The B2B Customer Experience — What Is It?

The B2B customer experience is the collective experience that a B2B client (such as a vendor, salesperson at another company, etc.) has when they interact with your brand. It’s very similar to the B2C customer experience, with some notable differences given the target audience of your business.

That’s because, for a variety of B2B organizations, a “client” is actually a group of people, such as multiple stakeholders. Those stakeholders might have many different needs or preferences when it comes to customer experiences; thus, brands like yours that primarily service B2B clients need to develop well-rounded experiences with unique challenges.

Furthermore, all of the members involved in a given B2B account play a role in the client’s purchasing decision. Will that client buy from your brand, subscribe to your services, or re-sign up for another deal? The B2B customer experience is inherently more group-oriented. There’s no one person you can target your efforts toward or expect to shake hands with.

Also complicating things is the fact that different departments within your target customer’s business might have different needs or expectations. They may even have different interpretations of your brand overall.

How To Sell To Other Businesses

Keep some key things in mind when developing customer-centric practices for B2B buyers:

• Tailor CX touch points to the preferences and experiences of your customers instead of being applied across a complete buyer journey.
• Complete each account's ideal B2B CX over time as you learn the client's expectations and desires. Gather metrics on customer needs and adjust them over time.
• Keep your CX strategy balanced so as to not alienate any of the stakeholders or departments within the account you wish to sell to.

In the long run, you’ll cultivate more customer loyalty and generate stronger customer relationships. Higher customer satisfaction will yield a competitive advantage across all marketing, including social media and similar platforms.

B2C vs. B2B Experience

In many cases, it’s easier to understand the B2B CX when you compare it directly to the B2C customer experience.

When you sell to the B2C market, you sell to the end-users or consumers of your new products. These are inherently small groups or distinct individuals. Therefore, your data analytics probably includes much more segmentation. You spend more time gathering data on a group of people than coming to conclusions about those groups based on their shared interests.

Customer experiences for B2C audiences are shorter. Touch points are usually tailored to the majority of people instead of individual accounts. This is a bit of irony — with the B2B CX, each journey or CX experience has to be tailored to the individual account more often. With the B2C CX, your customer journeys are much more generalized or “one size fits all.”

However, both CX focuses prioritize:

• Gathering customer data
• Using automation algorithms and machine learning decision-makers
• Incorporating and analyzing customer feedback
• Meeting customer expectations to reduce churn and improve retention

In these ways, your B2B company will use many of the same eCommerce account management methods for big B2B sales as it would for smaller customer bases.

The Vital Importance of CX for B2B Clients

In any case, customer experience is just as important for B2B clients as it is for end-users or traditional consumers. Why?

Firstly, B2B clients probably have several alternatives they can pivot to at a moment's notice. Therefore, you need to prove to your B2B clients that you will take care of them and understand their unique challenges or preferences. Offering somewhat white glove or personalized VIP experiences to B2B accounts is not unheard of, let alone rare.

Secondly, many more B2B clients engage in longer deals and larger monetary transactions compared to the average B2C purchases/deals. There’s more money on the table, plain and simple. Your brand’s CX could be the deciding factor in whether a B2B account decides to work with your brand instead of a competitor and whether you can add that money to your business bank account.

On top of those factors, CX can have an outsized impact on the long-term relationships you have with each of your B2B clients. Given the importance of long-term, consistent income for B2B businesses like yours, this is utterly vital. It won’t matter if you can consistently attract new B2B accounts to your business if you lose those accounts after a few months of service. You’ll spend more money marketing than you have coming in.

Bottom line: If your business provides products or services to B2B clients, know how to enhance your CX across the board.

The Best Ways To Improve B2B CX at Your Brand

Luckily, Awesome CX has developed a lot of strategies and techniques you can leverage to boost the B2B CX at your brand starting today. These strategies take into account the unique needs and challenges associated with B2B marketing and service providing.

Develop Personalized Experiences

One of the most effective ways in which you can bolster B2B CX for your business is to develop and deliver personalized experiences to each account holder.

Personalized experiences can range from personalized marketing to bespoke product packages to special discounts and more. The ultimate goal is the same: to make every account feel special and unique because they are.

Personalized experiences make your brand stand out in the minds of account holders and stakeholders. That’s one of the strongest things you have in your repertoire as you seek to keep your biggest accounts paying your business instead of a competitor.

If needed, create a customer journey map for each B2B company you work with. Identify their pain points and identify which of your brand’s differentiators can help solve these issues. Including relevant case studies (and passing these along to the sales teams) can provide the backing your pitches need. Lastly, all businesses must deliver great customer experiences for each new customer they onboard.

Offer Self-Service Options

Another way to revamp and improve B2B CX is to offer self-service options. Many clients for B2B businesses want to be able to access resources 24/7 or otherwise work on their own time frames. Self-service options, like FAQ pages, detailed knowledge bases, and much more, allow your clients to manage things for themselves.

Not only does this free up some work on your end of things, but it makes your client feel independent and supported in all of their endeavors. It’s a more effective way to prioritize B2B customer experiences than you may initially think.

Provide Multiple Channels for Support

At the same time, work on developing multiple support communication channels for each B2B client on your roster.

Communication channels can include:

• Chat channels (either with chatbots or actual service team members)
• Dedicated email addresses for customer support
• Phone lines or dedicated phone numbers for each high-value client
• Social channels like Instagram or LinkedIn to chat with leads/customers in real-time
• And more

The more ways your clients have to communicate and follow up with you, the better your business will run. Those clients will feel like they can always connect with your enterprise when they need you the most, and they won’t ever be put on hold when they need an issue solved quickly.

Revamp Customer Support Processes

Revamping and improving your customer support processes may also be smart. Many B2B clients expect to be worked with immediately when they have a question, concern, or complaint. They don't want to hear excuses; they want to hear solutions and results ASAP.

Take a long, hard look at your current customer support processes and see where you can make improvements in terms of:

• Communication
• Number and variety of available CS channels
• Workable solutions and solution timetables (faster solutions are always better)

Awesome CX’s support services could be just what your brand needs to provide revamped, superior customer support to your clients. If your organization doesn’t have enough staff members to make this work, you can rely on our supplementary assistance to make it happen. Or you can rely on us to provide stellar CS experiences for your B2B accounts in perpetuity.

Assign Dedicated Officers/Agents To High-Spend Accounts

Lean into personalization and customer support by assigning dedicated officers or customer success agents to the biggest accounts you have for your brand. Those large accounts may provide your business with the majority or even all of its income, so keeping them is absolutely vital.

Create the most effective and high-quality customer experience for those big-ticket clients by providing them with dedicated contacts. Those contacts can build a rapport with your accounts or clients, facilitating a human, dependable relationship for years to come.

On top of that, assigning a dedicated officer or agent to each high-value client will allow you to anticipate their needs, deliver even more personalized experiences in marketing, and tackle any problems they encounter before they become too noticeable. All in all, it’s a multifaceted improvement that should result in similarly multifaceted benefits.

Incorporate Key Feedback

From time to time, your B2B clients and customers may provide you with important feedback regarding your customer support, your hours, your prices, or something completely different. Whatever that input surrounds, incorporate it at the earliest opportunity.

Your B2B clients know the weak points of your customer experience. After all, they are the ones who live it day in and day out. If they say that your website isn’t very good or intuitive, who are you to deny them?

Make a list of all the feedback you receive, then cross-reference these points between different clients. If you see any common issues or problems, try to tackle those before more specific or unique problems.

Let Awesome CX Enhance Your B2B CX

At the end of the day, your CX will impact the success of your B2B business more than many other factors, including marketing! After all, a good CX for your B2B clients will do wonders for your reputation and bring more new clients to your brand than ever.

Fortunately, you don't have to undergo this evolution alone. Awesome CX's specialists can provide a range of assistance and insight to help you revamp and reinvigorate your B2B CX. Whether you need backend office support, web or software development services, or something else entirely, we can help. Send us a note today to get started.

Sources:

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

Business to Business: What Is B2B? | businessnewsdaily.com

Business-to-Business (B2B): What It Is and How It’s Used | Investopedia

What is B2B (business-to-business) commerce and how does it work? | Tech Target