Building Customer Centric B2B Organizations

Trend #7: Increased Customer Centricity in B2B 

According to Salesforce, 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services. 

Experts say the pandemic created a major shift in how B2B businesses approach customer experience. In this article we share 4 ways that B2B organizations are becoming more customer centric. 

Customer Centric B2B Organizations combine technology and data analytics with human interactions for a seamless, full service client experience. 

 “Technology used to be a mechanism for ‘optimizing’ an organization, but now it is fundamentally reshaping them,” according to Technology speaker Peter Hinssen.

The pandemic accelerated overall eCommerce growth across all sectors by four to six years, according to a 2021 study by Adobe.  

The use of video conferencing capabilities today, versus two years ago is a great example of this. The companies that thrived adapted and adopted technological solutions to bolster their client experience.

Further advances in AI based technology like chatbots helped many companies field a massive influx of customer service requests, freeing up agents to support more high-value customer needs from their home offices. 

Futurist & Technology speaker Mike Walsh explains how financial giant UBS used AI to supplement their human interactions, reducing friction for the clients and offering a data driven approach to benefit their B2B customers.

Furthermore, successful organizations leverage the data captured by tech to understand exactly who their client is, and what they need, in order to provide personalized service. 

Truly customer-centric brands use data to proactively serve customers. Predictive analytics can pinpoint when a customer is most in need of a product or service or when they might require changes or additional services. 

It’s at these moments that the best companies step in to offer support before customers even realize they need it.

(For more on building collaborative digital ecosystems, check out this article. )

 Customer Centric B2B Organizations  leverage humanity to build trust. 

In a time when every customer is navigating their own set of evolving circumstances and challenges, personalization carries greater significance: building trust takes people from prospects, to customers to advocates. 

Founding Writer of Fast Company & Co-Founder of Management Lab, Polly LaBarre explains that organizations who dive into WHO their clients are by listening with humility, will develop long lasting, sustainable relationships that go beyond any single transaction. 

Building trust is as simple as this: Be helpful. Our expert on Persuasion, Influence & Sales, Phil M. Jones suggests that tech isn’t as important in guiding customer experience right now, it is listening to what our clients need and offering them solutions. 

Listen to your clients, ask them what they need and then figure out how to do it. The fastest tech or most evolved AI will not replace the ability to ask questions and connect with your clients. 

 Customer Centric B2B Organizations help their customers, not just sell to them.

The biggest challenge for B2B sales right now isn’t losing the sale to someone else, it is stagnation and indecision by clients. 

According to a 2022 study by Gartner B2B customers spend only 17% of their purchase process time talking to potential suppliers and sales people. 

Today, customers have access to an excess of information which causing buyers to become easily overwhelmed, leading to stagnation and indecision, or at worst, low quality decision making. 

Consider the insurance or financial services industries. The products available are highly complex, leaving even the most astute client researcher feeling confused and paralysed by the sheer volume of information available for each decision in a multi-step process.

In cases like this, B2B sales people must build on the trust they have created with their clients to enable them to make great choices, by helping them navigate the available information, prioritize their needs and create an opportunity for distinction that puts the clients’ needs first, and the sale second. 

 Customer Centric B2B Organizations know that incredible EX creates incredible CX.

The majority of executives - 55% - agree that it is impossible to provide great customer experience (CX) without providing great employee experience (EX), a recent Harvard Business Review Analytics Services survey states. 

Further to that, companies that prioritize EX to deliver an exceptional customer experience achieve revenue growth that is 1.8 times faster than those that don’t. 

With all of the upheaval in the last two years, this is more important than ever, and is one of the most salient topics of 2022.

We all read the story of the DoorDash employee who refused to go out on delivery with a DoorDash driver because it “wasn’t [his] job.”

Denise Yohn advocates creating a values based culture within your organization both internally and externally, beginning with the very first point of contact with a potential employee that extends through to the end user. 

Communicating clear expectations for your employees offers them a framework in which to achieve premium customer care.

Customer-centricity is vital for companies in 2021. When a company is truly customer-centric, every decision and action is done with customers in mind. It’s the customer-centric companies that will set the tone and lead the charge with loyal, satisfied customers in the years to come.

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For more information on any of the speakers linked above, please contact me at derek@thesweeneyagency.com or by phone at 1-866-727-7555.