Joe is a busy business owner—especially during a pandemic!

He got to stop 80% of his customers waiting for him to answer his phone, by sharing a self-service Coshape quotation tool with them.

Self-service Quotation Tool For High In Demand Products

Covid or Christmas,

Wanting to be working more on the business, than in the business,

Everyone from order-management and customer-care got the flue or on vacation:

There are many times during a normal year that a well designed product customizer can help you with inquiries and get your customers faster to place their orders with you.

The Problem

During the busy times of COVID Joes phones are not standing still.

Fortunately for him one might think. Not so much if it happens every day and when you should be busy fulfilling orders.

Especially for those items that are required by others to keep their business running in a safe manner: For those there are more inbound requests than ever.

All that results in everyone in the business answering phones and emails while getting less done in overall outcome.

It reached a point where we just let the phones ring the entire day and then regular customers started to show up at our workshop to place their orders and because some of them even worried something had happened o us.

The Hypothesis

Given that most customers use the internet to research before they make a purchase. And they will probably have googled you to get your phone number in the first place anyways. Why not answer their most pressing questions right there on your website? And avoid 80% of the phone calls right away?

And you can even go a step further and show them if their request is possible to manufacture and how their requested product would look like.

The Solution

Parametric product customization with instant preview rendering.
Parametric product customization with instant preview rendering.
Coshape product customizer on your website.
Coshape product customizer on your website.
Product customizer with instant pricing.
Product customizer with instant pricing.

Product customizer for your most in demand products

So, instead of answering phones give customers the opportunity to see:

  • That yes, indeed this is something we are offering.
  • You can order it here right away in a self-service manner, because our phones are running hot.
  • These are the dimensions we offer – and yes of course you can try to call us if your requirements are not exactly what we offer online.
  • This is all the information we need from you to get you your product.
  • This is how your product looks like.
  • This is what it costs.
  • This is the expected delivery time.

Introducing the Coshape product customizer

  • Collect the exact customer specifications you need – every time.
  • Provide instant quotes so your customers always know exactly what price to expect and you don’t loose money on the quote.
  • Get the CAD data for production you need.
  • Give customers a prerender of their exact custom product, making it easier for them to visualize it as if they’ already have it.
  • Engage customers with an excellent product experience of yours. And, as the Ikea-effect explains: if you co-create a product, you value the product more.

The Impact

Help your customers answer their most important question: Do you do… Can you make…
Of course, you can! You are a custom manufacturer after all.

Help your customer to understand what you need from them right from the get-go and in advance: which specifications you need, for which area of application the customer has determined your product, which dimensions you need for production, etc.

When is a product customizer a good fit for my operation?

You should aim to intercept 80% of customer inquiries with a product customizer.

Some indications that a product customizer might be a business case:

Generally everything that is custom-made on a larger scale, i.e. mass-customization. But also think about:

Seasonal products: Is there a product that there is only a high-demand for in during a special season and you should rather be focused on production and fulfilling more inquiries, not answering phones and taking customers’ specifications?

Automating tedious and repetitive tasks: Instead of your employees doing them, let a computer do it for you and free them to do more creative and value additive work.

And much more… There have probably already come some ideas right to your mind while reading this case study here.

Let’s talk about them and find out if product customizer are a good fit for your business case as well.

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Let’s Talk About Your Business Case

This is just one example and one application amongst many on how one can make use of digital tools along the manufacturing process. As founders and business people ourselves we’re interested in what your most critical challenges and opportunities are in your business:

Talk with a Coshape Founder