5 Best Ways To Improve B2B Customer Experience In 2021

B2B purchase cycles are longer, and hence the time and money invested in acquiring new customers are often more than the B2C purchase cycle.

Customer experience is a crucial differentiating factor that helps the B2B businesses to acquire, nurture, and retain customers.

Customer experience is the top priority for around 46% of the businesses in the next five years.

Besides, more than 80% of customers have agreed to pay more for a better customer experience.

Hence, companies are also focusing on creating valuable omnichannel experiences and spending a lot to keep customer communication smooth.

Here are the top 5 ways to improve B2B customer experience in 2021 and ahead:

1- Simplify and Digitize the Customer Journey

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced even the non-digital organizations to digitize the customer journey. Hence, the first step to offering an improved customer experience is digitizing the customer path.

Create a persona to understand your customers and identify the different touchpoints to engage with your brand. Identify the roadblocks and merge all your digital and non-digital touchpoints.

You can collect customer feedback at every stage of the buyer journey to optimize them according to the users’ expectations.

2- Offer Excellent Customer Support

Make every effort to offer exceptional customer support to your customers. Here are some tips for providing excellent customer service:

● Train your support staff to remain friendly and say welcome, and thank you every time they interact with the customers. AI-powered solutions like EdCast foster a culture of learning and enable social sharing between different departments.

● Use help desk software like Zendesk to offer multi-channel support and execute the core tasks at scale.

● Be responsive, proactive, and respectful in your interactions.

● Again, ask for customer feedback and continue to improve your support operations.

3- Improve Your Customer Retention Rate

The retention rate is the number of customers that stay loyal to your business at the end of a given period (week, month, or year).

Higher retention rate means the users are happy with your service, and they prefer your brand over your competitors. Data-driven companies see more growth; hence, you should try to keep an average retention rate of more than 30%.

Here are some practical ways to improve customer retention rate:

● Always over-deliver and under-promise.

● Keep track of your competitors to know their product features and pricing. Talkwalker is an excellent tool to compare the performance of different competitors. Present irresistible offers to your customers that provide more value than being offered by your competitors.

● Be there with your customers when they need you.

● Leverage the power of personalization in your marketing efforts.

4- Set the Right Expectations and Value Transparency

ROI analysis will also play a significant role in the B2B purchase cycle as 77% of customers conduct a detailed ROI analysis before making the purchase decision.

Hence, B2B companies need to set the right expectations right at the start of the customer journey and value transparency.

B2B customers always expect more whether its services, offers, or support. You have to work on all these three fronts to build a stellar business. Make it easy for the customers to browse content, prepare a variety of B2B content to tackle the needs of different customers, take proactive measures to deliver correct answers, and use the power of AI to reach the customer at the right time.

Deliver the promises you make, correct your mistakes, and listen to your customers. Companies that listen to the customers and improve their offerings can retain their customers for a more extended time.

5- Work on the Six Pillars of Customer Excellence

There are six pillars of customer excellence vital to acquiring, nurturing, and retaining customers for a longer period. As a B2B company, you need to work on the following six pillars to build an excellent customer relationship:

● Integrity – Remain honest with your business principles and have a solid foundation of trust. People favor a business that demonstrates trustworthiness. Acquire reviews, positive comments, and higher ratings to show excellence.

● Resolution – Don’t shy away from accepting your mistakes. Instead, always remain prepared to take immediate action for recovery.

● Expectations – Every B2B customer has higher expectations. As suggested earlier, overdeliver on the expectations and provide a consistent service.

● Time and Effort – Offer instant solutions because people hate to wait. Whether it’s providing service feedback or notifying about a new update, keep it fast.

● Personalization – Create hyper-personalized campaigns to reach the customers that focus on individual customer needs.

● Empathy – You can’t ignore empathy if you wish to achieve success because brands that care for people’s emotions can build a strong rapport. Besides, take steps for the well-being of your employees because your employees are the ones who will keep your customers happy.

Conclusion

B2C companies are winning the customer experience satisfaction race, and B2B companies should not lag behind. Apply the five ways mentioned above to take your customer experience strategy to the next level. Remember, brands that offer innovative and exceptional experiences will be able to acquire more customers and retain them for longer.