Caterpillar Marine Power Systems (CMPS) has launched a new online forum designed to share product experience. The forum at www.marine.cat.com will provide a unique platform for existing and prospective customers to exchange opinions, questions and solutions related to Caterpillar® marine products and beyond.
The move is also meant to fuel open and honest communication within the maritime community and to share the vast amount of application know-how that has been gathered with thousands of Cat and MaK marine engines operating on the seven seas.
Online communities are becoming increasingly important for consumer products and business-to-business applications. CMPS is the second division within Caterpillar to launch such an initiative and follows the community debut of Caterpillar’s electric power generation division in late 2008.
The new online forum does not replace any of the existing customer service platforms such as the application support centre, or individual solutions at the various Caterpillar dealerships. However it will provide existing and prospective customers an additional opportunity to network online.
“Join, discuss, solve” is the overall theme of the CMPS online forum. Initially Caterpillar has set up nine different channels to share ideas: Cat product, MaK product, engine selection, technologies, sustainability, regulations and standards, financial services, engine room discussions and general topics. Experts from CMPS will monitor the discussions and provide additional support and advice if necessary. This also allows Caterpillar to gather direct customer opinions and feed them back into the organisation where appropriate.
First and foremost, the CMPS online forum fosters peer-to-peer interaction. From an enterprise perspective, however, the forum also dovetails future product and service offerings with customer needs in a new way. And because of the direct feedback from the field, potential issues will be detected and resolved quicker than ever before.
“Join, discuss, solve” opens up a new area of customer interaction and marketing opportunity. The CMPS online forum complements the existing communication efforts perfectly and also significantly increases the CMPS web presence at www.marine.cat.com, which is a critical part of today’s business.