How Wientjens improves customer relationships thanks to their spare parts webshop

The new spare parts webshop in the Wientjens Cloud offers customers a more efficient and accessible way to order machine parts. This leads to higher customer satisfaction throughout the machine lifecycle and helps Wientjens to better serve their customers. 

Challenge

Wientjens, specialized in installations for recycling water and energy for textile laundries, regularly received inquiries about spare parts by phone or mail, often with unclear pictures or the request for a new pump, for example "the blue one" while they have 10 different blue pumps. This contact was usually through their distributors. All in all, this created an inefficient process.

Therefore, they now make all information available online 24/7 so that customers can order the necessary parts themselves. With this approach, Wientjens hopes to make it faster and easier for customers to order, and to make it clear that the Wientjens Cloud, also known as IXON Cloud, is a valuable tool for them.

Solution

When Wientjens mentioned to IXON that they were looking for a spare parts webshop, IXON partner Cybox happened to already be developing this webshop integration for IXON Cloud. They just needed a customer who wanted to test it. That worked out perfectly!

Spare parts webshop

A separate tab in the platform contains the spare parts webshop. A project manager at Wientjens, explains: "The dropdown lists all the machines to which the customer has access. The customer can select the correct machine and then sees exactly the parts list with the correct parts for this machine. This prevents confusion."

^{Wientjens' spare parts webshop with the spare part list belonging to a specific machine.}

In addition to spare parts, Wientjens also offers consumables and service and maintenance kits in the webshop. Orders now often arrive at the customer within a few days, instead of the 2 to 3 weeks it took before. Wientjens is currently working with Cybox to add quotations to the webshop. This will allow customers to first download a quote, forward it internally and then order from their saved shopping cart. 

Wientjens uses AFAS as its ERP system. From there, all serial numbers, spare parts lists and customer numbers are extracted and integrated into the webshop. Wientjens' CEO says, "Our Configure to Order (CTO) approach ensures that the basics are right, so you set it up right once, after which maintenance and use are easy."

^{An overview of how all platforms, partners and apps work together at Wientjens}

Document management

With IXON's AFAS Connector, Wientjens can also display documents such as machine manuals with each machine in the Downloads tab. Updates in the ERP system are automatically implemented everywhere. "The advantage is that customers can always access the documents online and no longer lose them," says the CEO.

^{Documents displayed at the machine in the Wientjens Cloud}

Result

When a customer requests spare parts in the old way, he receives an automatic e-mail about the new webshop. "Within a few months, a significant number of our customers switched to the webshop. You can also see that the size of orders is increasing. Because people have more overview, they also order more, for example a spare set," says the project manager.

He adds, "Customers who normally weren't interested in the cloud, but now discover the webshop, go to the cloud anyway. That's also how we get new cloud users." The CEO adds: "You can't really avoid it in the near future. After all, data is also becoming increasingly important. The only challenge is to show customers the value of that data."

^{Machine data visible in the Wientjens Cloud}

Altogether, the Wientjens Cloud and thereby the spare parts webshop allows Wientjens to build relationships with customers and serve them better. It also reduces the need for travel, which reduces carbon emissions, and reduces the problems caused by a lack of technical staff at customers. 

Conclusion

Previously, Wientjens heard little from customers after a machine was sold unless there were problems. Now there is more contact and insight into usage. "The approach used to be transactional, now it's relational," says the CEO. "To foster this, we want to house as much knowledge as possible in the Wientjens Cloud as a single source of truth that all customers can go to because they see the value." 

In addition, Wientjens is working on a Knowledge Base for failures so that customers can be supported even faster. "Distributors will soon be able to look up failures in the Wientjens Cloud and find possible causes, solutions and instructional videos," explains the project manager. "This way they can usually solve problems quickly themselves, without being bothered by time differences."

For more information about the Spare parts webshop, visit the IXON Marketplace.