Why Is the Customer Experience So Crucial?

Customer experience, or CX is so crucial, especially in the B2B arena, for one big reason: it’s the differentiating factor that separates your company from others.

Companies can all produce top-tier software or other products, services, and other benefits for their clients. However, only some companies have the attention to detail and customer-focused philosophies to provide enduring, helpful CX strategies.

B2B companies are looking for quality products and quality time examining, purchasing, and using those products. That’s all contingent on a customer’s experience: one of the most critical metrics of a customer journey.

Think of a customer journey as the set of real-time touchpoints that B2B buyers experience when they discover and buy from your brand. A customer journey map can help you grasp this idea more fully, but it includes the discovery, purchasing, and retention of business-to-business customers.

Customer experience, of course, means everything from the layout of your website to the skill of your customer support team to the accessibility of your self-service features, like tutorials and knowledge base resources.

The better an experience you can make for your customers:

• The more loyalty those B2B customers will have for your brand. More customer loyalty is always a welcome thing for B2B organizations.
• The more likely those B2B customers will be to come back for another purchase. It’s an indicator of customer satisfaction and reduces churn.
• The greater your reputation will grow among your target audience members.

Given all these benefits, it’s a no-brainer to focus on improving your B2B CX as much as possible. Double down on customer experience, and you won’t just acquire new customers: you’ll retain them in the long term. This is excellent for profitability (given the fact that it costs more to acquire a new customer as opposed to keeping a current one).

7 Ways To Improve B2B Customer Experiences

Of course, improving B2B customer experiences is easier said than done, especially if you don’t have a plan or specific ideas.

That’s why we’ve collected seven ways you can directly improve your B2B client experiences starting today. Take a look at these suggestions and implement them based on your budget and staffing resources.

Start With a Customer-Centric Vision

It all begins with a strong, customer-centered vision. A customer-centered vision will ensure that you create your products, services, and experiences with a mindset of pleasing or helping your customers, not (only) raw functionality or practicality.

For instance, when you are building your B2B website or storefront, if you focus on things from a customer-centric perspective:

• You’ll think about how customers can easily navigate through the store.
• You’ll consider which layouts or formats for products are most accessible.
• You’ll design your site so that it’s enjoyable to go through from start to finish.

A customer-centric vision will help your brand stand out from the pack right from the get-go, showing B2B clients that you’re concerned primarily about their satisfaction. Review B2B business customer needs and implement solid B2B experiences into your omnichannel marketing, product design, and much more.

Get To Know Your Customers

Next, you’ll want to get to know your customers by collecting plenty of customer data from the moment of onboarding or even before. This can include generalized customer data gathered from throughout your industry and personalized customer data that you gather from your first B2B clients.

In any case, you’ll need all this data for personalization and for targeted marketing later down the road. Personalized and targeted marketing, such as happy birthday emails or special discount emails sent to specific B2B clients, can do a lot to make your customers feel like you know them personally and really care about their experience.

Personalize the Experiences

Armed with a wealth of customer data, personalize B2B customer experiences whenever possible.

Personalization is critical in modern B2B marketing and user experience (UX), and for a good reason. It allows you to not only market specific products or services to target customers. It also lets you forge long-lasting, positive relationships with big spenders or longtime consumers.

The stronger those relationships are, the stronger your customer base will be. Using the data you’ve gathered, improve customer experiences by offering personalized chat responses and giving specific customers access to additional resources or customer support channels. Lastly, you can recommend specific products based on their previous purchase history.

Done right, your customers will think you can read their minds! That’s a major competitive advantage and differentiator for your company. So prioritizing e-commerce customer expectations should be a goal of your digital experience management team.

Provide Plenty of Post-Sale Support

Post-sale support is equally as essential as support leading up to a sale in the B2B world. If you fail to maintain post-sale support, such as by not having any customer support channels for your B2B clients, those same clients may think you’ve abandoned them once you’ve taken their money.

Post-sale support includes:

• Providing access to support channels like chat or phone lines
• Answering customer queries and complaints quickly
• Sending follow-up emails or surveys to customers who completed a purchase for the purposes of collecting feedback and for double checking that they are satisfied

Positive, post-sale support often leads to more purchasing decisions and a higher net promoter score or NPS. Ultimately, it’s a great customer experience all around.

Use Modern Tech Tools and Automation

It’s wise to use as many modern tech tools as possible, like CRM or customer relationship management software and automation tools. Automation tools, in particular, can help you streamline your customer experience workflows. Such tools improve customer experiences by maximizing your available workforce, such as sending many different and personalized marketing emails simultaneously.

Many modern tools can also improve customer experiences by providing personalized customer data to your marketing or sales/customer experience staff as needed. For example, when a customer experience agent has to respond to a complaint, tech tools can give that agent all the information they need to pick up the conversation where it was left off.

Lean-In to Customer Experience – Provide Support

Speaking of customer experience, you should double down on it as much as possible. Strong customer support is absolutely vital for ongoing or subscription-based businesses. You’ll need to provide ample support to your B2B clients if you wish to provide them with enjoyable experiences.

For particularly important or long-term clients, consider assigning a dedicated customer support agent or point of contact to handle all of their queries or concerns going forward. Assigning a human face to your organization will do wonders for making your brand stand out. Many customer personas are in favor of implementing these tools.

Optimize Your Site and Store

Lastly, don’t forget to optimize your website, social media presence, and online storefront (whether hosted on your own site or on e-commerce platforms like Amazon) as much as possible. The easier to navigate your store is, the better an experience a B2B customer will have right from the start. They’ll also be less likely to run into any glitches or issues that cause them to click away from your store in favor of a competitor.

Bonus Tip: Collect Customer Feedback!

Let’s take a look at a bonus eighth way to improve B2B customer experiences.

In order to maximize the quality of your product, the attractiveness of your brand, and the accessibility of your support resources, you should collect as much customer feedback as possible. Your B2B customers will likely be more than happy to provide feedback about their experiences, whether that feedback is positive or negative.

Positive feedback can be used to motivate or inspire your team. Negative feedback, however, is more useful, even if it feels brutal to absorb at first.

Negative feedback, for example, can be used to directly improve your website’s functionality, offer new resources or support channels that you didn’t previously, and better direct your limited resources where your customers need them most. Think of customer feedback as a guiding arrow you can use to make sure your brand is as customer-focused as possible.

You can gather customer feedback in a variety of ways, such as surveys. Just be sure all the ways in which you gather feedback are totally voluntary and unobtrusive. For example, should you decide to implement one or more surveys, keep them short, specific, and voluntary. That way, your clients don’t become annoyed at having to answer them.

Contact Awesome OS Today

The experiences you provide to your B2B customers will heavily impact brand loyalty, long-term profitability, and the overall success of your business. Concentrating on the B2B customer experience is arguably the most impactful thing you can do to help your company thrive in the months and years to come.

Awesome OS can help you achieve that goal in more ways than one. Our comprehensive BPO solutions are tailored to brands like yours, and it’s available with month-to-month contracts rather than contracts that stretch on for years.

To learn more about how Awesome OS can help you improve your B2B customer experience, send us a message, and let’s chat today!

Sources:

What is Customer Experience (CX) and Why Is it Important? | Tech Target

Why is personalization important? | TechTarget

After-Sales Service Support | Investopedia

The Value of Keeping the Right Customers | Harvard Business Review