People know their shoe sizes, since shoe measurements are more or less standardized and companies offer pictures and size charts online. Yet still, shoe orders get sent back every day, because they don’t fit. It only gets more complicated in the world of vehicles. Is this the right part to fix my problem? Is it for the correct year, make and model? Is this a fair price? What else will I need to swap out to replace this?
Now try to apply that to the heavy-duty industry where fleets spec different things coming off the OEM line, make repairs with products form different brands, or apply their own makeshift fix. And did I forget to mention that heavy-duty product data isn’t standardized? I think I need a counter to lie down on for a moment.
E-commerce is the future, but it doesn’t have to be so complex to find a good deal on the correct product. FE‘s Jason Morgan spoke with Ken Clinchy, vice president of digital and e-commerce at FleetPride, to see how they’re helping fleets sort through these issues.
“Our Fleet Pride employees, when you get on the parts side, these are folks who have been on the counter for 30 or 40 years and they now help people virtually,” said Clinchy. “It’s essentially a virtual parts counter, is the best way to think about it. They’re able to leverage all that knowledge and then point you in the right direction online to make the purchase very quickly.”
Customers don’t like getting the wrong part and companies don’t like dealing restocking issues. Even the most well-kept websites can end up processing returns and that’s partly due to a lack of standardization in the industry.
“This is just a challenge in general in our industry, product data is not standardized in the heavy duty space. We’re trying to do that. We’re part of the council around heavy duty data standards. And really the reason we push that and the reason it’s so important to us is for the customer,” Clinchy explained. “Because if we can all get to standard data, it makes it far easier for us to tell the customer, ‘Hey, when you’re looking at a valve, here’s the four attributes that will always be on every valve. Your inlet, your outlet ports, the location of the ports.'”
Differences in terminology, incomplete listings, outdated information—there are plenty more pitfalls to tackle. To see how FleetPride is working to get the right part to you the first time, watch the video.
