Gyro
Industry 4.0 Case Study
Live chat and automated lead qualification.
“One key enhancement identified is to implement an automated lead qualification process.”
Key learnings
- Technology can be leveraged quickly to release opportunities identified by the team.
- When implementing a new technology don’t forget to organise your internal processes to support its successful adoption.
- Remember to consider how the functionality of your current systems can be enhanced through easily accessible and available add-ons.
- Always think about where the generated data and information created by the new technology should be stored to allow maximum benefit (e.g. customer conversations recorded in CRM).
- Look for further opportunities for improvement when reviewing any unintended consequences and unexpected results – embrace a culture of continuous improvement and innovation around new technology.
Background
Gyro Plastics is one of the leading plastics engineering companies in NZ. The company made its first plastic moulded product way back in 1968 and since then have become known as expert plastic manufacturers. They provide products to the infrastructure sector in New Zealand with a broad range of distribution pillars and cabinets as well as taking on custom design and manufacturing projects.
Gyro pride themselves on applying the same dedication and commitment to achieving the best result possible for custom products as they do with their own proprietary product. Since July 2016, Gyro have been operating out of their new premises in friendly Feilding, after moving from Wellington where they were based since the company’s inception. Their services and products are available nationwide and they have become one of the key plastic manufacturers in New Zealand.
Opportunity
Gyro are committed to providing their customers with a seamless and engaging end to end experience. One area that they identified as an opportunity for development was around the way they interact with customers at the beginning of their engagement. Gyro have a number of different ways for potential customers to initiate contact and these were predominantly via direct phone calls, emails and web forms. As it was usually a small, busy team who were fielding these initial contacts, they felt that they didn’t always do justice to the initial conversations, having to provide information on the fly.
The team were also mindful that quickly assessing the needs of the customer and streaming them to the most appropriate place was incredibly important for both that customer and the business, but this was often difficult to do. There were also challenges with mobile reception when remote working that led to difficulty taking and progressing calls. The team felt that an additional mode of communication would be beneficial, but that it would need to allow for immediate and dynamic conversations to happen.
Solution
After reviewing the available options, a solution was identified to enable a live chat function on the Gyro website. It was decided that this chat application needed to have simple plug and play integration as well as functionality that supported mobile use and the ability to connect a chat request with the most relevant person at Gyro. To ensure that customer queries weren’t lost or delayed, they also wanted the ability for all team members to be able to respond if required.
The team also decided to take a “Minimum Viable Product” approach to quickly test the concept. Drift was identified as the product that provided the required functionality, and they began building this into their website. As the new functionality was being implemented, the team also worked on the internal processes they felt were needed to support this new method of communication, which included:
- Agreement on who would have access to utilise the application to respond to initial customer queries Live Chat and Automated Lead Qualification About the site visits & Industry 4.0 The purpose of the Demonstration Network is to drive uptake of Industry 4.0 technologies among New Zealand manufacturers with the aim of increasing their productivity and global competitiveness.
The Network of Site Visits (NSV) are part of the Industry 4.0 Demonstration Network, which also includes a mobile showcase and smart factory showing cutting-edge industry 4.0 technologies in action. The NSV takes selected companies through a fully funded assessment process to help them accelerate their own journey towards Industry 4.0, and sees them share their knowledge with other manufacturers.
- Confirmation of the rules of engagement – what level of detail to go to regarding pricing and quotes etc before referring through more formal channels.
- Development of an informal set of questions that could be used at the start of the conversation to help gather the relevant information.
- Mapping the website pages to the people at Gyro who were most relevant to respond to live chat requests.
From identifying the need for an additional mode of communication through to having the identified solution live and available took less than a week and once implemented, the system proved to be a significant success with the majority of all initial contacts coming in via the live chat function on the Gyro website. An unintended consequence of the success of the implementation was the large volume of information arriving through the app. This was leading to a significant amount of work for the team to provide direct support to potential customers that didn’t progress through to a full customer relationship.
The team recognised that it was really important for them to qualify the leads that were being generated and to highlight the most relevant queries coming in. This was done by first developing a profile for their ideal customer and then mapping the characteristics of both target and off-target clients – this mapping included specifying flags to help categorise the queries and creating a set of questions to help guide this categorisation. Embracing a culture of continuous improvement, the team have identified many further opportunities through leveraging this new “live chat” functionality.
One key enhancement identified is to implement an automated lead qualification process. This process will be developed utilising the rules and process flow created to help categorise their target and off-target customers and then automatically divert them to the most appropriate value-added channel. The team is also looking at creating more formal integration into their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.
Benefits
- Improved accuracy of information being provided to potential customers around the Gyro offering.
- Having a documented record of the conversations between Gyro and potential customers.
- No longer needing to write customer conversations into emails following a call – saving time.
- Achieving a significant improvement in accuracy and reliability of data collected re. customer requirements.
- Having a clear structure to support the dynamic qualification of customer leads.
- More time spent working with strategically selected target customers and sectors.
About the site visits and Industry 4.0
The purpose of the Demonstration Network is to drive uptake of Industry 4.0 technologies among New Zealand manufacturers with the aim of increasing their productivity and global competitiveness. The Network of Sit Visits (NSV) are part of the Industry 4.0 Demonstration Network, which also includes a mobile showcase and smart factory showing cutting-edge Industry 4.0 technologies in action. The NSV takes selected companies through a fully funded assessment process to help them accelerate their own journey towards Industry 4.0, and sees them share their knowledge with other manufacturers.
