Digital B2B Customer Service is a Reality, Even in the Forestry Industry

Today B2B customer service is highly manual and reactive in forestry and even supply chain in general. Today, companies work in isolated systems and staff spend a majority of their time collecting and sharing updates, thereby wasting many man-hours. Sales and account managers spend up to 50% of their time on follow-ups regarding quotations, tenders, coordination, data and updates which their clients should otherwise have easy access to.

The Traditional Life Cycle of a Shipment

During negotiation, clients submit inquiries or request stock lists and reference pictures as well as estimated ready dates, payment terms, certifications, and the final price before making a decision. This process takes a long time and requires back and forth communication.

Going digital, however, would give a smooth and flawless experience to all the counterparties involved in the transaction. With B2B digital customer service, you can automate your supply chain starting from the tender or inquiry. However digital customer service is most critical to existing customers and active shipments, where the biggest time-savings and gains can be made. Proactively allowing the client to track containers, couriers, milestones and having schedules, documents and instructions all in one place.

Benefits of Digital Customer Service of the Forestry Supply Chain

Digital supply chain integration can help streamline customer-facing operations, as you digitize the entire process and collect data across the enterprise. The digital supply chain becomes a single version of a company’s sales, logistics and supply-chain Some of the most common benefits of a digital B2B customer service at Timber Exchange include:

• Getting warnings of deviations in shipments, compliance or milestones
• Track updates in real-time throughout the supply chain
• Visualizing, forecasting and analyzing upcoming events
• Analyzing business and supply chain performance
• Get notifications for key events and changes in the supply chain
• Generate compliant shipping documents automatically
• Pick the most suitable ocean freight journey based on journey days, ETA, carbon emissions and price
• Send constant updates of data regarding the shipment or deal in real-time, marking milestones throughout the day, optimizing the business process

Features Provided by Timber Exchange

Timber Exchange is a supply-chain platform offering market data, tendering, supply-chain tools and professional services.

Market Data Hub: Gives you a quantitate layer to support decision-making on how the global timber supply chain is performing on a monthly basis.

B2B Tendering: Allowing C-Suite to track all historic offers in a single channel and reducing the number of emails for those involved.

Supply Chain Tools: Automating the majority of compliance, legal and coordination processes for collaborating exporters, importers and freight forwarders.

Professional Offline Services: If you want to outsource cargo inspection, document compliance or trade finance that is available at highly affordable costs. Trade-finance includes both document drafting and L/C management/remittance.

The Timber Exchange network is connected with;

-1 customs authority

-10 couriers

-20 national chambers of commerce

-60 container lines

-18,000 bulk vessels

For more information on automating your supply chain, get in touch with Timber Exchange at [email protected].