Regardless of what is being sold, behind every successful business is a strong customer focus. It is the foundation for loyalty that ensures customers will always come first.
As customers scrutinize businesses more intensely than ever, companies prioritize building human customer relationships.
It involves learning and gaining valuable insights from consumers to build better products. One of the critical elements that ensure a company’s success and customer satisfaction is supply chain management.
From manufacturing to product delivery at your doorstep, supply chain management puts together an efficient system that forecasts consumers’ needs.
Customer service is one of the critical components of supply chain management that allows consumers to understand the product and the business.
Supply chain management plays a significant role in helping the product reach the customer’s hands.
One way to improve the supply chain management of any company is by working on customer service that focuses on the demands of the clients and provides the relevant data.
Potential buyers turn into dissatisfied customers because companies fail to meet customers’ demands. With time customers’ expectations have changed; they now expect efficient deliveries, timely communication, and high quality of the products shipped.
Since every brand or product caters to customers’ needs, new business owners must ask themselves How Customer Service is Important to Supply Chain Management? to make the brand more customer-centric.
In today’s world, companies have transitioned from more than delivering boxes. With technology, the production lines have configured their roles such that along every path of the supply chain, there is a strategized product movement.
With the industry’s growth from global sourcing of goods to sales, a career in supply chain management will open up numerous opportunities for you professionally.
Let’s look at some of the highest-paying supply chain jobs you might not know.
- Inventory Manager
Also known as the inventory analyst, inventory managers oversee the company’s supplies and products.
They supervise the inventory clerks or warehouse staff and communicate with different business members. The duties of the inventory manager depend on the type of industry and the size of the workplace.
Among the duties, they have to fulfill, count or use supply chain software tools to keep track of the stock levels is the primary role of every inventory manager.
There is always a significant chance that stocks might run low so, it is up to the inventory manager to order additional inventory. Besides this, you can also train inventory clerks or delegate tasks as an inventory analyst.
The pay scale ranges from $14,000 to $123,000 per year based on the workplace location and the experience. Apart from large firms that pay their managers relatively high salaries, certifications can also allow inventory managers to command high annual earnings.
- Logistics Manager
The logistics manager oversees how an organization should purchase products and distribute them in the market. These roles usually require strong organizational and multitasking skills that logistics managers should have.
Besides negotiating the shipping rates, logistics managers work with other departments within the company to implement logistical improvements.
Logistics managers can overlook multiple roles based on experience or expertise, from overseeing the export and import of products to supervising team members.
They are either responsible for the organization’s supply chain or designated to a specific region in a large company.
Similar to inventory managers, the average salary of a logistics manager is somewhere between $14,000 to $139,000 per year based on the type of industry and level of experience.
- Purchasing Supervisor
Communication and trust are the two most critical components that lead the business on the road to success or failure.
Purchasing supervisor’s role is to carry out proper research about the product or material supplier to prevent any business loss.
They find high-quality, cost-effective materials and work on negotiating the best deal for their business for manufacturing products.
Apart from negotiating, purchasing supervisors maintain stock levels and create a strategy for disposing of outdated items in profitable ways.
They also shed light on reducing time and cost by evaluating the company’s current procurement strategies. Working as a purchasing supervisor is a full-time job that likely takes up to 40 hours a week.
Aside from experience, the salary of purchasing managers depends on the education level. A professional career as a purchasing manager requires certification and five years of experience in the procurement industry.
- Product Quality Specialist
Every business or company wants its products to meet the standards of clients or customers. Criteria are met when the product delivered is of high quality, and most importantly, the organization is working hard towards maintaining that quality.
The primary role of a product quality manager is to ensure the quality of the products or the services a business is selling. It goes along with customer relations, manufacturing, and product delivery.
Aside from keeping a check on the standard of what is sold, product quality managers ensure that every employee follows the company’s guidelines.
Duties include understanding the health and safety standards for the business, ensuring that those standards are met, and keeping an eye on the quality of product manufacturing.
Providing reports on the process and the areas that need improvement to the executive board. Based on their responsibilities, product quality managers are paid according to that.
High salaries are awarded when companies have greater quality assurance and product management demands.
- Facilities Analyst
A high-quality product can only be developed when the equipment is up to date and well maintained. Without keeping an eye on the maintenance of the system used, there is a risk of poor quality products that no business or customer wants.
As a facilities manager, you can manage the regular maintenance or upgrade equipment to avoid compromising product quality.
Facilities specialists handle scheduling and budgeting on repairs to major construction projects and ensure that the product development process runs smoothly.
In addition to keeping an update on equipment, they also inspect the facility area that needs repair or cleaning.
Cleaning, maintenance, and repairs are the necessary tasks of a facility manager that ensure clients’ expectations are met. On average, the salary of facilities analysts ranges from $15,000 to $136,000 per year.
Conclusion
If you don’t value customers’ needs, it is unlikely that your business will stay afloat for long. One of the reasons most businesses often fail is that the focus is primarily on what kind of product is sold compared to how it reaches the customers.
For this reason, customer service plays a significant role in supply chain management, which looks after product delivery.
If your buyer is not satisfied with the quality of the product received, it is unlikely that your business will prosper or make a name in the market.
That is why every business owner should also satisfy the consumers, apart from focusing on product development.
