Longevity Acrylics Inc.
Helping Longevity Acrylics Keep Their Customers Informed
Longevity Acrylics Inc. is a manufacturer of bathroom products in Ontario, Canada. The company’s focus is on producing high-quality bathware from 100% cast acrylic. Their products are stronger and more durable than their competitions. The company does all of its design, production, and service work on location in Canada. Manufacturing of all kinds presents many challenges for businesses large and small. Longevity Acrylics needed a way to keep their customers informed about when their orders would be delivered. A custom order tracker solution was needed to help decrease demand and stress on customer service employees.
In this case study, we’ll take a look at how Link Software helped Longevity Acrylics keep their customers up-to-date on their orders with a custom order tracking system.
The Challenge
Longevity Acrylics take orders with various turnaround times for production and delivery. Each order can have items with different schedules. This makes it difficult for customers to know when their pieces are shipping. So the staff had to field phone calls and answer emails from customers on a regular basis. The frequent back-and-forth led to the need for a custom order tracking system.
Longevity Acrylics reached out to Link Software to see if there was something we could do to help. The order tracker needed to be self-contained, frictionless, and able to be embedded on the company’s marketing site. The goal was to limit the amount of work required by their staff to keep the system updated. In addition, Longevity marketing employees wanted to be able to upload company news and pricing inside the order tracker.
The Custom Order Tracker Solution
We built a brand new, from scratch, custom order tracker for Longevity to fit all of their needs. The order tracker has only two parts: an administrative interface and a customer front-end. Imported data from a third-party application drives both parts of the tracker.
Administrative Interface
Most of the systems we build for our clients have some kind of dedicated interface for staff. This project was no different. We built a simple administrative interface for Longevity Acrylics employees. They can log into the system from their computer using any web browser. Once inside, staff can upload order data and PDFs for news and pricing.
One thing worth noting, which was important to the team, was that order data imports had to be as simple as possible. A simple spreadsheet containing the order data is what the team uploads. The spreadsheet is generated by a simple reporting mechanism in the company’s existing accounting software. Whenever it is time to update the order tracker the spreadsheet is generated and uploaded. The whole process only takes a few minutes.
Customer Front-End
This is the most important and most often used, piece of the system. The customer-facing part of the order tracker is a simple form. It asks for two pieces of information for the order and uses that to look up the necessary details. The customer’s request returns the order details with breakdowns of each line item with its estimated delivery date. Again, Longevity Acrylics uploads and maintains all of the order data via the administrative interface.
The order lookup form matches the existing colors, fonts, and general design of the company’s marketing website. Implementing the form itself was as simple as making a new page in their content management system. Then it was a matter of inserting a few lines of code we provided. Now Longevity Acrylics customers can visit the website, enter in their details, and instantly get back the information they need.
The Final Result
In the end, Longevity Acrylics had a custom-built order tracker for their customers to do their own lookups. This helps cut down on the stress of regularly answering calls and emails about order statuses. The system is low friction. It’s easy for their team to keep updated and for customers to use. It also has the added bonus of offering news and pricing information to customers as well.
Would you like more information about how Link Software can help you create an order tracker? We would be glad to help answer any of your questions and offer up ideas for a custom solution. Contact us today for more information.