; it considered various options to deliver smooth digital experiences, and finally zeroed-in on creating a digital store that is accessible easily through web and mobile devices, with little effort.

The company used Salesforce Commerce Cloud to come up with its digital store. The online store delivered optimal shopping experiences – it was easy to use and allowed the biscuit manufacturer to personalize customer interactions. The store contained a search engine that provided product recommendations to shoppers based on criteria supplied by them.

Provide Various Delivery Options to Meet the Needs of Each consumer

It is well-known that consumers of food products (or for that matter, any essential item) appreciate flexible delivery options suited to their specific needs. Some online buyers may prefer picking up products from a nearby store, while in-store purchasers may find assistance in getting the products delivered at home useful. The key is to provide tailor-made delivery options suited to the needs of each consumer.

The biscuit manufacturing company used Salesforce to develop an online delivery mechanism that empowers consumers with all the information they require to fulfill their order. This includes indicating the time when the products will be delivered and listing special rebates to regular customers, who subscribe to the company’s products on an annual or bi-annual basis. More about subscriptions in a moment.

Facilitating Automatic Buying with a Wide Range of Subscription-based Offers

Many online buyers of food products prefer a subscription-based service - a service that allows them to provide standing instructions to the food company or its retail partner to deliver items they need for a fortnight or a month (or even a longer period, in some cases). This would prevent the hassle of ordering frequently and waiting for the products to be delivered. Food manufacturers also benefit from these subscriptions as they can sell their products in relatively large quantities and do repeat business with their consumers.

The biscuit company also provides various innovative subscription-based offers for its customers. The manufacturer depends on Salesforce Revenue Cloud to manage multiple subscription-based offerings to its consumers. This novel Salesforce solution helped the company come up with a wide range of subscription-based billing models. The solution also helped the processed food giant to automate its revenue management process, thereby enhancing efficiency levels considerably and reducing costs in a big way.

Let’s now proceed to see how a Canadian pet food manufacturer harnessed the power of Salesforce to deliver avant-garde customer experiences.

Leveraging Salesforce to Enhance the Quality of Customer Experiences

A world-renowned manufacturer of dog food with operations across North America utilized Salesforce to provide high-quality experiences to buyers of its products. The company used innovative Salesforce applications to:

Improve the Quality of Customer Interactions Significantly

For years, companies across the world used analytics tools to identify trends in sales and other business transactions. However, little effort was made to use the rich AI-driven abilities of these applications to measure the quality of customer interactions and enhance customer satisfaction.

The pet food manufacturer utilized Salesforce Einstein Analytics’ rich AI-powered features to develop a framework of high efficacy to score each customer interaction and identify how it could have been better. The efforts of the company delivered handsome results -- customer satisfaction levels rose by nearly 30%.

Deliver Consistent, Excellent Experiences Across All Customer Touchpoints

Today’s customers demand fully connected omnichannel experiences; 79% of customers surveyed by Salesforce opined the experience provided by a company is as important as the product provided by it. In a fiercely competitive world of business, consumers simply switch over to other brands if they find the experiences delivered by a company don’t match their expectations.

The dog food maker unleashed the power of Salesforce to deliver excellent services across all channels. Most of the company’s customers order its products online and pick them up in nearby stores. The company delivers high-quality experiences to buyers at all touchpoints, online and offline.

Enable Retailers to Serve Customers Better

As seen above, a vast majority of the pet food maker’s customers prefer the Buy-Online-Pick-Up-In-Store (BOPIS) buying model. This makes retailers a critical part of its success. The company understands the significance of replenishing the stocks of products in stores to ensure customers get the products they ordered, when they visit the store. The pet food manufacturer also leaves no stone unturned to maintain seamless communication with each retail partner.

The company relies on Salesforce to make sure its customers don’t leave the store empty-handed. It has developed a robust Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solution that is fully integrated with the Points-of-Sale (PoS) terminals at each store. As soon as the stock of a product reaches the re-order level, the company takes steps to replenish the stock immediately. The PRM system also ensures hassle-free communication and coordination with all retailers.

As you can see, the two manufacturers of processed foods fully utilize Salesforce to deliver excellent customer experiences, thereby paving the path to business success. At Solunus, we combine our ability to understand your unique needs thoroughly and our expert knowledge of Salesforce products to help you delight your customers.

How do you provide first-rate services to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction? Do share with us.

What You Can Expect by Partnering with Solunus

• Work order and invoice processing efficiencies go up by up to 70%.

• Manual processing of tasks can be reduced by nearly 60%.

• A 360-degree view of business data.

• Resolve nearly 90% of customer complaints on the first contact.

• Improve service productivity by up to 47%.

About Solunus

Solunus is a dedicated Salesforce partner organization, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Our unrelenting focus on comprehending the unique needs of our clients coupled with our unrivaled expertise of the Salesforce platform enables us to deliver the perfect solutions that create the best value for manufacturing firms.