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Rethinking Customer Service at FactoryFour

Implementing new manufacturing software typically means long implementation times and bottomless support costs. Matthew Lerner, FactoryFour's Director of Customer Success, talks about how FactoryFour's approach to customer service is different.



At FactoryFour, we’ve spent the past 5 years developing novel technologies and feature sets that drive more value to manufacturers using our platform. With our mission to help manufacturers harness an increasingly digital future, we found another way to add differentiated value: rethinking how we service our customers.

Our Service Philosophy

The way manufacturing software has traditionally been purchased and supported is broken. Vendors charge exorbitant upfront costs for inflexible, rigid software, trapping businesses in an endless loop of consulting and support fees to keep their system functional.

Our philosophy at FactoryFour is simple: rather than service the customer, we believe in empowering the customer to service themselves.

We’ve invested significant resources and effort into making FactoryFour configurable by the manufacturer, and we train our users to have a strong grasp of the platform’s capabilities. This creates a relationship where our customers are not reliant on us, and instead facilitates honest, productive collaboration in order to improve their systems and, in turn, their bottom line.

Affordable Support That Scales

We start by providing our customers with a support model that scales with their needs. A typical manufacturing software purchase comes with a hefty, upfront implementation cost and requires IT resources and consultants to support and update the system.

With FactoryFour, if the manufacturer is comfortable using our tools and API to set up FactoryFour themselves, they pay nothing for support. If they need some help getting off the ground, our support packages function as a percentage of the total cost, scaling with the size of their organization to avoid large costs.

Educate and Empower

A system that is mission critical to a manufacturer’s operations should put the power in the manufacturer’s hands. Education is a key part of our servicing model: we train our manufacturers to leverage FactoryFour’s configuration tools to make modifications to their system on the fly, instead of relying on us or IT.

To that end, we built the FactoryFour Learn Centerdirectly into the platform so users can quickly educate themselves on key features or read FAQs. We constantly update the Learn Center with new content, including guides on functionality, FAQs, and best practices on architecting the system.

Admin App

Rapid, Collaborative Implementation

Just like our customers, on-time delivery is our number one priority. The industry average for implementing a business system like this is 14.1 months from purchase and 58% of manufacturers experience an overrun of their expected timeline.

On average, manufacturers go live with FactoryFour in under 90 days. The user-facing configuration tools in FactoryFour make system modifications a simple task, allowing our implementation experts to collaborate in real-time with customers to configure the platform. This allows our team to focus on change management, developing a training plan for the customer’s workforce and realistic measurements for successful deployment.

Our tried and true method of assessment, configuration and deployment is outlined below:

Timeline

Want to learn more about FactoryFour and how it can help your business? Contact the FactoryFour team here and book a demo today.