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Customer Service for Food Manufacturers: The Most Powerful Differentiator

Customer Service Food Manufacturers

Enhance Customer Service for Food Manufacturers with Integrated Technology

2021 customers have more choices than ever. Read about the latest trends in customer service for food manufacturers.

The Ever-Changing Food and Beverage Customer

In today’s Tik Tok and Instagram era, food and beverage trends are constantly changing. Viral recipes (looking at you, TikTok feta pasta), fad diets, and more are creating an ever-changing marketplace for food manufacturers. This is especially true in 2021, with COVID-19 shaking up consumer behavior in every industry. An astounding 85% of consumers have made changes to the way they prepare and consume food due to the COVID-19 pandemic (1). Food and beverage manufacturers need to stay on top of customer service trends to stay competitive. Here we look at some of 2021’s food and beverage trends, and how manufacturers can prepare for them.

Convenient Customer Service is King

In today’s fast-moving society, consumers want convenient food products and ways to purchase them. Grocery e-commerce, food delivery and meal kit sales have all increased due to stay-at-home orders and consumers are craving the convenience and ease of daily habits and routines they had pre-COVID. E-commerce now accounts for 10-15% of grocery spend. Food manufacturers need to adopt customer service using technology that allows them to easily sell to consumers from multiple channels, not just in retail stores.

Consumers are also looking for conveniently packaged food products. Almost half of consumers started buying more frozen foods during the pandemic and frozen food sales climbed 17.4% (4). 39% of consumers sought out single-serving or individually wrapped products (4). Companies who could easily adapt to these shifts are able to capture huge sections of the market. Visibility into your existing and previous customer data provides actionable insights that enable optimal customer service for food manufacturers. Access to sales history, and order trends gives food and beverage companies the edge they need to shift production to match changing consumer preferences.

  1. Sources:
    1. https://www.edlong.com/top-7-food-industry-trends-for-2021/
    2. https://www.fooddive.com/trendline/plant-based-foods/98/
    3. https://apnews.com/article/technology-lifestyle-public-opinion-media-coronavirus-pandemic-553d0b4304c20193f44cd8158e916f36
    4. https://www.fooddive.com/news/frozen-food-packaging-gets-more-sustainable-as-consumers-want-more-individu/596352/
    5. https://www.foodprocessing.com/industrynews/2021/report-alt-proteins-poised-for-surge
    6. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/us-food-supply-chain-disruptions-and-implications-from-covid-19

“After just a few days training our department heads and superusers, Softengine had nearly three-quarters of our employees — across sales, finance, customer service, purchasing, shipping and logistics — using the application. “

– Balaji Raghunathan, VP of operations for Rapid Conn Inc. in the United States

What Our Customers Say

Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner, Baronet Coffee

Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner

“Anyone you tell that you’re going to a new ERP system, they all give you that ‘pained look.’ To think that we’re on a year from when we did discovery to now three months into our live implementation, and all we’re working on is some fine-tuning. Some of these fine-tuning tasks are those little things that make our life so much easier, but this wasn’t what I expected when we went live because people told me so many horror stories. I was thankful for the effort on both Softengine and Baronet teams.”

Denise Ost, Chief Operating Officer, Goodwill Industries, San Joaquin Valley

The good news is that SAP Business One’s Sales Analysis capabilities enabled us to evaluate the results of that campaign and then make adjustments for future promotions. Specifically, we can check the number of transactions, discount levels and net gain or loss per promotion and per location. We have to be very careful with how we spend our precious marketing dollars and the new system gives us the tools to optimize our investment in that area.

Jason Dugan, CFO, Trudeau Distributing Company

Softengine has been a key contributor to our rollout of SAP Business One. The company’s consultants were excellent and helped ensure that we had a successful implementation.

Leonard Kang, Operations Manager, Christopher Lena

We decided to find a partner we could put our trust in. Softengine is very experienced and systemized in its approach. We were very confident we’d made the right choice. Small businesses might be intimidated by SAP software. What they don’t realize is that SAP offers solutions designed specifically for small to midsize companies like ours.

Ray Lacorte, VP of Operations, Choice Organic Teas

We feel like we are in great hands with Softengine and the SAP Business One system they installed. It’s nice to finally put all those unreliable ERP systems and redundant procedures in the rear-view mirror.

Justin Ku, Administration & Operations Coordinator, Swabplus

The Softengine team was able to tailor SAP Business One to deliver all the traceability Swabplus needed, including all the applicable reports. Softengine enhanced the core system to enable creation of new batch numbers if components don’t already have them and the option of batch-costing. They also added fields for escalation dates, expiration dates and additional inspection data (e.g., who inspected and when), which could be incorporated into each Certificate of Analysis.

Virginia J. Gregorian, COO, Turbo Wholesale Tires

Our experience with Softengine has been extremely positive. Any time we call for assistance, they always assign someone who’s highly professional and gets the job done quickly. Interestingly enough, I’ve become so much more educated about IT-related matters since working with the Softengine team on this project. Every time we need to upgrade the system, they walk me though all the steps to make sure that I completely understand what’s happening, which contributes to the overall success of the upgrade. It’s been a pleasure to work with them.