Business customers go digital with B2C experience expectation

Digital technology and services have changed the competitive landscape: Besides just retailers, digitalization is also affecting business customers. But customers have been slow in taking into account the impact on B2B customer experience. Let’s take a look at this new mindset.

Many business customers still prefer face-to-face contact to other forms of communication –that was the assumption until now. But as a result of ongoing digitalization, business customers now move at different speeds. As consumers adapt to and take advantage of the benefits of maturing B2C multi-channel experience, they are starting to demand a comparable experience when they belong to B2B entities and interact with other B2B companies. A survey revealed that nearly half (49%) of B2B buyers prefer to make work-related purchases on the same websites they use for personal purchases[1]. Consequently, organizations need to offer their business customers more possibilities for digital interaction.

Opportunities and challenges

But what do B2B customers truly want? How do they want to be contacted and what levels of service and convenience are they demanding? Businesses need multi-channel commerce systems that address the unique challenges of the B2B realm, with the flexibility to adapt to a rapidly changing competitive landscape. But before this can be achieved, organizations need to take a step back and think from the business customer’s perspective.

Decisions are often made from a cost-saving perspective. But when it comes to B2B digitalization, it’s all about competitive advantage: Taking a look at the overall customer experience and trying to put everything in place that optimizes this experience will set you apart from competitors. True multi-channel commerce is key to providing the tools and capabilities required to support complex business relationships. This means any relevant solution should seamlessly integrate with sales, provisioning, service and marketing systems. It should offer a broad range of sophisticated capabilities that deliver a B2C-class experience in a B2B context.

[1] Accenture: “Building The B2B OmniChannel Commerce Platform Of The Future”