The rise of customer portals and demand for digital information

The pandemic proved to be a communications challenge for many customers and suppliers across all businesses. Unable to meet their customers face-to-face companies were obliged to look for virtual engagement and digital solutions, accelerating digital initiatives with which to improve their customer service.

The transportation and logistics industry have also been part of this trend. Major players have been active in developing their digital customer service platforms as part of their strategies to cope with the spikes of demand for deliveries, automating their processes to add value to their customers’ experience.

Future customer service - how digital?

The expectation is that customer service will increasingly go digital. Research in 2020 by consultants McKinsey found that B2B companies believe that digital sales interactions are two to three times more important than traditional ones. The research also revealed that customers increasingly show a preference for self-service channels across the research, evaluation, ordering and post-ordering phases of their purchasing transactions.

In its Future of Sales 2025 report analysts Gartner say that this increasing preference for self-service and digital channels will take on even more significance “…as baby boomers retire and millennials mature into key decision-making positions.” The report predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.

Trailer fleet manager benefits

In addition to existing traditional customer service channels, a digital customer portal can provide a trailer fleet manager with many additional advantages. The benefits include:

• Visibility and Environmental reasons. An online customer portal enables the trailer manager to keep an eye on orders and deliveries in an accelerated timeframe and follow up on transactions. Digitizing what were formerly paper-based documents brings environmental benefits.
• Customer empowerment. The digitizing of previously manually entered data and administrative tasks can reduce costs and free up the customers’ time to focus on areas of their trailer fleet management where they can generate maximum value.
• Convenience and easy access to information. The trailer fleet manager can find all information in one place at any time. They can use one digital dashboard to find information on their trailer contracts, download documents and reports on their fleet of trailers; and access maintenance and repair reports to keep on top of their trailer servicing requirements. Customer portals can also produce enhanced data analysis for customers
  
  TIP and its customer portal FleetRadar™
  As part of its strategy of ensuring that customers enjoy industry-leading technology, TIP is continuously developing its online customer portal, FleetRadar™.

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  Among the many features which FleetRadar™ offers TIP customers are:

• 24/7 access to information & free of charge discover the benefits of the portal.
• A fleet overview and detailed trailer information on a unit level for TIP managed trailers.
• Data including the age of the trailer, units on reservation, on/off hire, etc.
• Compliance overview: indication of upcoming and overdue service events, 12-month compliance planner.
• Online service documents to download
• Preconfigured and customisable dashboards to visualise fleet composition
• Exportable data: excel, cvs for customised analytics.
• Administrative rights for customers to self-manage access and rights.
• Daily data refresh.