Since its launch in April of 2017, MeritorPartsXpress.com has provided parts distributors and fleets the means to easily and quickly find necessary replacement parts. Meritor continues to make updates in order to better serve its customers. Christy Westrich talks about the latest developments in addressing Meritor’s customer parts ordering needs, including enhancements to self-service functionality, customizable and thorough notifications, and ways the organization is addressing emergency and vehicle down situations for customers.
Transcription of interview:
Erica Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: Hello and welcome to VSP News: Uptime Update. I am your host Erica Schueller, Editor-in-Chief of Fleet Maintenance magazine, covering all maintenance, all vehicle classes, all management, all the time.
The evolution of ecommerce and online parts ordering continues. Since its launch in April of 2017, MeritorPartsXpress.com has provided parts distributors and fleets the means to easily and quickly find necessary replacement parts. And Meritor continues to make updates in order to better serve its customers.
Meritor’s director of customer loyalty, Christy Westerich, sat down with us recently to talk about the latest developments in addressing their customers’ parts ordering needs, including enhancements to self-service functionality, customizable and thorough notifications, and ways the organization is addressing emergency and vehicle down situations for customers.
We first covered details about the formation of the Meritor Uptime Services Group, and how it helps to streamline the process of delivering on-demand parts for unexpected breakdowns and emergency service situations.
Christy Westrich, Meritor: Meritor recently launched our Uptime Services Group in our aftermarket facility, in Florence, Kentucky, which is dedicated to increasing vehicle uptime for our customers.
This group is intensely focused on expediting emergency or unit down order situations in order to decrease the turnaround time from order placement to order shipment.
We like to call this team the “extra step team” because they’re willing to go above and beyond to get parts out the door as soon as possible. That, in turn, decreases downtime for our customers.
Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: Let’s dive into the process of working with the MeritorPartsXpress Uptime Services Group. Westrich takes us through a transaction.
Westrich, Meritor: One of the major benefits of the Uptime Services Group is that the representatives in that group own every transaction, regardless of how the order is placed.
If a customer prefers to contact us by traditional means, like calling into our call center, the very first option they’re presented with is our Uptime Services Group for an emergency or truck down situation.
Contrarily, if a customer would prefer to use electronic means, like MeritorPartsXpress.com, those orders are funneled directly into our Uptime Services Group, so they can immediately be expedited to the best possible ship date.
As the transaction progresses, the Uptime Services Group has constant contact with the customer to make sure they’re comfortable with the order status, every step of the way.
Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: In addition to the launch of the Uptime Services Group, Meritor announced a number of recent enhancements to its ecommerce platform. Westrich shares more.
Westrich, Meritor: This past year, we launched multiple enhancements to improve self-service ability on MeritorPartsXpress.com. We did a complete redesign of our cross reference tool to not just show better visibility to Meritor cross references, but also to other available industry product cross references.
We also launched an alternative options feature which gives our customers the ability to look at alternative part numbers – whether that be an alternative brand, or even an alternative part that has the same exact form, fit, and function.
From an ordering perspective, we did a redesign of our “My Orders” portal, to give better visibility to our customers for order status on their open and shipped items, and we also give the customer the ability to download Excel order boards so they can do their own analysis.
But really, what we’re most excited about with these self-service enhancements is our recent launch of email notifications. If you’re placing orders on our online site – I’m not just talking about acknowledgments that Meritor has received your order – we’re now giving notifications if a part is in our distribution center, being picked and packed for shipment. If your promised ship date changes, if you would like tracking information on an order that’s shipped, you can have those all emailed to you.
If you prefer not to have them emailed to you, you can simply log in to the notifications portal on “My Orders” and you can view all of your communications related to your orders.
Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: Online parts ordering will continue to grow for the commercial vehicle market. Westrich talks more about what continuing trends we will likely see.
Westrich, Meritor: Customers are continuing to bring their personal ordering experiences to work with them, and they’re doing it more and more every day. It’s not going away.
Meritor is committed to partnering with our customers to bring them solutions, whether that is in standard parts ordering or whether it’s on MeritorPartsXpress.com digitally.
We’re going to be continuing to push forward with self-service enhancements. This year we’re going to expand our notifications to include text messaging and we’re also going to do a complete redesign of parts availability because, today, it’s just not enough to tell a customer whether something is or isn’t in stock. We want to help our customers improve their uptime by giving them all tools necessary to be successful.
Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: If you’d like more information about the current trends in ecommerce and online parts ordering, check out the link below to access a recent feature story from Fleet Maintenance on this topic.
Thank you for tuning in to VSP News Uptime Update, I’m your host Erica Schueller.
Until our next broadcast, keep up with this, and other industry topics, by visiting us online at VehicleServicePros.com.
