You've got a great product and you're making sales. That's fantastic! But you need to make sure that your customers are having a good experience with your product, too. You know it's important to have good customer service and to deliver orders in a timely fashion, but what does all of that look like? Here are the steps for how to fulfill an order:
Receive the Sales Order
Once you receive the sales order, you'll need to match it up with your customer's information. This process is called "Customer Master Entry." Customer Master Entry can be done manually or through an automated system that pulls data from another system. For example, if you're using QuickBooks for all of your accounting functions and have already set up a customer in QuickBooks, simply importing their information into Salesforce will automatically populate fields such as name and address along with other relevant details like phone number (if they've provided it). At this point, all of their personal information will be available within Salesforce!
Once they've been matched against their unique identifier in your CRM system (e.g., email address or Social Security Number), you'll create a new sales order record in Salesforce if one doesn't already exist for them. If there is an existing record with this identifier but not much information on file yet (such as only having their name), we highly recommend adding some basic details via our outbound email templates before creating any new records; this way, when people respond back to us they won't feel like they're answering questions that should've been answered by someone else first!
Now comes the fun part: processing this newly created record in order to create related items within your systems including delivery orders and invoices which are then paid by customers at some point after receiving those documents themselves.
Process the Order
- Process the Order.
- Check the order.
- Send the order.
- Track the order * Get confirmation of delivery.
Prepare the Order
- Prepare the order for shipping.
- Prepare the order for billing.
- Prepare the order for customer support.
- Prepare the order for returns, refunds, and exchanges.
Ship the Order
The last step in order fulfillment is shipping the order to the customer. Make sure the order is complete, and ship it in a timely manner. This will ensure that your customer gets their package on time, and that you are able to meet your shipping deadlines.
Billing & Payment
Once you’ve completed the order, you need to make sure that your customer has paid for it. You can use one of the following methods:
- Credit cards.
- Payment terms. For example, if you accept credit cards and PayPal as your payment options, a customer may choose to pay via PayPal but enter their billing information on a form below it. This allows them to keep their credit card details hidden from you until checkout.
- Checks and money orders (for large orders). If someone wants to pay with this method, they will fill out an order form with all the required information and give it back to you by mail or email before purchasing anything else from your store. The check or money order will be mailed out after receiving payment confirmation from either yourself or bank authorities like Visa/MasterCard etc., depending on how much time has passed since the posting date stamped on said document was issued by the institution issuing the check/money order itself!
Customer Support
Customer support is another major component of your fulfillment process. In order to deliver a great customer experience, you need to have a plan in place. This includes having a way for customers to contact you, track their satisfaction and complaints, and handle their requests.
In order fulfillment, it's important to plan ahead. When you plan, you can make sure that your products are available and ready for delivery when they're needed.
Let's look at an example of a basic order fulfillment process with a sample order:
- The customer places an order through the website or by phone.
- The sales representative adds the product to a cart on their end and prints off an invoice for the customer to sign before paying.
- The order is sent to accounting so that shipping costs can be calculated and billing can be completed.
The bottom line is that order fulfillment should be an easy process that you can do at any time. It’s important to have all of these steps in place so that customers aren't left waiting for their orders, but it shouldn’t be something that takes over your life either. By following these six steps, you'll be able to handle your fulfillment needs with ease! For more order fulfillment tips and tricks to better satisfy your customers, always refer to the specialty retail section of our blog. There is all you need to know to make your business more profitable. Check it out.
