In B2B, Customer Experience is becoming not only a prime source of competitive differentiation but also a major factor in choice of supplier or service provider.
To deliver a great B2B customer experience and achieve long term profitable growth, your strategy must contain the following ingredients.
Personalisation
- Critical for customer acquisition, repeat purchases, advocacy and developing long term relationships
- Achieved by having an in-depth understanding of
your customers in terms of:
- Who are the key participants and stakeholders in the buying decision
- Their priorities, needs and challenges
- Goals—both business and personal
- Using this knowledge, tailor experiences to particular circumstances. Remember this is B2B so will span across several individuals
- What Should You Do?
- Identify the members of the buying decision group
- Provide insights and actionable information that will help them achieve their goals, address priorities and pain points as well as hesitations they may have
Minimal Time and Effort
- Ease of doing business and the amount of time required is a strong driver of loyalty
- Finding opportunities to reduce cost, time and effort are major relationship enhancers
- What Should You Do?
- Review your processes and systems across your business such as your website, purchase/ordering, onboarding, service delivery, issue resolution etc
- Get feedback regularly from your customers and partners through surveys, customer meetings and service reviews to identify ways to improve
- Consider co-creating elements of product and service offerings with your customers
Issue Resolution
- The ability to resolve issues quickly and reliably is paramount as your product or service offering is often integral to the operations of your customers’ businesses
- Effective issue resolution when an incident occurs is a crucial “moment of truth” is a key driver for business customer loyalty and advocacy
- Therefore, it is important to have a Service
Recovery Strategy established for your business. Establishing one requires that
you:
- Know what matters to your business customers
- Understand what could go wrong
- Develop a “Plan B”-what will be done to resolve the issue
- Have a system in place to provide progress reports, timelines and updates
Expectation Management
- Managing customer expectations is important for securing ongoing relationships as well as repeat purchase
- With all stakeholders it is important that you are careful not to overpromise and underdeliver
- B2B customers want their expectations not only met but often exceeded
- What Should You Do?
- Be proactive: Plan in advance as to how you will manage your customer at key touchpoints and interactions.
- Communicate communicate communicate! Ensure that your relevant stakeholders both within your company and with your customers are clear as to your expectations regarding service quality, service delivery, key interactions and expectations
- Do What You Say You Will Do!
- Get
Customer Feedback
- Check in with your stakeholders (decision makers, influencers) to find out to identify issues, areas for improvement as well as additional ways you can add value to help them achieve their objectives
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