The last few years have been hard on innovation, as product development teams have been working more from home, and collaboration made more difficult as face-to-face meetings and lunch chats have been replaced by video chats and instant messaging. Even with these ubiquitous technological barriers, MeritorPartsXpress (MPX) team has launched a slew of updates to the ecommerce platform—with several more on the way this year.
Since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, MPX has added text notifications, inventory messaging, live web chats, and automated annual returns. Updates for 2022 include a faster site and a credit cards payment option, along with a VIN decoder tool and Driveshaft on Demand configurator tool.
“Despite there being a pandemic, and despite everybody being home, our ecommerce group was really focused on continuing to launch updates to Meritor PartsXpress,” explained Christy Westrich, MPX director of customer loyalty, at a media luncheon during the Heavy-Duty Aftermarket Week show in Grapevine, Texas.
2020-2021 Updates
Text messaging
Previously, MPX offered notifications via email and the e-commerce portal. Now there is an option to get alerts sent directly to your phone via text message. For some parts, you need to know their status as soon as possible, and texts are harder to miss than emails.
Westrich said the texts will supply order confirmation, shipping date, and revised dates if the order was re-promised for any reason. Text alerts can be configured to a customer's needs, alerting of all updates or more targeted messaging, such as for emergency orders only.
Updated inventory messaging
Many customers were requesting to know at which distribution center parts were located, Westrich recalled. The team realized they didn’t care as much if the part was coming from Florence, Kentucky, or Edmonton, Canada; “They wanted to know when they were going to get it,” Westrich explained.
The site now uses zip code, which can be changed, to determine shipment time and how to expedite that order.
“It'll tell you [that] you can get this by Friday, or if you want it by Thursday, you can add it to your cart, and you can make an emergency order and ship it out for you,” Westrich said.
Live web chat
Live web chat delivers technical service representatives instantly, for times when email is too slow for the answer needed.
Automated annual returns
Meritor allows for customers to return 5% of excess material annually.
“Prior to us launching this on Meritor parts Express, they would email that information to us and then it would probably take a day or so to get it back to them,” Westrich said. “Now, we have it automated on the site.”
Users drag and drop or upload the return information, and the site immediately provides a disposition.
“It'll even tell you why we can't accept something back, whether it's no longer in the sellable period or something to that effect,” Westrich said.
Updates planned for 2022
Faster site speed
Due to the rapid pace of adding site features, the back end has had to carry a heavy processing burden.
“It's pulling in order board information; it's doing a lot of intense data mining; and that has kind of slowed our site down,” Westrich said.
This has caused some pages to take 10 to 12 seconds to load, while the fastest time is 3 seconds. The development team’s goal for this year is to get all pages to load in around 3 seconds.
Credit card processing
MPX has required point-of-sale for payment, but by the end of the year, the site will accept credit card payments.
Driveshaft on Demand configurator tool
Meritor’s aftermarket side offers Drivetrain on Demand, for expedited delivery of driveshafts and differentials through authorized rebuilders. Customer usually get the parts in around 24 hours, explained Doug Dole, Meritor general manager for product safety. For driveshaft components, some configuration is required. MPX is working to automate feature for customers.
“They can go ahead and configure their drive shaft, and then we'll go ahead and fulfill it automatically from one of those authorized distributors,” Westrich said.
She noted Meritorhas developed configuration tools for driveshafts and kingpins, as well.
Vin Decoder tool
“This is something we've been waiting a very long time for,” Westrich said. “We're an old supplier; we have 110 years of technical information, so this fits really well in what we're doing.”
