How Can B2B Businesses Break Away From Traditional Patterns to Optimize Customer Support?

For B2B customers, the buying process is often more complex and formal than that of individual consumers. This can lead to a more traditional and less innovative approach to customer support and experience. Having said this, it’s worth asking whether B2B companies lack creativity in these areas. While we can’t provide a direct answer due to the many factors at play, we can offer some direction, and suggest actionable approaches.

Pascal Malotti is the Global Retail Strategy Lead & Strategy Director at Valtech

1/ Integrate Into the Value Chain of Customers and Partners

The challenge is real but not insurmountable. Integrating B2B companies into the value chain of their customers and suppliers is essential to maximizing operational efficiency and proactively managing risk. To achieve this, internally established business processes must be able to coexist with those of customers and suppliers. 

Identify the Touch Points

Firstly, process mapping is necessary to identify the touch points where your support can add value. Documenting and understanding internal processes, as well as those of customers and suppliers, helps to identify points of convergence and divergence.

The collaboration between Grundfos, a world-leading manufacturer of pumps and pumping solutions, and Qualtrics, an experience management platform, is an innovative example of a partnership. It improves customer experience in the B2B sector. By collecting feedback at every customer touchpoint and using automated alerts to track unhappy customers, Grundfos could transform critics into promoters.

As a result, the company has seen an average 9-point increase in customer ratings and three times the growth in satisfied customers. By integrating CX and OX data, Grundfos has obtained a holistic view of customer experience and operational performance, allowing internal performance metrics to correlate with customer perceptions to better understand the root causes of problems and successes.

APIs

At the same time, B2B companies that adopt integrated technologies are better placed to innovate and remain competitive. However, implementing technology integration across the customer and supplier value chains is a complex process. It requires careful planning and execution. Interconnected systems such as APIs and connectors are an essential part of this, as they facilitate:

• Process automation: By using connectors, companies can reduce manual intervention, minimizing errors and increasing the speed of operations.
• Real-time data exchange: Companies can react to requests and changes in customer needs faster thanks to the immediate availability of up-to-date data.
• Collaboration: APIs can create online portals where customers and suppliers can access relevant information, place orders, track deliveries, and more.
• Service customization: Connectors can integrate enterprise systems with third-party applications used by customers, providing a more consistent and integrated experience.

Artificial Intelligence

Successful integration must serve one ultimate objective, namely, to dematerialize and make processes more reliable. On this point, AI plays a significant role in reliability and availability, particularly in the modeling of remote maintenance logic.

AI can be integrated into remote assistance systems to help technicians diagnose and resolve problems more quickly and efficiently. It can provide step-by-step guides, repair recommendations, and information on spare parts required.

Siemens’ use of its MindSphere IoT platform provides a perfect example. In this, data from industrial equipment is collected and analyzed in real-time. AI can then optimize equipment performance and predict maintenance needs, providing effective remote support for its industrial customers.

2/ Drawing Inspiration From B2C

B2B customer support has traditionally been complex and focused on long-term relationships. To take a page from B2C’s book regarding support and customer experience, B2B companies need to develop customized solutions that specifically address the individual needs of each customer, partner, and supplier. By incorporating certain B2C-inspired practices, B2B companies can better accommodate to customer needs, strengthen long-term relationships, and stand out in a competitive market.

User-Friendly Interfaces

A starting point would be to facilitate interactions through user-friendly customer portals and simplified user interfaces, to support access to information. Favoring a web interface over a client interface is a winning strategy. Indeed, it offers the flexibility, accessibility, and efficiency that is so crucial in B2B environments. Speed of deployment, centralized maintenance, and cost reduction are significant factors.

For franchise networks, web interfaces can easily incorporate accessibility features for users with special needs. This enables the various centers (purchasing, logistics, etc.) to work together in real-time. 

Communication

Another way of thinking about this would be to invest in the pillars of transparency and communication, the approaches to which vary according to the needs, expectations, and distinct relational dynamics of each model. In B2B, fragmented communication channels can affect the speed at which complex issues get resolved. One way around this problem is to communicate transparently and provide real-time updates on orders, deliveries, and problem resolutions to maintain total transparency.

Feedback

B2C focuses on a fluid, intuitive, and visually appealing user experience to maximize sales and consumer engagement. B2B focuses on efficiency, robust functionality, and personalization to meet complex business needs and optimize commercial processes. Continuous feedback is key to meeting these needs. Specialist platforms such as Qualtrics, Medallia, or CustomerGauge can help collect feedback. These structure and analyze the data, and segment customers by size, sector, or seniority.

Direct-to-customer Model

The direct-to-customer (DTC) model can offer clear operational efficiency and cost-reduction benefits. However, B2B companies must first assess whether this approach is suitable for their target market, their business model, and their existing customer and partner relationships.

DTC can be applied by different types of B2B companies, depending on their sector of activity and the nature of their products or services. Cisco Systems, for example, is known for its networking and communications products and services. They have introduced an e-commerce platform for some of its products and services that allows corporate customers to buy directly online.

To innovate and break away from traditionalism, B2B must shift its focus to facilitating fast, efficient interactions to provide a positive user experience. Steady progress is being made as companies succeed in this transition. But others may be encountering a degree of organizational inertia and resistance to change. Also, VSEs and SMEs are not on the same footing as large groups when it comes to making the necessary investments.