As 2020 comes to an end (yay), there’s no reason you can’t finish it off on a positive note by taking some steps to put in place an improved B2B customer experience plan across your business.
Here are five ways you can improve your customers’ experience.
1 – Be human
It’s time to get emotional. Business people are people too. Just because you’re selling a B2B product or service to a company, there’s still a real person making the decision to buy. So use emotion, not just rational facts and figures, in your communications to customers.
The New Zealand B-to-B Marketing Report 2020 found that telling more emotional and human stories can cut through the sea of sameness in B-to-B marketing and get your brand noticed and remembered.
2 – Streamline buyers’ online journey
As customers migrate online during the pandemic, you need your online buying experience to be seamless. Today’s business buyers have more choices than ever before and now expect expertise, speed, transparency, and convenience.
Customers should know exactly what you want them to do next.
- For example, “Sign up now for a free trial” leaves no doubt in the buyer’s mind what their next step is.
- Use links and buttons to display your call to action so that customers can easily proceed to the next step of the journey.
Not only should you be clear about what you want the user to do next, but you should make it as easy as possible for them to move through their buying journey.
This Mckinsey case study shows how you can build a customer-focused B2B business.
3 – Get personal
There’s more to personalization than simply adding a customer’s name on an email.
As mentioned earlier, it’s important to understand that your customers are people with emotions.
A recent Salesforce survey showed that 84% of customers say being treated like a person, not a number, is very important to winning their business.
Personalization helps to humanize your marketing and create stronger, deeper relationships with your customers.
4 – Omnichannel experience
Customers are increasingly using online channels, both to research and buy.
B-to-B buyers. Now expect high levels of service and personalization (there’s that word again) throughout the customer journey.
What is an omnichannel experience?
Put simply, and an omnichannel experience is when your customers engage with your business across multiple channels online or off, on your website or social media, by mobile device or laptop, they enjoy the same great customer experience, same messaging, and the same ease of use.
What you want to achieve is a consistently great customer experience across all your different channels. Here’s an article from CustomerGauge with tips on how to create your omnichannel experience find out more.
5 – Create and repurpose sales tools
Sales … yes, we didn’t forget about salespeople and the vital role they play in your customer’s experience.
With in-person sales meetings decreasing, you need to be creating or repurposing sales enablement tools that work over video conferencing apps.
These should be designed differently from your traditional presentations.
- Make them shorter (people’s attention span via video is less than in-person)
- Incorporate other media (such as short videos, self-assessments, and polls)
- Add interactive content
- Use content that can be clearly read on a mobile or tablet.
Avoid your pitch feeling like a lecture by mixing in your different content on screen.
