One of the most important aspects of success in any business is being able to know and attract your potential customers. In a commercial setting, this often means speaking directly to their needs as a consumer, ensuring that your product is the solution that they need. While this is still true in the B2B business setting, you are also going to want to offer value beyond that. Business customers and clients typically demand convenience to go with that. Since they’re more likely to be in a long-term relationship with their service providers, they expect more attention to customer success. Here are some of the ways you can ensure that you provide it.
Give them a proper welcome
Not every B2B business is going to need this, but if you are able to craft a great onboarding program for your business, then this can get your relationship with your clients off on the very best possible foot. First of all, it makes your customers feel assured that you’re not simply going to abandon them once you have closed a sale and gotten their money. It also helps them better engage with your products, especially if you’re providing something like SaaS that has multiple features that they can engage with. Providing video tutorials or webinars also helps you put a face and voice to the brand, personalizing it and creating a bit more of a connection with your new clients.
Be in reach when they need you
One very common complaint with B2B businesses is how easy it seems to get in touch with the team when it comes to making a new sale, but then all of a sudden, you’re met with radio silence when you’re a paying customer who is having a problem. You need to ensure that your customer support processes are just as robust and responsive as your sales team. Find the right customer support channels to make use of, whether it’s a phone line, a chat on your website, or even on your social media feeds. It’s best to give customers a few options and to make sure that you are reachable within working hours without too much of a hassle or a wait.
Make sure that payment isn’t a hassle
B2B customers have to pay like everyone else. However, usually, they’re not going to be paying in cash or up-front at the point of hiring your services, unless you’re selling them physical products. As such, working out convenient and easy-to-track payment methods can be crucial. A lot of B2B businesses use invoices. If you do, ensure that you use invoice software to send, track, and remind automatically. Digital transfers can speed up the process of payment too, so it’s worth looking at the difference between ACT and EFT payments to see which best fits the needs of your business. Most importantly, you need to be able to easily provide receipts and proof, as B2B customers have to keep neat records of all of their expenses.
B2B clients are more likely to engage with content
Given that the main goal of a B2B client is to fulfill the needs of their business and, in some way, improve it, they will much more often be interested in finding ways to optimize the tools and resources they use to run the business. As such, they’re more likely to engage with interesting and insightful content. Writing great B2B content and sending it out via social media or offering your customers the chance to opt-in to emails can not only answer their questions but further build a bond between your customer and brand.
Ensure that their feedback is always welcome
As mentioned, B2B clients and customers tend to develop a longer-term relationship with the businesses that they engage with. As such, if you want to retain them, then making them feel heard is very much an important part of the process. There are various ways to collect customer feedback, but the important part is that you make sure that they feel heard when they do give feedback. This includes specific replies to suggestions they have made. You can later capitalize on this with case studies showing how your business has changed in response to direct feedback. You shouldn’t accept every single piece of feedback, of course, but you shouldn’t rush past any suggestions, either.
Add something of the personal touch
Doing what you can to personalize the B2B customer experience is going to help your customers and clients feel much more valued as an individual, rather than just as a sale. The easiest way to do this is to make sure that you’re able to respond to them as individuals, taking into account the context of their relationship with the business. This means a lot more than just remembering their name. Making use of customer relationship management tools can help you keep the data you need on file, so that your team is able to quickly bring up the details that they need. Ensuring some consistency in your customer’s point of contact can make their relationship with the business feel much more personal, as well.
Empathize with the customer
One of the common mistakes in B2B business is treating each client as a totally professional, non-emotional, non-personal entity. It might be true that they are looking for more professionalism and convenience than the average consumer, but they are still human. Finding points to empathize with them, understanding how their personal needs intersect with their professional needs, and making sure that there’s still a human side to your customer service can be very important. You can still forge a personal connection with the point of contact you have within your customer’s business, which can influence them to feel more loyalty to your business as a result.
B2B customers can seem demanding and, indeed, some of them will be. You have to know your own boundaries but, at the same time, ensure that you can provide the convenience most of them will expect.
