Why Delivering A Superior Customer Experience Matters in B2B
When it comes to adopting new philosophies, practices, and technologies, businesses tend to give disproportionate focus on the sales process. While the sales process is a vital aspect of increasing revenues through initial conversion, around 60% of buyers say that they would switch to a new brand in a given industry after one bad customer service experience.
This figure only begins to demonstrate the overwhelming importance of offering a personalized, efficient customer service system. To make it even clearer why customer experience matters for B2B, we are going to cover a few things:
- How much decision-makers care about customer service
- The benefits of offering a quality customer experience
- The most effective way to modernize customer service
Let’s dive into each and provide some illuminating statistics to better understand the reality.
How Much Do Buyers Care About Customer Experience?
90% of Americans use customer service as a factor in deciding whether or not to purchase from a company.
Buyers in every industry want to be taken care of by the businesses that they patronize.
89% of customers are more likely to make a repeat purchase after a positive customer experience.
A quality customer service experience can actually be a powerful sales tool.
76% of B2B buyers expect a business to know their unique needs and expectations, which is even higher than the 63% of B2C customers.
B2B decision makers are even more customer service-focused than B2C consumers, and their expectations are higher.
78% of consumers will forgive other mistakes and still make a repeat purchase with a company that offered them quality customer service.
Customer service can even help alleviate the cost of mistakes made in other departments of a business, making it a clear top priority when looking to improve operations overall.
83% of customers feel more loyal to a brand that resolves their complaints.
Brand loyalty can lead to tons of repeat business from decision makers that buy in bulk, which can be vital to the success of any B2B sales-driven company.
The Benefits of a Quality Customer Experience
68% of buyers would pay more for a product knowing it is being purchased from a company well-known for offering quality customer service.
Customer service not only makes past customers happier, but also increases the profit potential of future buyers. For B2B, this often means better margins on bulk and premium goods.
Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits between 25-95%.
There is no better reason why customer experience matters for B2B than the massive profit bump available by increasing customer retention by even a small margin.
Investing in acquiring new customers is 5-25x more expensive than retaining existing ones.
The disproportionate focus on the sales process may be costing businesses more money than if they focused some of that financial and time investment on developing better customer service.
64% of business leaders say that customer service benefits their company’s growth.
Those who have taken the step to improve their customer experience will vouch for its effectiveness in growing a quality business.
Businesses can grow revenue 4-8% above others in their market by prioritizing an improved customer service experience.
Turns out, the hard numbers back up what business owners are saying about the profitability of customer service.
The Most Effective Way to Modernize Customer Service
So, now that we know why customer experience matters for B2B, the next question is how best to improve the customer service experience a business has now. One of the easiest and fastest ways to completely revamp the customer experience is by adopting a cutting-edge software platform as its foundation.
By adopting customer service software, business owners can:
- Automate the processes that take up associates’ time, but don’t benefit from their human touch (organization, ticket routing, automatic escalations and approval processes, etc.)
- Give associates more time for the work for which they are truly needed (live calls, email correspondence, in-depth customer support)
- Use manual inputs to customize the service experience to fit their business and clientele
- Offer a clean, user-friendly self-service portal that makes it easy for buyers to reach out and get the support that they need.
- Have a holistic view of the customer: what matters to them, their focus, how to be more proactive than reactive to their needs. A holistic view touches on providing both customer service and customer success and how combining those two improves the whole customer experience at large.
All that managers need to do to adopt one of these platforms is to select a quality partner that they can trust to deliver the best possible experience for their consumers. When they are ready to take the next step, Vivantio can help.
See Why Customer Experience Matters for B2B with Vivantio
While each of the benefits listed in this article work wonders for businesses, they won’t help if managers choose a platform that doesn’t offer all of the necessary features. Vivantio offers a cutting-edge customer service software platform that offers everything listed and more, including:
- Endless integrations to make implementation easy
- Workflow designer tool that allows managers to customize the framework of their CS operations without any technical knowledge required
- White label service portals so businesses can maintain a cohesive brand throughout the service process
- Building a holistic view of your existing customer base to improve and elevate the customer experience
For businesses looking to bring their customer experience into the modern age, Vivantio is a no-brainer option.
