If you haven't heard, the electronics manufacturing market is shifting rapidly! In response to the cut-rates being offered in developing nations, domestic facilities are now adding services you simply cannot get overseas. These can be extremely cost-effective, and add significant value to local manufacturing choices.
Foremost among these would be repair and fulfillment services. Post-sale support is one of the most costly areas of any electronics production, and it's pure sunk costs. Any savings in this area will only help your bottom line, and potentially help customer retention as well.
What You Need In An Electronics Manufacturer With Repair Services
1 - "Invisible" Call Centers
Virtualized call centers are so standard in business that few people even stop to think about where their call might be going. As long as everyone answering the phone pretends they're part of the same company, the customer neither knows nor cares.
So first and foremost, they have to have the capabilities to take your support calls while answering the phone as your company. Customers should never know they're calling a third-party.
2 - Guaranteed Supply Lines
One of the biggest problems with post-sale fulfillment in overseas production comes from the supply lines being used. It's extremely hard to oversee foreign manufacturing to ensure the exact right parts are always being ordered, not to mention the issues keeping counterfeits away.
Plus, if there's a defect or a run on a particular component, you could find yourself waiting months for replacements to arrive. Those overseas transportation systems can be a real detriment to speedy response.
3 - Component-Level Diagnostics
One byproduct of all the offshore production is that many companies simply don't bother trying to repair anything. If even a single component goes bad, they merely send out an entire new device because they lack the facilities to repair it properly.
It says something about the actual cost-effectiveness of overseas manufacturing when such a clearly wasteful process is seen as the least-bad option.
Instead, if your domestic manufacturing center is doing your tech work, it's simple for them to do component-level diagnostics and actually fix the product. You'll lose far less money sending out replacement products that could be sold instead.
4 - Testing And Reporting Abilities
A third-party call center hired to tech your products does not have any real incentive to do more than the bare minimum. They're not likely to be collecting detailed information on problems encountered. As such, even major defects can be concealed from you until they become a huge (and usually very public) problem.
When your manufacturing partner is the same one making the products, they have every incentive to identify defects and fix them ASAP. If they've got testing facilities onsite, they can be proactively investigating issues as customers report them.
You get faster revisions to your products, which minimizes the damage any unforeseen defect can cause.
5 - A True Customer Focus
If your customers are happy, they buy more of your products. If they're buying more of your products, you're ordering more products from your manufacturer.
A quality electronics assembler with customer support options understands this. If they make customers happy, that directly brings THEM more business right alongside your new business. Again, this gives them an inherent motivation to treat your customers well and increase your repeat business.
New customers cost 5x as much to acquire as it costs to retain customers. Quality customer service is a no-brainer from a long-term standpoint.
Don't Cheat Yourself When Selecting An Electronics Manufacturer!
You really can get the best of both worlds with domestic manufacturing: Affordable high-quality electronics, with support and fulfillment services to match. If you're still dealing with the months-long supply chains and language barriers inherent with overseas production,
To learn more about the benefits of reshoring your manufacturing processes, contact ZenTech today for a free cost-savings consultation!
photo credit: Accretion Disc via photopin cc
photo credit: mike_knewtson via photopin cc
