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Three ways to make your B2B customer experience stand out

Three ways to make your B2B customer experience stand out

Build lucrative and long-term relationships with your clients with easy, fast and friendly customer support.

It’s official: the customer experience is still king.

According to Econsultany’s 2018 Digital Trends report, optimizing the customer experience is the top priority for marketers.

This isn’t surprising, as a great end-user experience can have a big impact on your business. What is surprising? Only 10% of brands believe they’ve optimized their digital business strategy for the customer experience.

When your employees put the customer experience first, you will gain a competitive advantage. The more you make customers feel valued, the more likely they will be to buy additional products or services and refer you to their peers.

"Just 13% of brands rated their customer service delivery as a 9 out of 10."

Dimension Data

Here are three ways to deliver an amazing B2B customer experience:

1. Welcome new clients

The steps you take the first few days after a sale can make or break your client relationships. If your onboarding experience is memorable, customers will be more likely to tell their bosses you are delivering value to their business.

A welcome package can reinforce your value, so clients remain confident they made the right decision by choosing you over your competitors. Here are some things to include in your welcome package:

· An introduction to their support team or dedicated account representative

· Information on how to get started with your product or service

· A link to your calendar, so they can book any necessary kick-off appointments

· An invitation to join your social communities, forums or user groups

· A discount on a related product or service

· A hand-written thank you note and/or a gift

2. Make customer service easy and intuitive

Strong end user support is about eliminating barriers. Your onboarding process should remove any obstacles to working well with you your customers may face.

For example, your support reps can send both new and continuing users educational content as soon as they sign up and as new content becomes available. Guides, videos and tutorials can walk them through the steps they must take to succeed with your product or service, both at the beginning of your relationship and as your company’s offerings evolve.

Further, when a customer runs into a problem, they want an immediate answer. This is why many people now prefer self-service support, as opposed to queuing to speak with a rep.

In addition to traditional support, you can also give customers on-demand help via chatbots. When a customer types a question into a chat box on your home or support page, a bot will instantly respond. Chatbots can handle the majority of support requests, which reduces the burden on your in-house team, while also giving busy professionals faster service. According to recent research, 45 percent of end users prefer chatbots as the primary mode of communication for customer service inquires.

3. Give each client a dedicated account rep

Although clients can get answers to most of their questions via self-service support, there are still times when they would benefit from phone support from an account rep.

In these cases, B2B clients appreciate working with a dedicated account rep who understands their challenges and goals. A dedicated rep eliminates the most frustrating parts of phone support, repeating your problem to multiple representatives and speaking with someone who lacks knowledge about your business in particular.

Dedicated account reps also have the authority to resolve issues without escalation or call transfers. This allows customers to solve many of their problems on the first call.

"72% of brands fail to collect data to review and optimize journey patterns. Meanwhile, 73% can’t identify blockages in processes that will impact their customer experience."

Dimension Data

The future of customer support is now

With B2B markets becoming more global and competitive, the customer experience is now the ultimate brand differentiator. In fact, it matters more than your technology, products and services. When you focus on the customer experience, you will stand out from your competitors and increase the value and duration of every client relationship.

What else can B2B brands do to improve their customer experience? Share your tips below.