The importance of digital customer experiences in B2B

As a B2B organization, you have to change a lot nowadays. Instead of calling daily with your customers to go through the ordering process, you now have to be present digitally and provide a digital customer experience.

This is easier said than done. There are a lot of pitfalls in the digital customer experience process. This will give your sales and marketing team a lot of other activities. To make it a lot easier for your organization: here are the most common challenges of the digital customer experience for your B2B organization.

Digital customer journeys

It is becoming increasingly important to map the customer journey of your customers, no matter what kind of organization you are. This is - to put it briefly - the way a (potential) customer travels from the first contact moment with your company to the stage of repeat purchases and thus: brand advocacy. It is often quite a challenge to define as an organization at which stage of the digital customer journey your customers are right now.
As a B2B organization, the challenge to set up a suitable customer journey is even greater than for B2C companies. It is often a complex customer process that is followed and it is not always clear who you are in contact with. But to solve this problem, there are some tools available. You can use Artificial Intelligence and Marketing Automation.

The importance of personalization

You can use the data of your customers to gain a better understanding of where in the customer journey the customer exactly is. On this basis, you can approach the customer with a specific message that meets his needs and wishes at that specific moment.
Approaching the right person with the right content at the right time ensures an improved customer experience. This also implies a high degree of customer satisfaction and a greater chance of customer retention. Personalization to the needs of the customer also makes the purchase process a lot easier and more pleasant.
According to Forbes, personalizing the customer experience can increase your revenue by a range of around 5 to 10% and it will reduce your company costs by 15 to 20% over a 3-year period. Personalizing your customer journey can thus bring you many benefits in the long term.

How do you use data here?

But how do you proceed? It is important to link data online as well as offline in order to create one customer image. Good communication between the various departments within your company and regular contact with existing customers is therefore important. This way you can always keep your details up-to-date per customer. An approach that reaches across different channels is therefore recommended. In order to coordinate this combination of data and content, it is interesting to call on Marketing Automation. You can read more about this in this whitepaper.
You can also realize an improved customer experience by using Artificial Intelligence. AI can be used for dynamic pricing, purchase forecasts, drawing up customer-specific catalogs or newsletters and you can also use chatbots. How these Artificial Intelligence solutions work, you can read below.

Dynamic Pricing

Dynamic Pricing is about dynamic prices that are calculated and various input variables such as customer profile, season, country and the size of the demand for the product. Based on these factors, an optimal price can be calculated with the help of AI. The three biggest advantages of this AI solution are:

• Higher turnover
• Higher profit margin
• Higher customer loyalty

Predictive Analytics

Based on previous purchases or previous website visits, you can collect information regarding customer preferences. You can also make some suggestions for possible purchases in the future. This way you offer your customer a personalized order based on their previous purchases. You can, for example, recommend equivalent products of a higher price range with better quality, also called 'up-selling', or products that are complementary to a certain product. The latter is better known as 'cross-selling'. For example, you also offer ink cartridges when someone has bought a new printer.

Customer-specific messages

From the history of purchases, you can also design an individual purchase process per customer. This provides a very interesting insight into the preferences and needs of your customer. You can send out custom messages such as catalogs and newsletters. The possible returns can also be predicted per product. Examples of this form of personalization are Spotify that you are proposing a playlist based on the music you have played often or Netflix that makes suggestions for certain series and films. your viewing habits, etc. But you too as a B2B organization can do this.
It is also possible to have a customer draw up a list of products that they order from you on a regular basis. This makes the purchase process easier for both you and your customers.

Chatbots

Chatbots are one of the biggest trends of the moment. Those are the small windows that suddenly appear on your screen and appeal to you. This AI tool can answer the questions of your website visitors, qualify leads and help customers check out in the purchase process. A chatbot is a kind of virtual assistant that can make the sales process more efficient and can offer a customer service that fits perfectly with the customer. The visitor who is still with a question does not have to wait for the answer from the customer service department, but simply receives an adapted answer. This tool can also collect information such as contact details with which they can get back to work in your sales department.

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